Minorities and their nationalism(s): The terms of a discourse in South Asia

Abstract

South Asia is the theatre of myriad experimentations with the doctrine of nationalism: religious, linguistic, religio-linguistic, composite, plural or exclusive - the region stands witness to all. However, officially promulgated nationalism, presented as the finality of one's affiliations and loyalties, comes to be fiercely contested by minority groups resolute on preserving what they see as the pristine purity of their cultural inheritance. A minority's claim to selfhood is consistently called into question through a politics of nomenclature. The nationalism of the minority groups is frequently relegated to either sub-nationalism, proto-nationalism or a pre-modern appellation, ethnicity. This article examines the perspective of minority identities as they negotiate their terms of co-existence, accommodation and adaptation with several other competing identities within the framework of nation state. © 2012 Taylor & Francis.