What Pluralism Means

That is what the Indian Constitution does again and again. The harmony between Parts III and IV in Minerva Mills, the balance between article 25 and article 25(2)(b), and the balance between article 30 and article 29(2) are all of this kind.

What a plural society has to solve

Four problems, and each is a chapter of this module.

Recognition. Who counts as a group, and who decides? That is [Who Is a Minority] and, for tribes, the notification under article 342.

Protection. What may a group keep that a majority might otherwise take away: its language, its script, its institutions, its personal law, its land. Articles 29, 30, 350A, 371A and the Sixth Schedule.

Participation. How does a group that will always lose a national vote take part in governing? Reservation of seats, federal division, and autonomous councils.

Limits. What may a group NOT do to its own members in the name of its identity? That is where pluralism meets the equality chapters of Module III, and it is the hardest of the four.

A worked example

A State has a district in which a linguistic group forms ninety per cent of the population and three per cent of the State's population. It asks for schooling in its own language, for its script to be used in the district's courts, for its customary rules on inheritance to be applied to it, and for the district to be given an elected council with power over land. Which of these does Indian pluralism grant?

Schooling: yes, and it is close to a right. Article 350A directs every State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage to children belonging to linguistic minority groups, and article 29(1) protects the right of any section of citizens having a distinct language, script or culture of its own to conserve it.

Courts: not as of right. Article 345 lets the State Legislature adopt one or more languages in use in the State as its official language, and article 347 lets the President direct that a language spoken by a substantial proportion of the population be recognised, on a demand. So the answer is that the machinery exists and the decision is not the group's.

Customary inheritance: only if the law already recognises it. Personal law and custom are recognised in India, but a group cannot create its own private law by asking. That is examined in [Legal Pluralism, and Personal Law].

An elected council over land: only in the Sixth Schedule areas. Elsewhere the answer is the ordinary panchayat under Part IX, which has no protected power over land.

The example shows the shape of Indian pluralism. It is generous about identity, culture and language; cautious about law; and territorial about power, which is why federalism and pluralism sit in one paper.

Distinctions

What it does NOT mean

It does not mean every difference is protected. The Constitution protects language, script, culture, religion and the institutions built around them. It does not protect a practice merely because a group has always followed it, which is the whole subject of [Essential Religious Practices].

It does not mean groups have rights against their own members. Articles 29 and 30 are rights of a section or a minority against the STATE. Where a group's practice injures a member, the member's own fundamental rights are in play, and that conflict is the hardest question in the module.

It does not mean pluralism and equality always agree. They frequently do not, and Module III is largely about where the Constitution comes down when they collide.

And it does not mean India invented it. Every large society has been plural; what is distinctive about India is the extent to which its Constitution wrote the accommodation down.

Quick revision

Pluralism: a society of several distinct groups, and the doctrine that this should be accommodated rather than removed. Three senses: descriptive, a fact about composition; normative, that diversity is valuable; and legal or political, what the State actually does about it. A fourth idea shares the word: value pluralism, associated with Isaiah Berlin, that genuine goods conflict and cannot be ranked on a single scale, which is why a constitution is a set of accommodations. Four problems a plural society must solve: recognition, protection, participation and limits. Indian machinery: articles 29 and 30, Part XVII with articles 345, 347, 350A and 350B, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, personal law, and reservation of seats. Contrast with assimilation, which dissolves difference, and with multiculturalism, which supports it actively.

Test yourself

1. Distinguish the three senses of pluralism, with an Indian example of each. Descriptive, that India contains many linguistic, religious and tribal groups. Normative, the argument that this diversity should be preserved rather than assimilated, which is the case against a uniform civil code. Legal and political, the machinery of articles 29 and 30, Part XVII and the Sixth Schedule.

2. What is value pluralism and why does it matter constitutionally? The claim, associated with Isaiah Berlin, that there are several genuine human goods which cannot all be realised together or ranked on one scale. It matters because it explains why a constitution is a set of accommodations rather than a single principle, and why courts balance rather than deduce.

3. Name the four problems a plural society has to solve. Recognition, of who counts as a group and who decides; protection, of what the group may keep; participation, of how a permanent minority takes part in government; and limits, of what a group may not do to its own members.

4. Distinguish pluralism from assimilation and from multiculturalism. Pluralism accommodates difference; assimilation dissolves it into a common national culture; multiculturalism goes further and actively supports and funds each group's identity.

5. Which article protects the right to conserve a language, and whose right is it? Article 29(1), and it belongs to any section of citizens having a distinct language, script or culture of its own, not only to a minority.

6. Why do pluralism and equality often conflict? Because pluralism protects a group's ability to live by its own norms, and equality protects an individual against those norms where they disadvantage that individual. The Constitution comes down on different sides in different places, which is the subject of Module III.