Democratic Accommodations: The Minority Question in India analyses the complex story of the accommodation of claims, interests and rights of minorities in India. It aims at what India-being one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse nations of the world-can offer to other nations, particularly to the countries of Europe that are confronted with ethnocultural and ethno-religious assertion. The authors have endorsed the argument that all plural democracies-and all democracies can only be plural in the present historical conjuncture despite the attempts by regimes to make them majoritarian-must work out their own strategies of accommodation by evolving a policy matrix that is suited to the dynamics of their own societies. The book is organised along four rubrics-laws, institutions, policies and political discourse-to understand Indian democracy's distinct response to diversity. The rich and nuanced exploration of the Indian approach to the minority question presented in this book will advance the international debate on diversity and multiculturalism and help policymakers in pluralistic democracies to develop their own particular strategies to deal with minority claims.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

How should liberal democratic governments respond to citizens as religious believers whose values, norms and practices might lie outside the cultural mainstream? Some of the most challenging political questions arising today focus on the adequacy of a policy of ‘live and let live’ liberal toleration in contexts where disputes about the metaphysical truth of conflicting world-views abound. Does liberal toleration fail to give all citizens their due? Do citizens of faith deserve a more robust form of accommodation from the state in the form of ‘recognition’. This issue is far from settled. Controversies over the terms of religious accommodation continue to dominate political agendas around the world. This is the first edited collection to provide a sustained examination of the politics of toleration and recognition in an age of religious pluralism. The aftermath of the events of September 11th have dramatised the urgency of this debate. It has also surfaced, nationally and globally, in disputes about terrorism, security and gender and human rights questions in relation to minority communities. This volume brings together a group of new and established scholars from the fields of law and philosophy, who all present fresh and challenging perspectives on an urgent debate. It will be indispensable reading for advanced researchers in political and legal philosophy, religious and cultural studies and related disciplines.

Of the many challenges facing liberal democracy, none is as powerful and pervasive today as those posed by religion. These are the challenges taken up in Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith, an exploration of the place of religion in contemporary public life. The essays in this volume suggest that two important shifts have altered the balance between the competing obligations of citizenship and faith: the growth of religious pluralism and the escalating calls of religious groups for some measure of autonomy or recognition from democratic majorities. The authors--political theorists, philosophers, legal scholars, and social scientists--collectively argue that more room should be made for religion in today's democratic societies. Though they advocate different ways of carving out and justifying the proper bounds of "church and state" in pluralist democracies, they all write from within democratic theory and share the aim of democratic accommodation of religion. Alert to national differences in political circumstances and the particularities of constitutional and legal systems, these contributors consider the question of religious accommodation from the standpoint of institutional practices and law as well as that of normative theory. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach and comparative focus, this volume makes a timely and much-needed intervention in current debates about religion and politics. The contributors are Nancy L. Rosenblum, Alan Wolfe, Ronald Thiemann, Michael McConnell, Graham Walker, Amy Gutmann, Kent Greenawalt, Aviam Soifer, Harry Hirsch, Gary Jacobsohn, Yael Tamir, Martha Nussbaum, and Carol Weisbrod.