Meet the four misfits living in one HDB flat. One is a Malay–Jew who is trying to get his father to come back as a ghost. Cantona is a promising Bangladeshi artist on the run from a construction company. Tights is a Chinese illegal immigrant with a Forrest Gump obsession. And Shanti is a gifted Indian lab technician hiding from her abusive husband. When a forlorn pontianak begins haunting them, the four friends find themselves embroiled in a surreal showdown that may just upend the world, or at least Singapore. Written in Suffian Hakim's trademark humour, The Minorities is a novel about those living on the edges of society and their soulful bond.

Sarah Langston is a Caucasian girl in love with her African American boyfriend, Richard Morris. Everything is cool until she finds out she is pregnant. Sarah has a broken family, and revealing this secret to her ever-supportive dad is the most difficult thing she has ever had to do. She finds comfort in one of her best friends, Emily Wilkerson, her African American best friend. With the help of Emilys parents, Sarah tells the truth to her dad, even if haunted by fear. Surprisingly, her mom, who has never been there for her, overhears the conversation. What will happen to their already tarnished relationship? How will her mother react to this news? Abuse, the police, and the neighborhood play a part as everything comes crashing down on them. The Minorities exemplifies the unconditional love parents have for their children, no matter what the circumstances. The support of family and friends is the most important thing one needs in times of despair. Teenage pregnancy is one of the unrelenting issues our society faces. If not prevented among the youth, it can be an avenue for violence and neglect of responsibility. In The Minorities, one vivid example of aggression against women is being told.

Human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behavior and are regularly protected as natural and legal rights in municipal and international law. All human beings irrespective of their race, religion, sex. language, place of birth and culture are entitled for all human rights. The concept and practice of human right is not new having come into everyday parlance since the World War-II The history of Indian culture was trace back in Indus-civilization. Indian culture is the thesis of many local and immigrant cultures, religion and ideologies. Adaptability in Indian and accommodation of different cultures, religion, powers and process in different regions of India. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru rightly said that, “an unbroken continuity between the most modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu thought extending over three thousand years, the rights of man have been the concerns of all civilizations from time immemorial.” Humanity, justice and concepts of Human Rights were known to India. Not only India but the other parts of the world like the Babylonian laws and the Assyrian (ethnic group Indigenous to the Middle East) Laws, the Dharma of the Vedic period in India, and the jurisprudence of Lao-Tze and Confucius in China have advocated and practiced Human rights in civilization of their time.

With reference to India.

East, by Barbara Harff

Minority protection is integral to a civilised standard of internal good governance. The goal of promoting friendly inter-group relations within states highlights the linkages between constitutionalism and the extending reach of international law in shaping domestic governance and structuring relations between the state, non-state communities and individuals. While law per se cannot guarantee the security and integrity of minority groups, law and legal institutions play a role in promoting a tolerant and pluralistic environment and a multicultural ethos that appreciates, rather than resents, ethno-cultural diversity. This book is a comprehensive, modern study of the important field of international protection of minority rights, focusing on 20th century developments. Minority rights regimes, which address the issue of group identity and autonomy, have essentially been a stabilising force, buttressing state survivability in the face of claims to self-determination or secession. These serve to promote the peaceful co-existence of distinct ethno-cultural groups, captured by the metaphor of ‘Babel’, within existing states. Despite overlaps, the content of minority protection is more modest than the claim of indigenous groups for collective rights or peoples’ rights to self-determination. As part of the contemporary corpus of human rights norms, minority protection may be appreciated as an aspect of the evolving content of the ‘internal’ dimension of the right to self-determination. Chapter 1 introduces some key definitional and conceptual problems in the field of minority protection and presents a brief historical review of international approaches up to 1919. Chapter 2 discusses the League of Nations era. Chapter 3 examines approaches towards minority protection after World War Two as reflected in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and efforts to protect minorities outside the UN regime. In this period, discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, minorities' issues remained largely submerged within the UN project of promoting universal individual human rights. Chapter 6 addresses the post-1989 revival in minorities' issues within the UN; Chapter 7 offers a succinct overview of what might be considered a parallel history with respect to the development of regional human rights schemes and what these afford to minority protection, closing with concluding observations. Meticulously researched, this volume offers a valuable synthesis of this important but often heart-breaking field.