India would fit any definition of being multicultural. It is multilingual,
multireligious, multi-ethnic, multi-racial (though never used in India). In fact I would
argue India is more multicultural than the US since the US demands
"assimilation" (melting pot) whereas India doesn't (salad bowl).
Anthony
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Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor Currently
Comparative International Development Senior Visiting Research Fellow
University of Washington Asia Research Institute
1900 Commerce Street National University of Singapore
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA 469 A Tower Block
Phone: (253) 692-4462 Bukit Timah Road #10-01
Fax : (253) 692-5718 Singapore 259770
http://tinyurl.com/yhjzrm Ph: (65) 6516 8785
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On Tue, 11 Sep 2007, raghu wrote:
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:38:43 -0700
From: raghu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: PEN-L list <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ethnic nationalism
On 9/11/07, David B. Shemano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Actually, to be fair, a lot of countries created at the end of the imperial era
were not based on homogenous ethnicity. Of course, most of those creations are
also failed states and ethnic conflict often plays a big part in the failure.
I think most successful democratic nation-states are relatively ethnically
homogeneous. The US is arguably the exception that proves the rule, but the US
is really historically unique in material ways.
Well I really hope that is not the case because you are describing a
very xenophobic world. Many conflicts that appear to be ethnically
based on first sight can be interpreted differently on a
less-superficial examination. For instance the case of the Bosnia
conflict. Far from being the result of ancient ethnic rivalries, it
was an attempt to very artificially homogenize along arbitrarily
defined ethnic lines, a society that had long been diverse.
Ravi pointed out the example of India - it is not nearly as
multi-cultural as the US, but it is far from being ethnically
homogenous, so there's a pretty big counter-example for you.
I think your conclusion is an unnecessarily pessimistic one. Ethnic
conflict has never been all that important, it is just readily adopted
as a catch-all explanation because it fits in nicely with the dominant
political ideology that has the nation-state at its core.
The term "ethnic cleansing" is a dead giveaway. It implies that
somehow ethnic populations are made dirty by diversity and it is quite
natural to "clean" them up and make them homogenous.
-raghu.
