Context

Given the diversity and complexity of India, the only constitutionally valid common denominator is citizenship.

Social security

• An eminent sociologist and former president of the International Sociological Association, T.K. Oommen, has written extensively on the concept of social security.
• Evolution of nation: He says the principal challenges to the evolution of a nation lie in minimising disparity, eradicating discrimination, and avoiding alienation.
• Excluded groups in our society: He has listed nine categories of socially and/or politically and/or excluded groups in our society: “Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, cultural minorities — both religious and linguistic, women, refugees-foreigners-outsiders, people [of] Northeast India, the poor and the disabled”.
• Sources of exclusion in India: He has suggested that “the three sources of exclusion in India — stratification, heterogeneity and hierarchy — create intersectionality.”
• This insecurity manifests itself in genocide, culturocide and ecocide and in its absence, a society may be conceptualised as secure.
• The Indian polity, he says, “has the most elaborate set of identities based on class, religion, gender, caste, region, language and their intersectionalities as well as consequent permutations and combinations.
• Citizenship as a common denominator: Given the diversity and complexity of India, the only constitutionally valid common denominator is citizenship.
• This is the point at which fraternity can and should be practiced among equals.
• Prof. Oommen opines that it is “only through the conflation of state and nation” can our Republic be considered a nation.

Conclusion

Cultural monoism and secularism are insufficient, Prof. Oommen says; instead, “the idea of conceptualizing India as a multicultural polity is more amenable than a secular India.” The sheet anchor of this has to be citizenship.

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