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21 April 2014 06:35 am - 1 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
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There are not many societies in the world that are socially and culturally uniform. This is particularly so in societies that attracted migrants from other territories. America attracted and accommodated a wide range of ethno-religious groups into its fold. The process of accommodation of diverse communities there was guided by the dominant idea of a melting pot; the incoming groups and individuals were expected to adapt to the dominant ideas and values of the country of their destination. This did not mean that people had to always give up their cultural and social practices and the latter often remained part and parcel of their day to day lives, usually in their private domains. What came to dominate the public life of the country were liberal values of individual freedoms, basic social and political rights and the ethos of competition and individual achievement. It should also be noted that America is not the only country in the world that had gone through a complex process of state formation in a context of mass immigration. Other examples are Australia, New Zealand and Canada..jpg)
As mentioned before, the ethno-religious composition of the population in this country has been mostly the result of immigration of people from different parts of India and elsewhere in the distant past and the ensued processes of accommodation, assimilation and acculturation. Some incursions had taken the form of invasions leading to conflict and change of territorial arrangements. Western colonialism added more to the complexity. However, the unification of the country did not result in any significant weakening of some of the pre-existing divisions and in fact, helped perpetuate them as these broad divisions often became the building blocks of the political system that came into being. The liberal idea of a multitude of individual citizens becoming autonomous stakeholders within a competitive polity did not take root in a segmented society where collective consciousness did not evolve very much beyond the boundaries of primordial divisions of family, kinship, caste, ethnicity and religious congregation. Though some of the state policies and interventions, both before and after independence, were designed in keeping with universal values such as equality and social justice, political mobilization of people tended to follow the fault lines largely determined by primordial divisions. This pattern has not changed very much to this day. Ethno-religious conflicts in the recent past and the present communal tensions in the country clearly attest to this fact..jpg)
Too many politicians, irrespective of their ethno-religious identity, talk about their communities, their problems and their welfare and rarely make an effort to concentrate on the collective well-being of the citizenry as a whole.fazel Monday, 21 April 2014 12:09 PM
Very good article. well done!
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