Rethinking

Multiculturalism
Cultural Diversity and Political Theory

Second edition

Bhikhu Parekh
© Bhikhu Parekh 2000, 2006

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7

The Political Structure of

Multicultural Society

A multicultural society faces two conflicting demands and needs to

devise a political structure that enables it to reconcile them in a just and
collectively acceptable manner. It should foster a strong sense of unity
and common belonging among its citizens, as otherwise it cannot act as
a united community able to take and enforce collectively-binding deci-
sions and regulate and resolve conflicts. Paradoxical as it may seem,
the greater and deeper the diversity in a society, the greater the unity
and cohesion it requires to hold itself together and nurture its diversity.
A weakly held society feels threatened by differences and lacks the
confidence and the willingness to welcome and live with them.
A multicultural society cannot ignore the demands of diversity either.
By definition diversity is an inescapable fact of its collective life and
can neither be wished out of existence nor suppressed without an unac-
ceptable degree of coercion and often not even then. Furthermore, since
human beings are attached to and shaped by their culture, and their self-
respect is closely bound up with respect for it, the basic respect we owe
our fellow-humans extends to their culture and cultural community as
well. Respect for their culture also earns their loyalty, gives them the
confidence and courage to interact with other cultures, and facilitates
their integration into wider society. As we have seen, cultural diversity
is also desirable for society as a whole and represents a valuable col-
lective asset.
Since no multicultural society can or should ignore the demands of
diversity, the assimilationist mode of political integration advocated by
Conservatives, nationalists, some communitarians and proponents of
comprehensive liberalism is inherently unsuited to it. The assimilation-

196
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 197

ist takes the nation state as his ideal and believes that no polity can be
stable and cohesive unless its members share a common national culture,
including common values, ideals of excellence, moral beliefs and social
practices. As a custodian of society’s way of life, the state is assumed to
have the right and the duty to ensure that its cultural minorities assimi-
late into the prevailing national culture and shed all vestiges of their sep-
arate cultures. In the assimilationist view the choice before minorities is
simple. If they wish to become part of society and be treated like the rest
of their fellow-citizens, they should assimilate. If they insist on retaining
their separate cultures, they should not complain if they are viewed as
outsiders and subjected to discriminatory treatment.
There is nothing wrong with assimilation. If minorities freely decide
to assimilate into the dominant culture, their decisions should be
respected and they should be given every opportunity and help to do so.
The question, however, is whether this degree of assimilation is neces-
sary to ensure political unity and should be made a precondition of
equal citizenship. The answer to that is in the negative. For reasons dis-
cussed earlier, minorities have a right to maintain and transmit their
ways of life, and denying it to them is both indefensible and likely to
provoke resistance. Furthermore, it is not clear what they are to be
assimilated into. The assimilationist assumes that society has a coher-
ent and unified cultural and moral structure, and that is rarely the case.
Although the moral and cultural structure of a society has some inter-
nal coherence, it is not a homogeneous and unified whole. It varies with
class, religion and region, is made up of diverse and even conflicting
strands, and consists of values and practices that can be interpreted and
related in several different ways. The assimilationist ignores all this,
and either offers a highly abridged and distorted view of national cul-
ture or equates it with that of the dominant group.
If minorities are left free to negotiate their relations with the wider
society and have an incentive to do so, they might decide to assimilate,
but they are less likely to do so if assimilation is imposed, rushed or
brings no benefits. The Jews have survived two millennia of a strong
assimilationist pressure from Christians, the ethnic and cultural minori-
ties in the Soviet Union have survived the most brutal repression, the
formidable economic and cultural pressures of the United States have
not succeeded in creating a melting pot, and the most determined
attempts by the Algerian and Sudanese governments have failed to
assimilate the Berbers and the southern Sudanese Christians respec-
tively.
198 Rethinking Multiculturalism

There are several reasons why the pressure to assimilate does not
always succeed. Cultures are too deeply woven into the lives of their
members to be jettisoned at will. Most of them, further, are embedded
in or at least intertwined with religion, and outsiders cannot assimilate
into them without changing their religion, which they are often reluc-
tant to do. Cultures are also extremely complex structures of beliefs and
practices, and their nuances, unspoken assumptions and deepest sensi-
bilities cannot be easily acquired unless one is born into them. Total
cultural assimilation therefore requires biological assimilation, and
many outsiders are unwilling to pay that price. Assimilation is also gen-
erally unable to redeem its promise of full and unqualified acceptance.
Even when one assimilates into the dominant culture after a strenuous
effort, there is always the danger that one’s slightest difference or past
background might be made the basis of discrimination by the whole or
a section of the wider society. The demand for total assimilation springs
from intolerance of differences, and for the intolerant even the smallest
differences are sources of deep unease.
The assimilationist pressure sometimes has the opposite conse-
quences to those intended by its champions. When a society refuses to
accommodate the legitimate demands of its cultural minorities, the lat-
ter seek to exploit such spaces as society itself provides to legitimize
their demands. For reasons too complex to discuss here, modern west-
ern society is extremely sensitive to religion and does not wish to
appear intolerant of deeply held religious beliefs and practices.
Minorities are naturally tempted to take advantage of this, and demand
recognition of their differences on the grounds that these are an integral
part of their religion. The Sikh’s turban no longer remains a cultural
symbol, which is what it largely is, and becomes a badge of religious
identity. The Hindu refusal to eat beef, the Muslim use of loudspeakers
to call the faithful to prayer, and the Rastafarian dreadlock are all
turned into mandatory religious requirements. The unfortunate conse-
quences of the religionization of culture are obvious. Religion acquires
a considerable influence over the development of the culture con-
cerned, religious leaders assume undue authority, critical voices are
silenced, and the easily negotiable cultural demands take on a strident
and uncompromising religious character. Frightened by the spectre of
religious militancy, liberal society throws up its own brand of secular
militancy, and the consequent polarization of society takes its toll on
the normal political process of deliberation and compromise.
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 199

When the religionization of their demands does not yield the desired
results, minorities are sometimes tempted to legitimize them in ethnic
terms, accusing wider society of undermining their ethnic identity and
even of ethnocide. Cultural practices are then ethnicized, given a
pseudo-natural grounding, and assigned a spurious identity-sustaining
role. The same process that occurs in the religionization of culture is
reproduced here with similar results. If cultural differences were
accepted as a normal part of life, those involved would not need to
ground them in something as intractable and non-negotiable as religion
and ethnicity. Religious and ethnic differences would, no doubt,
remain, but they would not become politicized, turned into the last bas-
tions of cultural defence, and given more importance than they
deserve.

Modes of political integration

In much of the literature on the subject three modes of political inte-

gration are canvassed as most likely to reconcile the demands of unity
and diversity. For convenience I shall call them proceduralist, civic
assimilationist, and millet models. Since they are well-known, the
barest outlines should suffice.1
In the proceduralist view the deep moral and cultural differences to
be found in multicultural societies cannot be rationally resolved, and
our sole concern should be to ensure peace and stability. This requires
a largely formal and neutral state laying down the minimally necessary
general rules of conduct, subject to which citizens remain free to lead
their self-chosen lives. If the state were to pursue substantive goals of
its own, it would violate the moral autonomy of, and discriminate
against, those taking different views of the good life. According to the
preceduralist the formal and minimal state combines maximum politi-
cal unity with maximum diversity; the former because it stays clear of
its citizens’ moral and cultural disagreements and makes no controver-
sial demands on them, the latter because it imposes the fewest con-
straints on their choices. This view, whose origins go back to Hobbes,
has been recently restated with some modifications by Michael
Oakeshott (1972), Robert Nozick (1974) and Chandran Kukathas
(1992a).
200 Rethinking Multiculturalism

The civic assimilationist view occupies a halfway house between the

proceduralist and the assimilationist.2 Unlike the proceduralist, it
argues that the political community requires agreement not only on its
structure of authority but also on a shared culture; but unlike the assim-
ilationist, it insists that the latter should not be comprehensive and
encompass all areas of life. For it the unity of the political community
lies in its shared political culture, which includes its public or political
values, ideals, practices, institutions, mode of political discourse, and
self-understanding. Unless its citizens share such a culture, they cannot
engage in a meaningful dialogue, formulate and resolve their differ-
ences and pursue common goals. Subject to the constraints of the
shared political culture, citizens should be free to lead their self-chosen
lives in the private realm. For the civic assimilationist the public realm
represents uniformity; and the private realm, which includes the family
and the civil society, represents diversity. The former ensures unity,
provides principles to determine the permissible range of diversity, and
gives society the confidence to tolerate and even welcome deep differ-
ences in the private realm. The origins of this view go back to Locke
and the founding fathers of the American republic, and it has been
restated with suitable modifications by the later Rawls (1993a) and
Habermas (1993).
For the advocates of the millet model, human beings are above all
cultural beings embedded in their communities. All that deeply matters
to them – their customs, practices, values, system of meaning, sense of
identity, historical continuity, norms of behaviour and patterns of fam-
ily life – are derived from their culture. As an essentially legal and
administrative institution, the state has no moral status, and its sole rai-
son d’ être is to uphold and nurture its constituent cultural communities.
It is not a community of communities, for that implies that it has an
independent moral basis and its own distinct goals, but a union or a
loose federation of communities, a bare framework within which those
communities should be free to pursue their traditional ways of life and
engage in necessary social, political and economic interactions. The
state is expected not only to refrain from interfering with their internal
affairs, but also to recognize and institutionalize their autonomy,
enforce their customs and practices, and so on. Individuals are assumed
to owe their primary loyalty to their respective communities, and
derivatively and secondarily to the state.

* * *
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 201

Judged by their ability to reconcile the demands of unity and diversity,

the three theories outlined above are all unsatisfactory in varying
degrees. The proceduralist assumes that however different their con-
ceptions of the good life might be, all citizens can readily agree on what
structure of public authority is most likely to achieve peace. The
assumption is unwarranted. The structure of authority can rest on a sec-
ular or a religious foundation. If the former, it can be based on univer-
sal franchise or one limited by race, class or gender. The universal fran-
chise in turn can be equal or weighted towards the intellectual elite, as
J. S. Mill (1964) had argued, or university graduates as was the case in
Britain until 1948. The system of elections might be direct or indirect
and take individuals as its basic units as the liberals advocate, or cor-
porate groups as Hegel, some pluralists and others have urged. The
authority of the state might be absolute or limited by a constitutionally
prescribed system of separation of powers. The choice between these
alternatives is moral in nature, and based on our views on such ques-
tions as the grounds and limits of civil authority, the functions of gov-
ernment, how it should treat its citizens, the nature of the individual,
and the importance of political participation. Since individuals deeply
disagree on these matters, the proceduralist is wrong to assume that
decisions on the structure of political authority are purely instrumental
or pragmatic in nature and easily arrived at.
Even if a state scrupulously avoided substantive goals, it would need
to decide whether or not to allow slavery, polygamy, polyandry, incest,
public hangings, euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, abortion, vio-
lent sports involving animals, coerced marriages, divorce on demand,
gay and lesbian marriages, unconventional sexual practices, rights of
illegitimate children to inherit ‘parental’ property, racial discrimination,
and so on. If it does not legislate on these matters, it indicates that it
does not consider them sufficiently important to the moral well-being
of the community to require a uniform and compulsory mode of
behaviour. If it legislates, it takes a moral stand and coerces those tak-
ing a different view. Whatever it does, its actions have an inescapable
moral dimension. This is also true of such policy matters as the system
of taxation, allocation of public resources, and the importance to be
attached to different rights and the kinds of limitations placed on their
exercise. The proceduralist cannot explain how citizens are to debate
let alone resolve these questions.
A morally and culturally neutral state which makes no moral
demands on its citizens and is equally hospitable to all cultures and
202 Rethinking Multiculturalism

conceptions of the good is logically impossible. And since every law

coerces those not sharing its underlying values, a morally and cultur-
ally non-coercive state is a fantasy. Some states might, of course, be
less coercive than others, but no state can be wholly free of moral and
cultural biases and the concomitant coercion on those who disapprove
of its structure or actions. Even a state that institutionalizes such values
as liberty and equality coerces those who are opposed to them. Since
the structure and exercise of political authority are never morally neu-
tral, the unity of a political community cannot rest on procedural foun-
dations alone. It requires at least some agreement on what the political
community is about and how it should be governed. Since the proce-
duralist does not explain how such agreement can be secured in a mul-
ticultural society, his account of the unity of the state is incoherent.
The proceduralist is on stronger grounds when he claims that his
state provides a considerable space for cultural diversity. Since it is not
committed to a substantive vision of the good life, its laws and policies
make minimum demands on its citizens and leave them free to pursue
their self-chosen goals. However, as we saw, the state cannot be
morally as neutral as the proceduralist imagines, and hence the space
for diversity is not as great as he claims. Furthermore, in most multi-
cultual societies a particular culture is generally dominant and enjoys
considerable economic and political power. By contrast others suffer
from obvious structural and other disadvantages and cannot flourish or
even survive for long without public moral and material support. The
same dynamics of the competitive economy that creates vast economic
inequalities and a disadvantaged underclass operates in the cultural
sphere as well. Indigenous communities, for example, have no hope of
maintaining their ways of life unless the state restricts the movement of
people and capital into their territories and grants them powers of
autonomy and cultural self-regulation, all of which are ruled out by the
proceduralist. When cultures enjoy unequal power, as they generally
do, the procedural state works to the disadvantage of minority cultures.
Although the civic assimilationist view avoids the mistakes of the
proceduralist and has much to be said for it, it is open to three objec-
tions. First, since it separates private and public realms too neatly, it is
unable to give a coherent account of those institutions that straddle
both. For example, the school educates future citizens, and has a polit-
ical dimension. However, since children are not just citizens but also
human beings and members of the relevant cultural communities, their
parents and cultural community have a vital interest in their education,
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 203

which makes the school a cultural institution that belongs to the ‘pri-
vate’ or civic realm. If we stressed the former, we would have to treat
the school as a public institution subject to the control of the state and
ignore parental cultures and choices; if the latter, we would reach the
opposite conclusion. If, however, we stressed both as we should do and
as many societies are increasingly doing, the civic assimilationist the-
ory offers no guidance on the structure and functions of the school.
Religion also defies the private–public distinction. Religious persons
see life as a whole and seek to live out their deeply held beliefs in their
personal and collective lives. This confronts the civic assimilationist
with a dilemma. If he confined religion to the private realm as he gen-
erally does, he would discriminate against religious people, alienate
them from public life, provoke their resistance, and endanger the very
unity for whose sake he excludes religion from the public realm. If he
admitted it into the public realm, he would jettison or at least blur the
private–public distinction and face the acute problem of how to deal
with what would now be a multicultural public realm.
Secondly, the civic assimilationist view insists that while cultural
communities are free to lead their self-chosen lives within the private
realm, they should accept the political culture of the wider society. This
ignores the fact that the latter is a product of history and reflects and
registers the political consensus prevailing at a given point in time. As
the demographic composition of society changes, or the latter throws
up new ideas and movements, or when its dominant values and prac-
tices are shown to bear unduly heavily on those who are new to it or
whose historical experiences are different, the established political cul-
ture needs to be suitably revised. Women’s groups, not all of them fem-
inists, have highlighted the patriarchal bias of the dominant liberal cul-
ture and pressed for its radical reassessment. There is no reason why
cultural minorities should be denied that right.
What is true of society’s values is also true of its political symbols,
images, ceremonies, collective self-understanding and view of national
identity. They, too, reflect and reproduce a particular historical consen-
sus and need to be suitably revised when shown to misrepresent or
ignore the presence, experiences and contributions of marginalized
groups or to be out of step with the changes in the demographic com-
position of society. These groups may rightly ask that the wider society
should grant them suitable public recognition in the collective expres-
sion of its identity. Such recognition confers public legitimacy on their
presence, recognizes them as valued members of the community, and
204 Rethinking Multiculturalism

facilitates their integration. ‘We’ cannot integrate ‘them’ so long as

‘we’ remain ‘we’; ‘we’ must be loosened up to create a new common
space in which ‘they’ can be accommodated and become part of a
newly reconstituted ‘we’.
Thirdly, the civic assimilationist attempt to combine a monocultural
public realm with a multicultual private realm has a tendency to work
against the latter. The public realm in every society generally enjoys far
greater dignity and prestige than the private realm. The culture it insti-
tutionalizes enjoys state patronage, power, access to valuable
resources, and political respectability, and sets the tone of the rest of
society. Although other cultures are free to flourish in the private realm,
they exist in its overpowering shadow, and are largely seen as marginal
and worth practising only in the relative privacy of the family and com-
munal associations. Subjected to the relentless assimilationist pressure
of the dominant culture, their members, especially youth, internalize
their inferior status and opt for uncritical assimilation, lead confused
lives or retreat into their communal ghettos.
The older generation of Jewish immigrants to Europe and the USA
have frequently remarked that when young they used to feel deeply
embarrassed if their parents spoke Yiddish in public, wore traditional
dress or performed their religious and other ceremonies in public, and
that over time they lost their language, cultural pride and in some cases
even the culture itself. This sad phenomenon has not disappeared even
in more relaxed times such as ours. A couple of years ago when I was
travelling by train in Britain, I was sitting opposite an elderly Pakistani
couple and next to their adolescent daughter. When the crowded train
pulled out of the station, the parents began to talk in Urdu. The girl felt
restless and nervous and started making strange signals to them. As
they carried on their conversation for a few more minutes, she angrily
leaned over the table and asked them to shut up. When the confused
mother asked why, the girl shot back, ‘just as you do not expose your
private parts in public, you do not speak in that language in public’.
One wonders if she would have felt so distressed if her parents had
been speaking French. Though no one presumably had told her so, she
knew that the public realm belonged to whites, that only their language,
customs, values, bodily gestures and ways of talking were legitimate in
it, and that minority ethnic and cultural identities must remain confined
to the private realm. In a society dominated by one culture tolerance is
not enough to sustain diversity in the private realm as the civic assim-
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 205

ilationist assumes. Public institutions including the state need to play

an active and supportive role. We shall later see what this involves.
The millet model has its merits, and hence its long historical pedi-
gree. Ancient Greece and Rome allowed the communities of traders,
travellers and others settled in their midst to be governed by their own
customs and practices. In medieval England the Lombards and the
Baltic merchants of the Hanseatic League lived in separate enclaves,
ran their affairs according to their own customs, and paid the crown a
tribute in return for its protection. This was also the practice in ancient
and medieval China, where Ibn Batuta, a fourteenth-century Muslim
traveller, found a congenial home in the self-governing Muslim quar-
ters away from the ‘skilled and civilized’ but ‘strange’ majority com-
munity. Contemporary India and Israel have incorporated some ele-
ments of the millet model into their political structures and respect the
personal laws of their minority and majority communities.
Respecting the autonomy of a cultural community is sometimes the
only way to bring or keep the community within the wider political
community as is the case in Israel, or to give it the confidence to inter-
act with and evolve its own pattern of relationship with wider society
as is the case in India, Nigeria, Sudan and many other multicultural
societies with histories of intercommunal conflict. In some cases it is
also just, as when there is a danger of the majority community impos-
ing its own vision of the good life on its minorities as in India and other
developing countries, or when the minority community’s way of life is
distinct and self-contained as with the Amish in the United States,
Australian aborigines and tribal peoples in India. Cultural autonomy
also adds to the cultural diversity of society with all the advantages
mentioned earlier.
The millet model, however, goes far beyond cultural autonomy and
self-government and claims to provide the organizing principle of the
entire society. It is open to several objections. By breaking up society
into self-contained communities and disallowing all but minimally nec-
essary interaction, it militates against the development of common
social and political bonds without which no political community can
act effectively and maintain its unity and cohesion. The Ottoman mil-
let system worked for centuries only because the imperial form of gov-
ernment ruled out a shared public life and treated non-Muslims as sec-
ond-class citizens. It had great virtues including a remarkable record of
religious toleration that puts Europe to shame, but it also froze religious
206 Rethinking Multiculturalism

communities, arrested the growth of common bonds, and could not

cope with the demands of democracy and common citizenship.
Besides, individuals belong to several communities such as the ethnic,
the religious and the cultural, which do not necessarily coincide,
thereby making it difficult to decide which community’s autonomy to
protect. Furthermore, since members of a community rarely take an
identical view of their culture, institutionalizing its autonomy risks per-
petuating the role of the dominant elite and threatening basic individ-
ual liberties to which the wider society cannot remain wholly indiffer-
ent, especially when disaffected individuals create disorder or ask for
its help. Again, the millet model might make some sense in an unde-
veloped agricultural economy, but none in an industrialized society in
which constant social and economic mobility and close interactions
between groups break through the communal barriers and require a
shared economic and political life with a common body of rules, norms
and practices.

In the above I have examined four views on the political structure of

multicultural societies and found them defective in different degrees.
The assimilationist theory more or less ignores the claims of diversity,
and the millet theory those of unity. The proceduralist and civic assim-
ilationist theories respect both, but fail to appreciate their dialectical
interplay and strike a right balance between them. They confine unity
and diversity to separate realms and draw too neat a distinction
between the private and public spheres with all the difficulties that
these create. Since they view diversity as a fact to be accommodated
rather than a value to be cherished and leave it to the precarious mercy
of the cultural and political marketplace, they also work to the disad-
vantage of minority cultures and do not create a climate conducive to
cultural diversity. If we are to develop a coherent political structure for
a multicultural society, we need to appreciate the importance of both
unity and diversity and establish a satisfactory relationship between
them. Since different multicultural societies have different histories and
traditions and include different kinds of cultural diversity, each needs
to develop its own appropriate political structure. Since, however, they
all face the common problem of reconciling the demands of unity and
diversity, certain general principles apply to them all. These principles,
which I discuss below, are not intended to prescribe a model but to act
as navigational devices.
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 207

Structure of authority

Peace is the first desideratum in every society, particularly the multi-

cultural whose tendency to provoke acute conflicts is further com-
pounded by its inability to rely on a shared body of values to moderate
and regulate them. At all costs a multicultural society must find ways
of holding itself together long enough to enable its different communi-
ties to become used to each other and build up common interests and
mutual trust. It needs a collectively agreed structure of authority enti-
tled to speak and act in the name of the community, and hence a con-
stitution that lays down the manner of constituting such an authority, its
manner of exercise and area of jurisdiction. The constitution is not an
ideological document laying down once and for all a body of political
principles, for it would then foreclose new developments and restrict
the community’s political imagination, but a body of procedures and
norms that is acceptable to all under its authority.3 The procedures and
norms cannot be deduced from abstract standards of fairness, for if the
latter are unacceptable to those involved, they neither carry political
authority nor are likely to be observed in practice. The constitution is a
political document hammered out in difficult negotiations and embody-
ing such consensus as is thrown up by the parties involved. It shapes,
structures and stabilizes the wider political process, and is in turn
embedded in and sustained by the latter. Although it is the source of all
legal authority within the community, its own authority is political in
nature and derived from the continuing popular acceptance of it.
It is not always easy to agree on the basic principles of the constitu-
tion in a multicultural society. The more substantive they are, the
greater the likelihood of disagreement. It should therefore do no more
than prescribe the basic structure of civil authority, its area of jurisdic-
tion and mode of exercise. There are bound to be people who are, for
various reasons, unable to agree upon even such a minimal constitu-
tion. Wherever possible and when it is not likely to store up future trou-
ble or provoke widespread resentment, they need to be won over by
appropriate concessions and placed under a weak moral or at least a
prudential obligation to respect the constitution. Some groups of ultra-
orthodox Jews in Israel deny the very legitimacy of the state of Israel,
which in their view is expected to be created by a messianic interven-
tion rather than by human efforts.4 The founding fathers of the state of
Israel wisely won them over by agreeing to leave them alone in certain
areas, exempting them from many of the ordinary obligations of citi-
208 Rethinking Multiculturalism

zenship and giving them financial and other support. They are obvi-
ously a privileged group, but most of their fellow citizens thought the
price worth paying, partly to bring them under the authority of the new
state, partly out of the belief that they represent a valuable strand within
the Jewish culture, and partly in the hope that the sense of security and
the common experience of living together with secular Jews would
bring about appropriate changes in their ways of thought and life
(Beilin, 1992, ch. 3). The Constitution of India showed similar politi-
cal prudence when it won over its religious and cultural minorities by
granting them the kinds of collective rights and exemptions discussed
earlier (Mahajan, 1998, chs 3 and 4).
There is a strong case for a constitutionally enshrined system of fun-
damental rights in a multicultural society. They affirm the equal dignity
and status of all citizens, give pride of place to rights considered essen-
tial to the good life, and build them into the very structure and self-
understanding of the state. They check the excesses of populism and
reassure minorities that their claims to equality and justice are not
dependent on the vagaries of normal politics. They also provide the
minimum basis of national unity, prescribe the limits of cultural diver-
sity, and structure the political debate on minority practices. By giving
minorities the necessary self-confidence and requiring the state to
respect certain norms, a statement of fundamental rights helps create a
climate in which different communities can interact in a relatively
relaxed manner and build up mutual trust and goodwill. It is hardly sur-
prising that every multicultural society has increasingly felt compelled
by its experiences to move in the direction of enshrining such a state-
ment in its constitution.
Although the case for fundamental rights is overwhelming, the dan-
gers highlighted by their critics are real and need to be guarded against.
A deeply divided society might be unable to agree upon their content,
and the attempt by the majority to impose them is likely to exacerbate
the situation, as is the case with the otherwise excellent Canadian
Charter of rights and freedoms. In such situations the society concerned
should either wait until there is a consensus or settle on a fairly thin
statement of rights, leaving it to the courts to give them a substantive
content and the normal political process to build a consensus around it,
as Israel has done with the widely accepted concept of human dignity.
There is also the danger that fundamental rights might be used to
silence unconventional voices, prevent public expressions of deep
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 209

differences, or impose a premature closure on the outcome of intercul-

tural dialogue. Although there is no infallible way of avoiding this,
the risk can be minimized by limiting fundamental rights to matters
essential to all defensible forms of good life and on which a broad
cross-cultural consensus can be obtained. They should obviously be
substantive enough to serve their intended purpose, but should not
impose a specific vision of the good life and subtly subvert the pre-
vailing forms of cultural diversity.
Thanks to the enormous influence of the American experience, it is
commonly believed that the constitutionally guaranteed system of fun-
damental rights necessarily requires a Supreme Court, that the latter
alone has the power to interpret and enforce them, that its decision is
final and cannot be challenged, and that it extends to striking down
offensive legislation. All four assumptions, especially the last three,
need to be reconsidered if the judiciary is not to undermine or emascu-
late the democratic political process and usurp a political role.
Fundamental rights do not occupy a separate realm of their own, but are
embedded in and nurtured by democratic politics. Since they have both
a legal and a political dimension, we need to find ways of integrating
the judicial and the political process. We might give Parliament or its
equivalent the right to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its deci-
sions in highly controversial cases, or give the Court the power to make
a declaration of incompatibility and ask the Parliament to reconsider
the offending legislation but not to strike it down itself, and so forth.
New Zealand, Britain and several other countries are experimenting
with some of these ideas, and they deserve careful attention.

Justice

In every society the state plays a vital role in fostering a sense of jus-
tice and common belonging. Its role is even greater in a multicultural
society in which it is one of the few sources of unity, provides a focus
to the shared life, and is expected to set an example of how to rise
above narrow communal prejudices and points of view. It is therefore
of the utmost importance that the institutions of the state should be, and
be seen to be, impartial in their treatment of the members of different
communities. This is particularly important in the case of the police.
210 Rethinking Multiculturalism

They enforce the law and maintain order, and discharge two of the
state’s crucial functions. They are the first and most important link in
the long chain of justice and determine what is fed into and is likely to
come out of the judicial system. They come into daily contact with cit-
izens, who judge the otherwise remote and impersonal state in terms of
their experiences of the police. And as the only institution of the state
that is constantly exposed to the unsavoury side of society, the police
are also likely to be the most deeply corrupted by it. It is hardly sur-
prising that in all multicultural societies their behaviour is often the
focus of much minority discontent and protest. It is essential to ensure
that their exercise of authority is regulated by clearly defined proce-
dures, above all suspicion of partiality, and its misuse subjected to
severest censure and punishment. It is also crucial that they should be
as representative of the wider society as possible consistent with the
demands of professional competence and integrity. This gives different
communities the opportunity to work together, counter each other’s
biases, and learn to look at themselves from a wider perspective. It also
prevents the identification of the state with one particular community
and ensures that different communities become used to exercising
authority over each other.
As the sole source of legally secured justice in society, the state needs
to ensure that its citizens enjoy equality of treatment in all significant
areas of life such as employment, criminal justice, education and pub-
lic services. Negatively equal treatment involves absence of direct and
deliberate or indirect and institutionalized, discrimination. The former
occurs when those in charge of decision-making are guided by preju-
dices against certain groups of people, the latter when the rules and pro-
cedures they follow contain unnoticed discriminatory biases and work
to the systematic disadvantage of particular communities or groups.
The rule that policemen should be six feet tall, or that a candidate for
an academic post must have acquired his first degree within the coun-
try, discriminates against Asians and immigrants respectively. The law
should require all public institutions periodically to examine the hidden
biases of their rules and procedures, and should set up appropriate bod-
ies such as the Commission for Racial Equality in the UK and the
Equal Employment Opportunity Agency in the USA to ensure that they
do so. In the absence of such provisions, highly prized areas of life run
the risk of becoming the unmerited preserves of a particular commu-
nity, with the consequent alienation and exclusion of the rest.
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 211

Positive equality requires equality of rights and opportunities. All cit-

izens should enjoy equal rights, and these should include not only the
usual repertoire of civil, political, economic and other rights but also
cultural rights. The latter refer to the rights an individual or a commu-
nity requires to express, maintain and transmit their cultural identity.
Since culture is an integral part of an individual’s sense of identity and
well-being, cultural rights are part of human rights, and a good society
should guarantee them to all its citizens. Besides in every society the
majority community generally sets its cultural tone and is effortlessly
able to affirm and express its cultural identity. Justice requires that, sub-
ject to the limits to be discussed later, the same opportunity should be
extended to the minority communities as well. By giving them the
sense of security they need to express their identity and interact with
the wider society, cultural rights also earn their loyalty and good will
and facilitate their integration. Principles of justice regulate matters
essential to the good life and relate to what Rawls calls the basic struc-
ture of society. The basic structure is not economic and political only,
as Rawls maintains, but also cultural, and hence principles of justice
should deal not only with liberties and material resources but also with
cultural rights and opportunities. The politics of recognition is therefore
part of a wider and nuanced theory of justice, with the crucial differ-
ence that unlike liberties and resources, recognition cannot be individ-
ually enjoyed or centrally distributed and calls for a more complex con-
ception of justice. We shall return to this later (Chapters 10 and 11).
All citizens should enjoy equal opportunities to acquire the capacities
and skills needed to function in society and to pursue their self-chosen
goals equally effectively. This may involve giving additional help
to those who need it to overcome disadvantages derived from cultural
differences or past acts of injustice. Such help does not constitute what
is tendentiously called compensatory discrimination, for its purpose is
not to compensate for past injustices but to help these groups overcome
their historically inherited disadvantages and to equalize them with the
rest. Such equalizing measures are justified on grounds of justice as
well as social integration and harmony. If a cultural community were to
feel powerless, or be disproportionately disadvantaged, or excluded
from mainstream society, it would not be able to realize its potential,
would feel unjustly treated and remain a source of constant tension. As
I discuss later (Chapter 8) the concept of equal opportunity requires
great sensitivity when applied across cultures.
212 Rethinking Multiculturalism

Decentralization of power has a particularly important role to play

in ensuring justice in multicultural societies. Since different commu-
nities regularly encounter each other in the normal course of life at
local or regional levels, respect for their differences at these levels
matters to them greatly and shapes their perceptions of each other and
the state. It is also easier for the local and regional bodies to accom-
modate differences than it is for the central government, because the
adjustment required is more readily identified, limited in scale, not too
costly and is generally free from the glare of publicity. There is also
greater room for experimentation, mistakes are more easily corrected,
and different areas can learn from each other’s good practices. It is
therefore crucial to build up strong local and regional units of govern-
ment and use them to foster a vibrant civic culture. As recent research
has demonstrated, intercommunal tensions are less frequent and more
easily managed when there is an extensive local network of formal and
informal cross-communal linkages nurturing the vital social capital of
mutual trust and cooperation (Varshney, 2001).
Intercommunal conflicts thrive on memories of real or imagined past
acts of injustice. The more bitter the memories, the more intractable the
conflicts and the more difficult it becomes to restore normal relations
between the communities involved. It is therefore vitally important in
a multicultural society to resolve conflicts promptly in a just and
humane manner and to prevent accumulation of painful memories. As
for the inherited memories of the past, society needs to find ways of
both pacifying the tormented consciousness of its erstwhile victims and
paving the way for intercommunal reconciliation on the basis of a care-
fully worked out system of ‘transitional’ and restorative justice. A pub-
lic apology for a grave past injustice is one way, provided that it is gen-
uine, based on full knowledge and acceptance of the nature of the injus-
tice involved and accompanied by a willingness to make at least some
amends for it. This was the case in Australia when its Prime Minister,
Paul Keating, backed up his apology in 1992 for the violence to the
Aborigines and the theft of their land by white colonisers with appro-
priate legislation and financial help. As a rule, perpetrators of injustice
do not want to remember the past and their victims do not wish to for-
get it, and their divided attitudes to it render a shared future impossible.
It is vital to avoid both obsessive brooding over the past and a willed
amnesia and to confront, understand and accept the past as well as
break with it by rectifying its injustices and agreeing to conduct future
relations on a just basis. The pain of past humiliations is best assuaged
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 213

not by melodramatic demands for forgiveness from the erstwhile vic-

tims whose agony they sometimes aggravate by the implicit attempt at
moral blackmail, but by a genuine and firm promise of a just future
made in a spirit of collective responsibility.5

Collective rights

In a multicultural society, cultural communities generally demand var-

ious kinds of rights they think they need to maintain their collective
identity. Some of these rights, usually called group, collective or com-
munal rights, are not easy to accommodate within liberal jurisprudence,
and raise difficult questions such as whether the concept of collective
rights is logically coherent and what kinds of collectivities may legiti-
mately claim what kinds of rights (Bauböck, 1994a, ch. 11; Kymlicka,
1995, ch. 3; Jones, 1999).
Just as individual rights are those of which the individuals are the
bearers, collective rights are those of which human collectivities are
the bearers. Human collectivities are of several kinds, ranging from
groups united by transient or long-term common interests to historical
communities based on a shared way of life. The term ‘collective rights’
is generic, and group, communal and other rights are its species. Like
human collectivities, rights also cover a wide spectrum and encompass
rights to non-interference, exemption from normal requirements, self-
government, claims on society’s resources, and so on. When we talk of
collective rights, we need to be clear about the kind of collectivity we
have in mind, the sense in which we use the term ‘right’, and the con-
tent of the right.6
Collective rights can be acquired in one of two ways. Individuals
might pool their rights together or alienate them to the collectivity; we
might call these derivative collective rights. The rights of trade unions,
clubs, and so on are of this kind. Secondly, collectivities might acquire
their rights sui generis, by virtue of being what they are and not deriva-
tively from their members. We might call them primary collective
rights. The rights of medieval towns to self-government including the
levy of taxes, exclusion of outsiders and the right to make representa-
tions to the king, the rights of Christians and Jews to self-government
under the Ottoman empire, and a tribe’s right to its sacred sites and tra-
ditional esoteric knowledge fall under this category. These rights
214 Rethinking Multiculturalism

belong to the relevant collectivities qua collectivities and cannot be

drived from their individual members for the simple reason that the lat-
ter qua individuals have no such right. Collectivities are human beings
related to each other in certain ways and, although they are made up of
individuals, they sometimes form new and independent entities making
autonomous claims of their own. The distinction between derivative
and primary collective rights relates to their nature or mode of acquisi-
tion, not to their rationale or mode of justification. All rights derive
their justification from their contribution to human well-being, and in
this respect there is no difference between the two kinds of collective
rights. To say that primary collective rights are not derived from or
reducible to individual rights is therefore not to say that the collectivi-
ties involved have interests independently of those of their members.
While derivative collective rights are readily conceded, primary col-
lective rights are not, on the grounds that only the individuals can be
primary bearers of rights and that all collective rights are reducible to
them. The objection is based on one or more of the following four
grounds:

● Rights presuppose the capacities for agency and reciprocity which

only individuals possess.
● Secondly, they are ways of recognizing the moral status of and
showing respect for their bearers, and only individuals, being ends
in themselves, have such a status.
● Thirdly, rights are means of protecting and promoting fundamental
interests, and only the individuals can have interests.
● Finally, rights can only be given to those who exist or are ‘real’.
Individuals satisfy the condition whereas collectivities are either
wholly fictitious or elliptical ways of referring to individuals.

None of these arguments is persuasive. Animals and children can have

rights though neither possess the capacities for agency and reciprocity.
We grant them rights if we think it desirable, and appoint or authorize
adults to exercise them on their behalf. It is not true either that collec-
tivities lack the capacity for agency or reciprocity, for they generally
have their decision-making procedures and act through their accredited
representatives.
As for the second argument, it is not true that only human beings
have dignity and moral status. God has both in the eyes of the believer.
For Australian Aborigines the spirits of the dead and the sacred moun-
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 215

tains and forests have a moral status. For Hindus and Buddhists all sen-
tient beings have a moral status, and deserve respect and compassion.
Human communities too can have a moral status, for they give mean-
ing and a sense of rootedness and belonging to their members, which is
why the latter are often prepared to give up their lives for them.
Furthermore, it is a mistake to think that rights are ways of recognizing
and respecting a preexisting moral status. They are also ways of con-
ferring it, and hence the question is not whether human collectivities
have a moral status but whether they should have it.
The third argument makes the crucial point that only human beings
have interests, can suffer or prosper, feel miserable or happy, and so
on, but goes wrong in defining human interests in narrowly individu-
alist terms. Some of our interests are individual in nature; for example,
I want to live, write a good book, or have a happy marriage. Some oth-
ers are shared with and pertain to us as members of the community and
can only be pursued together; for example, we want our political com-
munity to continue to exist, be peaceful and not torn by conflicts, cul-
turally rich and vibrant, characterized by civility and mutual trust, or
be respected and admired in the world. These are either our interests as
a community and in that sense our collective interests, or form the
shared background or precondition of our individual interests, and
hence our common interests. In either case they may rightly be called
the interests of the community.
Finally, it is not true to say that only the individuals exist and the col-
lectivities do not. Individuals can certainly be seen, felt, touched, and
so on, but there is no good reason to accept such a crude and narrow
criterion of existence or reality. Britain, the United States, the Catholic
Church, the United Nations, the western tradition of philosophy and the
University of Hull exist, although they cannot be seen or touched.
Human collectivities exist through the forms of consciousness, beliefs,
practices, rituals and so on of their members and persist over time when
these are institutionalized, intergenerationally transmitted and imagina-
tively appropriated by their members. They are made up of individuals,
but equally the latter are shaped by them. Neither can be reduced to the
other and declared either self-subsistent or fictitious.
Collective rights, then, are possible and can be derivative or primary
in their origins. The former are created by pooling together individual
rights, the latter are sui generis. Primary collective rights are of two
kinds. First, although they belong to human collectivities, they are or
can only be enjoyed and exercised by individuals. Israel’s Law
216 Rethinking Multiculturalism

of Return gives diasporic Jews the right to settle in Israel. The right is
possessed by the diasporic Jewish community as a whole but exercised
by its members individually. This is also the case with a Sikh’s right to
wear a turban and a Muslim employee’s right to time off for prayer.
For covenenience I shall call these individually exercised collective
rights. Second, some collective rights belong to collectivities and are,
or can be, exercised by them collectively. The right to national self-
determination (assuming that it is a right), the right of a community to
make representations to the government or be consulted by it on issues
of vital interest to it, a university’s right to self-government, and so on,
are of this kind. At a different level the Catholic Church’s right to grant
or refuse divorce and expel its members, and the Church of England’s
right to officiate at the coronation ceremony and to representation in the
House of Lords also belong to this category. For convenience I shall
call them collectively exercised collective rights. Some of the rights in
both categories are rights to non-interference by the state or other out-
side bodies, some others involve positive claims on them, yet others
fall somewhere in between.
Although collectivities can be the bearers of rights, it is sometimes
argued that they should not be granted rights because they are likely
to misuse these and threaten individual rights. The argument is
flawed. All rights can be misused including individual rights. If we
were to be consistent, we would have to deny the latter as well, and
that is absurd. The argument also privileges individual rights over
group rights, and there is no good reason to make such an assumption.
If collective rights can be used to oppress individuals, individual
rights too can be used to damage and destroy communities. Not all
individual rights always trump all collective rights, for much depends
on the relative importance of the rights in question and their context
and consequences. Indeed, the contrast between individual and col-
lective rights is overdrawn and ignores their highly complex relation-
ship. Some collective rights threaten individual rights; for example,
the right of a group to enforce moral conformity or expel its members
or deny them the right of exit. Some are the very preconditions of
individual rights; for example, a political community’s right to self-
government or independence. And some collective rights protect indi-
vidual rights and empower their bearers because organized groups and
communities are better able to defend the rights of their members than
the latter can do individually; for example, a community’s right to its
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 217

culture, language or educational institutions makes it easier for its

members to retain their culture or language than if these were solely
matters of individual rights.
The case for collective rights, then, cannot be dismissed out of hand.
We need to ask which collectivities should have what rights under what
conditions. The question can only be answered in terms of considera-
tions of human well-being, the basis and rationale of all rights, indi-
vidual as well as collective. Human well-being cannot be defined in the
abstract. Although we can identify universally common components of
it as we did earlier, every political community interprets and prioritizes
them in its own way, has its own thick notions of human flourishing,
and arrives at its own ideas on the content and conditions of human
well-being. While some collective rights can claim universal validity,
others vary from society to society. Different societies would therefore
reach different decisions on which collectivities should enjoy which
rights.
It would seem that a collectivity has a prima facie claim to rights if
it meets one of the following overlapping conditions:

● First, it means a great deal to its members, enjoys a moral status in

their eyes, and they wish to preserve it. The Amish, religious sects
and traditional communities, for example, fall under this category.
● Second, its existence is vital to the fundamental interests of its
members, and the latter can only or best be promoted by the com-
munity enjoying the right of collective action. The indigenous peo-
ples in Canada, Australia, India and elsewhere, and the Basques, the
Kurds and other national minorities meet this condition.
● Third, a community is deeply insecure and would not and cannot
integrate into mainstream society without certain guaranteed rights.
Muslims and other religious minorities in post-independence India,
and Christians in Sudan, Egypt and other Muslim countries in
which a strong majority is determined to impose its vision of the
good life on them fall under this description.
● Fourth, a community has long been subjected to systematic
oppression, lacks the confidence and the ability to compete with
the rest of society, and needs to be equalized with the latter by
appropriate remedial or supportive group-specific measures. The
ex-untouchables in India and African Americans in the United
States meet this condition.
218 Rethinking Multiculturalism

● Fifth, a community has the potential to make a valuable and unique

contribution to the wider society, and can only do so if it is given
the rights required to preserve its identity and attain its characteris-
tic form of excellence. Deeply religious groups and monastic orders
belong to the category.
● Sixth, some communities are based on shared doctrines of which
they see themselves as custodians, and can only function and con-
tribute to their members’ and wider society’s well-being when
endowed with appropriate rights. This is why, although it can cause
much suffering and restrict individual liberties, most states respect,
say, the Catholic Church’s right to excommunicate its members or
deny them divorce, and exempt it from the provisions of their anti-
sex discrimination legislation.

This is all rather sketchy and each of these conditions, which entitle a
collectivity to claim rights, needs to be argued and articulated at greater
length. However, it is only intended to indicate how we might go about
assessing the claims for collective rights. In each case the nature and
content of rights would vary, depending on what is required to achieve
their intended purposes. Some collectivities might merit only the right
to non-interference, some might merit exemption from certain general
requirements, yet others might rightly claim positive support of the
state and other public institutions. In some cases we might think it bet-
ter not to grant rights with all their legal and other complications, and
settle the matter by accommodation or by imposing duties on others.
This is a decision about how best to meet the legitimate claims of the
collectivities involved, and does not affect the validity of the claims
themselves.
While a collectivity merits rights under certain conditions, the rights
have no meaning unless it is able to act as a collective agent and pos-
sesses the requisite institutional structure to take and enforce its deci-
sions. Furthermore, since individual rights are just as, or even more,
important and deserve to be safeguarded, its decision-making proce-
dure should be broadly acceptable to its members, provide them with a
collectively acceptable mode of redress and allow them the right to exit
without excessive cost. Although it is not necessary that the collectiv-
ity should allow elections, representative institutions, and so on, for
that is a matter for its members to decide, it is crucial that its internal
functioning should enjoy their broad-based support. Exit from a com-
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 219

munity can never be cost-free, for no community worth belonging to

treats its members’ departure with indifference or which they can leave
without a sense of loss. However, the cost should not involve depriving
them of their legitimate claims on its resources or what is widely
accepted as theirs.
When confronted with the claims of cultural communities to differ-
ent kinds of rights, we should then ask such questions as whether these
promote their members’ or wider society’s well-being, whether grant-
ing rights is the best way to do so, whether communities have the insti-
tutional resources to exercise these rights and provide an acceptable
mechanism for a trade-off between these and individual rights in cases
of conflict, and what the overall social, financial and other costs are.
Answers to these questions do not always coincide. Although a com-
munity’s claim might be legitimate, it might lack the requisite institu-
tional resources, or be internally oppressive and refuse to change. We
need to weight up these and other considerations. And since there is no
infallible or incontrovertible method of doing so, we should reach a
decision by means of a democratic dialogue between the parties con-
ducted in a spirit of goodwill and compromise.7

Common culture

Like any other society, a multicultural society needs a broadly shared

culture to sustain it. Since it involves several cultures, the shared cul-
ture can only grow out of their interaction and should both respect and
nurture their diversity and unite them around a common way of life.
For those accustomed to thinking of culture as a more or less homoge-
neous and coherent whole, the idea of a multiculturally constituted cul-
ture might appear incoherent or bizarre. In fact such a culture is a fairly
common phenomenon in every culturally diverse society (Appiah,
1994, 1996).
Take something as mundane as cuisine. Chinese cuisine was initially
an exotic import in the West, but over time many of its members
acquired a fondness for it and made it an integral part of their dietary
culture. Those who enjoyed their traditional food at home visited
Chinese restaurants from time to time, and moved with ease between
the two. In recent years a further development has taken place. The
Chinese and western cuisines are no longer wholly separate. Each has
220 Rethinking Multiculturalism

borrowed the other’s ingredients, method of cooking, and so on, and

transformed and been in turn transformed by the other. This has meant
two things. Each cuisine has suitably incorporated some elements of
the other and acquired a multicultural dimension. Secondly, a distinctly
multicultural cuisine has begun to emerge, borrowing elements from
both and integrating them into something wholly new. While resem-
bling both cuisines in several aspects, it has an unmistakable identity
and vitality of its own. Since there are several ways of integrating the
elements borrowed from the two cuisines, the new cuisine in turn has
taken different forms, all sharing a common spirit of multicultural
experimentation but producing different results.
A similar twofold process occurs in other areas of life as well, such
as music, dance, the arts, literature and lifestyles, and to a lesser extent
even in such highly traditional and culturally resistant areas as reli-
gion, moral values and ways of thought. In each case different cultural
traditions influence each other and acquire a multicultural dimension.
And new multiculturally constituted musical, literary and other tradi-
tions also emerge, imaginatively transforming the elements borrowed
from different traditions into something wholly different. One only has
to consider how the current American culture has drawn heavily on
and creatively transformed the great contributions of the Irish, Jewish,
African American and other minority cultures into a distinct and
unmistakable collective culture. The two processes, the multicultural-
ization of the existing traditions and the emergence of multiculturally
constituted new ones, are closely related and reinforce each other.
When a tradition is multiculturalized, it sees the new multicultural tra-
dition as continuous with and carrying further its own internal multi-
culturalization. Conversely, the new tradition is embedded in and con-
stantly nurtured by the spirit of multicultural experimentation at work
in each of the separate traditions.
In a multicultural society cultures constantly encounter one another
both formally and informally and in private and public spaces.8 Guided
by curiosity, incomprehension or admiration, they interrogate each
other, challenge each other’s assumptions, consciously or uncon-
sciously borrow from each other, widen their horizons and undergo
small and large changes. Even when their interaction is limited, the
very awareness of other traditions alerts each to its own contingency
and specificity, and subtly alters the manner in which its members
define and relate to it. Over time they tend to throw up a new
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 221

composite culture based on their respective contributions and insights

and possessing a somewhat fuzzy but recognizable identity of its own.
It is neither their lowest common denominator nor a mere collection of
their arbitrarily selected beliefs and practices, but a more or less distinct
culture in which these are all redefined, brought into a new relation-
ship, and compose a loosely-knit whole. Once developed, it forms the
basis of their interaction, helps create a common ethical life, and
throws up a body of common principles that inform public policies and
structure political discourse.
Like all cultures the interculturally created and multiculturally con-
stituted culture is an unplanned growth. Its contents are broadly but not
universally agreed, and remain subject to dispute. It is relatively open-
ended, multistranded, pulls in different directions, and is constantly in
the making. It has enough coherence and stability to make intercultural
communication possible but not enough to escape periodic contesta-
tion. Since it grows out of the interaction between different cultures, it
is internally plural and both unites them and respects their diversity.
Not all members of society approve of all its aspects equally, but they
all find enough in it to own it as theirs and give it different degrees of
allegiance.
Just as a truly representative public opinion can only emerge from a
dialogue between equal citizens, a multiculturally constituted common
culture can emerge and enjoy legitimacy only if all the constituent cul-
tures are able to participate in its creation in a climate of equality
(Young, 1990, chs 4, 8). They should enjoy more or less equal respect,
equal opportunities for self-expression, equal access to private and
especially public spaces, equal ability to interrogate each other, and
more or less equal power and resources. Once these and other equali-
ties necessary for a fair and effective interaction are ensured, the dia-
logue follows its own logic and its outcome cannot be predetermined.
Since cultures are not all equal in their vitality and richness, their
respective contributions might not carry equal conviction with others
and find an equal space in the common culture that eventually emerges
from their dialogue. Furthermore, no society is a clean slate and inter-
cultural interaction does not occur in a historical vacuum. Since the
long-established culture of a society is deeply inscribed in its beliefs,
institutions and practices, it has certain inbuilt advantages. The multi-
culturally constituted common culture is therefore bound to contain a
bias towards it.
222 Rethinking Multiculturalism

In order to facilitate the emergence of a multiculturally constituted

common culture, both private and public realms need to encourage
intercultural interaction. The two realms are part of a common way of
life and deeply influence each other. If the public realm were to be
monoculturally constituted it would discourage diversity in the private
realm, and unless the spirit of multiculturalism flourished in the latter
the multiculturally constituted public realm would lack vitality and
support.
The development of a common culture cannot be officially engi-
neered both because cultures do not develop in that way and because
no state can be trusted with such power. However, since a common cul-
ture is vital to the unity and stability of a multicultural society and the
good relations between its members, the state cannot remain uninter-
ested in it either. Furthermore, cultural neutrality or laissez faire privi-
leges the dominant culture and does not ensure the equality of power,
resources and so on that are required for a genuine intercultural inter-
action. While the government should not directly intervene in intercul-
tural interaction and seek to influence its outcome, it should ensure that
the interaction takes place under conditions of equality. It should not be
culturally neutral or indifferent but even-handed, empowering all cul-
tural voices to participate in a common dialogue (Carens, 2000).
So far as the private realm is concerned, the development of a multi-
culturally constituted common culture requires a flourishing civil soci-
ety providing ample opportunities for different cultural communities to
meet and pursue common cultural, economic and other interests on a
regular and relaxed basis. Such common pursuits get them used to each
other, increase cross-cultural understanding and trust, and build up the
skills required to negotiate and live with their unresolved differences.
They also forge bonds of cross-cultural friendships and common mate-
rial interests, and make it easier to bear the burden of occasional incom-
prehension and irritation inherent in most intercultural encounters.
Although intercultural associations and activities tend to spring up in
every lively society, they might not do so on a sufficiently large scale,
or lack vitality and vigour, or become too paternalistic to serve their
purpose, or function under unequal conditions. Well-conceived public
policies playing a largely facilitating role then have an important role
to play. Official and unofficial spokesmen of the wider society should
publicly welcome the presence and contributions of different cultures,
patronize their social and other events, and so forth, and help build up
their self-confidence. Museums and art galleries, which define and cel-
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 223

ebrate the national heritage, should include and suitably integrate

minority contributions which are also an integral part of a multicultural
society’s common heritage. Local and regional consultative commit-
tees composed of the representative of different communities, multi-
faith networks and so on, facilitate intercultural dialogue and provide
valuable institutional spaces for cross-cultural cooperation.
Multicultural arts exhibitions, literary, musical and other events, and
film festivals build up shared sources of pleasure and foster a multicul-
tural ethos in society at large.
As far as the public realm is concerned, the development of a multi-
culturally constituted common culture requires a different pattern of
intercultural interaction. If the public realm were to require citizens to
speak the established political language in a standard accent and appeal
only to the prevailing political values as Rawls, Bruce Ackerman and
Joshua Cohen insist, it would discourage the participation of those
unused or unsympathetic to either. It should welcome new conceptual
languages, modes of deliberation, forms of speech and political sensi-
bilities, and create conditions in which their creative interplay could
over time lead to a plural public realm and a broadbased political cul-
ture. Even established political values should not be treated as non-
negotiable. If they can be shown to be unfairly biased against certain
cultures or to exclude other equally worthwhile political values, a crit-
ical dialogue on them should be welcomed as a step towards a richer
moral culture enjoying a broad cross-cultural consensus.
Since the public realm sets the tone of the rest of society and wields
considerable power and prestige, it should ensure adequate representa-
tion to cultural communities. Ideally their members should be able to
find their way into it through normal competitive channels. However,
this may not always be possible because of the prejudices of wider
society or major political parties, the structural biases of established
institutions, or the low self-esteem of minority communities. There is
then a strong case for some form of affirmative action in favour of the
excluded communities. It gives them public visibility, access to politi-
cal power and the opportunity to speak for themselves rather than be
spoken for by others and to do so in their characteristic modes of
thought. It also integrates them into the wider society, sensitizes the lat-
ter to the issues it is otherwise unlikely to encounter, and fosters habits
of cross-cultural deliberation. This is amply demonstrated by the expe-
riences of the USA and, especially, India where, despite its obvious
practical difficulties, occasional misuse and injustices to isolated indi-
224 Rethinking Multiculturalism

viduals, the policy of affirmative action for the ex-untouchables and

tribal communities has done much to redress past injustices, integrate
them into mainstream society and foster a shared public culture
(Parekh, 1992).
When both private and public realms create propitious conditions for
equal intercultural interaction with such judicious government help and
intervention as might be appropriate in different societies, a multicul-
turally constituted common culture is likely to develop. It forms the
basis of a shared way of life and underpins and gives the state moral
and emotional roots. The spirit of multiculturality flows freely through
all areas of life and becomes such an integral part of citizens’ self-
understanding that they accept differences as an important and valuable
feature of their society. The multiculturally constituted common culture
fosters a common sense of belonging among citizens and provides a
shared language and body of overlapping values growing out of, and
sustained by, a dialogue between them. Like any other culture, it cher-
ishes and cultivates, through educational and other institutions an
appropriate body of intellectual and moral virtues necessary to sustain
a multicultural society, such as the ability to uncover common grounds
behind differences, the willingness to accept and delight in differences,
the spirit of moderation, cultural curiosity, and the capacity to live with
unresolved disagreements. In such a society unity and diversity are not
confined to public and private realms respectively, but interpenetrate
and permeate all areas of life. Its unity therefore is not formal and
abstract but embedded in and nurtured by its diversity; and the latter,
being grounded in and regulated by the shared interactive framework,
does not lead to fragmentation and ghettoisation (Spinner, 1997, ch. 8).

Multicultural education

The kind of multiculturally constituted culture sketched earlier is best

sustained by a multiculturally oriented system of education.
Multicultural education has become a subject of much heated contro-
versy, especially in the United States. The dominant opinion there is
that one of the main tasks of education is to initiate pupils into the
American ‘national culture’ or ‘creed’, to cultivate in them a strong
sense of ‘national identity’ and create a ‘cohesive nation. Some groups
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 225

of African Americans and others have argued that the such an educa-
tion marginalizes them, takes a demeaning view of them and so on, and
that the main aim of education is to sustain pupils’ ethnic or cultural
identity, cultivate a sense of pride in their history and achievements and
help create cohesive ethnic communities. Despite their differences both
views share a common and misguided philosophy of education. For
both, the aim of education is to sustain community, be it the wider polit-
ical community or the narrower ethnic community, and to present it in
a favourable light. Both see education in political and instrumental
terms, take homogeneous views of the relevant communities and advo-
cate monocultural education.9
Basically, multicultural education is a critique of the Eurocentric and
in that sense monocultural content and ethos of much of the prevailing
system of education. Eurocentrism asserts the following two theses.
First, modern, that is post-seventeenth century, European civilization
represents the highest form of life reached by humankind so far and
provides the standards by which to judge all others. Second, it attained
its glory unaided by, and owes little if anything to, non-European civi-
lizations. Its formative influences are taken to be three, all European.
Its intellectual and political foundations were laid by classical Athens
and Rome, both presumed to be European. Its moral and religious foun-
dations were laid by Christianity which, although non-European in ori-
gin, was radically reshaped in the light of the Greco-Roman heritage
and became a progressive force only after it had undergone much cul-
tural filtering at European hands. Its third major source was the rise of
individualism, secularism, science, technology and so on, all assumed
to be the unique achievements of modern Europe and based on its pre-
modern heritage. The aims of education are to cultivate those capaci-
ties, attitudes, values and sentiments that created, currently underpin
and are cherished by European civilization, including the capacities for
critical and independent thought, individualism, the scientific and sec-
ular spirit, and pride in European history and culture. The content of
education, too, is provided by European civilization, and its literature,
history, geography and so on form the substance of these subjects. The
general ethos pervading the educational system highlights the glory and
uniqueness of European civilization and underplays or ignores the
achievements and contributions of others.
The limitations of such an educational system are obvious. It is
unlikely to awaken students’ intellectual curiosity about other cultures,
226 Rethinking Multiculturalism

either because they are not exposed to them or because they are pre-
sented in uncomplimentary terms, or both. It is also unlikely to develop
the faculty of imagination. Imagination, the capacity to conceive alter-
natives, does not develop in a vacuum. It is only when one is exposed
to different societies and cultures that one’s imagination is stimulated
and consciousness of alternatives becomes an inseparable part of one’s
manner of thinking. Since monocultural education cannot avoid
encouraging the illusion that the limits of one’s world are the limits of
the world itself, that the conventional ways of thought are the only
valid ones, it blots out the awareness of alternatives and stifles imagi-
nation.
Monocultural education also stunts the growth of the critical faculty.
Students taught to look at the world from the narrow perspectives of
their own cultures are bound to reject all that cannot be accommodated
within its categories. They are likely to judge other cultures and soci-
eties by the norms and standards of their own, and find them odd and
even worthless. And in judging their own society in terms of its own
norms, they are not likely to take a genuinely critical attitude to it.
Since monocultural education blunts the imagination which alone gives
a cutting edge to the critical faculty, they can hardly resist celebrating
the ‘glory’ and ‘genius’ of their own civilization or society and remain
vulnerable to the deadly vice of narcissism.
Monocultural education also tends to breed arrogance, insensitivity
and racism. Imprisoned within the framework of his own culture, the
student cannot accept the diversity of values, beliefs, ways of life and
views of the world as an integral part of the human condition. Nor sur-
prisingly he tends to feel threatened by them, not knowing how to cope
with them and resenting others for being different. Since he has little
knowledge of other societies and cultures, he is likely to understand
them in terms of superficial generalizations and stereotypes and do
them grave injustice. This is indeed how the Victorians built up a hier-
archy of human societies. They placed African societies at the bottom,
Asians a little higher, the Mediterranean still higher, and so on up to the
English whom they regarded as representing the highest stage of
human development. When asked why other societies had remained
backward, the usual tendency was, and is, to give a racist explanation.
The ‘genius’ of the white ‘race’ has enabled it to achieve great heights,
and misfortunes of other societies are due to the inferiority of their
‘race’. Such an attitude, albeit in an attenuated form, is still discernible
in many of our textbooks and teachers.
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 227

Monocultural education, then, is simply not good education. If the

aim of education, as all the great educationists have rightly argued, is to
develop such worthwhile human capacities as intellectual curiosity,
self-criticism, the ability to weigh-up arguments and evidence and form
an independent judgment, to cultivate such attitudes as intellectual and
moral humility, respect for others and sensitivity to different ways of
thought and life, and to open students’ minds to the great achievements
of humankind, the educational system should be as free of Eurocentrism
and all other varieties of ethnocentrisim as is humanly possible. A good
education should expose pupils to different conceptions of the good life,
systems of belief and modes of conceptualizing familiar experiences,
and get them to enter into the spirit of other cultures, see the world the
way they do and appreciate their strengths and limitations. While
rightly developing the powers of independent thought, analysis, criti-
cism and so on, it should also cultivate ‘softer’ and less aggressive
capacities such as sympathetic imagination, the ability to get under the
skin of others and feel with and for them, the willingness to look at one-
self from the standpoint of others, and the capacity to listen to them
with sensitivity and sympathy. Students are members of their ethnic and
cultural communities, citizens of their political community, and also
human beings. A good educational system needs to attend to all three.
It should help pupils understand the history, social structure, culture,
languages, and so on of their cultural and political communities in order
to enable them to understand themselves better and find their way
around in these communities. However, to limit education to this is to
take a highly impoverished and narrow view of it. Education is con-
cerned with humanization not just socialization, with helping students
become not just good citizens but also integrated human beings with
well-developed intellectual, moral and other capacities and sensibilities,
and able to feel at home in the rich and diverse human world.
The area where the principle of multicultural education is most rel-
evant is obviously that of the curriculum. A multicultural curriculum
should satisfy two conditions. First, it should not be unduly narrow.
No curriculum can cover everything in the world. If it became a con-
ducted tour of the world, it would be exceedingly superficial, trivial-
ize great events, serve no educational purpose, and do more harm than
good. Ideally it should familiarize students with the major representa-
tive forms of the subject in question, concentrate on some of them,
and so stimulate them that they follow up the rest on their own.
228 Rethinking Multiculturalism

The report on the teaching of history by the federal education panel

in the United States published in 1992 gives some idea of how the his-
tory curriculum could be organized. While rightly insisting that west-
ern history must remain an important part of the curriculum in western
schools and that such non-western history as is included should be
digestible, it emphasizes that students should have a sense of the way
the larger world has developed and the position of western civilization
within it. Accordingly, it divides human history into eight eras and
focuses on developments that affected large numbers of people and had
broad significance for later generations. It includes the Greek city-
states, the Roman Empire and modern European history, but also
China’s Sung dynasty, the Mauryan Empire in India and the Olmea civ-
ilization which influenced the Zapotec and Mayan civilizations in
Mesoamerica. As the report explains, the immediate purpose behind
such a broadbased study of history is to give the student a firm under-
standing of their community’s past, a reasonably intelligent and sensi-
tive understanding of the major periods in the history of most of the rest
of the world, and the capacity to explore the similarities, differences
and interconnections between them. And the deeper purpose behind it
is to stimulate students’ curiosity and imagination, broaden their sym-
pathies, and help them appreciate both the unity and the diversity of the
human species.
The field of literature has become a subject of much unnecessary
debate in recent years. Defenders of the traditional curriculum argue
that we should continue to concentrate on the classics or canons and
resist the pressure to include the fashionable and largely minority-
based literature whose literary worth has not yet been proven by the
critical judgment of history. Although this is an understandable reaction
to the misguided lobby that wants to ‘fire the canon’, the debate is mis-
conceived. As their advocates rightly argue, the classics explore the
basic features of the human condition with great insight and subtlety,
and are of universal value and appeal. They have a technical virtuosity,
exploit the language and its resources with considerable courage, and
provide the best medium to acquire the necessary literary skills. They
also articulate the ways of thought, structures of consciousness and
forms of sensibility of their age, and constitute irreplaceable records of
vital nodal points in the growth of the civilization of the community
concerned.
While these and related arguments make out a strong case for clas-
sics, they do not amount to a case against non-classics. Even assum-
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 229

ing that we can give a coherent meaning to the term ‘classics’ and
agree on the criteria for identifying them, the fact remains that they
are human creations and have their own biases and limitations. They
articulate some forms of experience and not others, do so from spe-
cific perspectives, and are products of their age which they never
wholly succeed in transcending. They therefore need to be supple-
mented by works that explore the structures and forms of experiences
of historically marginalized groups such as women, slaves, the poor,
the oppressed, migrants and colonial subjects. These works might lack
the technical virtuosity of the classics, but they have compensating
advantages. They explore new experiences or familiar ones from
neglected and unusual angles, reflect a spirit of defiance and playful-
ness, explore the sensibilities, moods and types of pain and pleasure
falling outside the experiences or the literary genres of classical writ-
ers, and so on. What is more, it is only by including them in the cur-
riculum and subjecting them to stringent literary criticism that we can
create a climate in which such literature can throw up its own classics
over time. The classics do have a vital place in education, but there is
no obvious reason why one should be forced into choosing between
them and the rest.
The second condition that a well-conceived curriculum should sat-
isfy has to do with the way it is taught. It is not enough to broaden the
curriculum and include different religions, cultures, texts and systems
of belief; one should also bring them into a fruitful dialogue. Whether
it is slavery, colonialism, the position of women, the family, the indus-
trial revolution, the rise of the trade unions or civil and external wars,
the individuals involved experienced them differently and reached dif-
ferent judgments on them. Each event has not one but several overlap-
ping histories and is amenable to different narratives, all of them par-
tial and biased though some more so than others. Since events and insti-
tutions are multifaceted, so is the truth about them, and a balanced
judgment on them can only be formed in a conversation between dif-
ferent perspectives. One of the central aims of education should be to
equip the student to participate in such a conversation and, thereby, to
broaden her sympathies and get her to appreciate the complexity of
truth and the irreducible diversity of interpretations without nervously
seeking for a final answer. Ideally, histories and experiences of minor-
ity communities should not be taught separately but integrated into the
general history of the community. This ensures that their particular
experiences and historical memories do not become ghettoized and
230 Rethinking Multiculturalism

obsessive and find their proper place in the collective memory and self-
understanding of the society as a whole.
When defined in this way, multicultural education is not open to the
criticisms generally made of it. It is argued that it fosters the cult of eth-
nicity, undermines common culture, leads to the Tower of Babel, dis-
torts history and undermines social unity. Far from ethnicizing educa-
tion, it deethnicizes cultures and makes them a shared human capital. It
is committed to the basic values of liberal society, broadens them to
include others and helps create a plural and richer common culture. It
encourages a dialogue between cultures, equips students to converse in
multiple cultural idioms, and avoids the cacophonous incomprehension
of the Tower of Babel. It challenges the falsehoods of Eurocentric his-
tory, brings out its complexity and plural narratives, and it also fosters
social cohesion by enabling students to accept, enjoy and cope with
diversity. Properly understood and freed from the polemical exaggera-
tions of its advocates and detractors, multicultural education is an edu-
cation in freedom, both in the sense of freedom from ethnocentric prej-
udices and biases and freedom to explore and learn from other cultures
and perspectives. The two freedoms are inseparable, for one cannot be
free from an ethnocentric perspective unless one has access to others,
and one lacks such an access if one remains trapped within the confines
of one’s own perspective.

National identity

Like any other community, a political community needs to, and as a

rule tends to, develop some idea of the kind of community it is, what it
stands for, how it differs from others, how it has come to be what it is,
and so forth; in short a view of its collective or national identity (Miller,
1995; Walzer, 1992b; Gilbert, 1998). Its shared conception of its iden-
tity serves several purposes. It satisfies the intellectual curiosity of its
members as to what makes it the kind of community it is, why it is this
and not some other community, and what belonging to it involves. The
political community includes millions of people whom one has never
seen and might never see but for whose sake one is expected to pay
taxes, make sacrifices, and even give up one’s life. It also spans count-
less past and future generations to whom again one is bound by com-
mon ties of affection, interests and obligations. Its sense of national
identity bonds these individuals and generations, and articulates and
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 231

explains why they all form part of a single community. It unites its
members around a common self-understanding and gives focus and
energy to their sense of common belonging. It also inspires them to live
up to a certain collective self-image and cultivate the relevant virtues,
facilitates the community’s self-reproduction and intergenerational
continuity, fosters common loyalties, and orders their moral and polit-
ical life. It does not remain purely cerebral but becomes embodied in
national rituals, symbols and ceremonies, and engages their emotions.
The shared view of national identity has a particularly important role in
a multicultural society because of its greater need to cultivate a com-
mon sense of belonging among its diverse communities.
Although every political community needs a view of its national
identity, the latter also has a dark underside and can easily become a
source of conflict and division. Every long-established political com-
munity includes several different strands of thought and visions of the
good life. Since every definition of national identity is necessarily
selective and must be relatively simple to achieve its intended pur-
poses, it stresses one of these strands and visions and delegitimizes or
marginalizes others. The history of a community, too, is necessarily
complex and can be read in several different ways, and a definition of
national identity runs the risk of oversimplifying it and glorifying the
role of some groups and denigrating that of others. A definition of
national identity can also become a vehicle of silencing dissident
voices and moulding the entire society in a particular image with all its
authoritarian and repressive implications. The danger is particularly
acute in a multicultural society with its inevitable diversity of values,
visions of the good life and interpretations of history.
We are thus confronted with a paradox. A shared sense of national
identity is necessary but also potentially dangerous, a force for both
unity and division, a condition for the community’s cohesion and
reproduction which can also alienate large sections of its citizens and
become a cause of its fragmentation. If it is to serve valuable purposes
and avoid obvious dangers, it needs to meet certain conditions:

● First, the identity of a political community should be located in its

political structure and not the widely shared personal characteristics
of its individual members, in what they share publicly and collec-
tively as a community not in what is common to them as individu-
als. It should therefore be defined in politico-institutional rather
than ethno-cultural terms, in terms of the institutions, values, mode
232 Rethinking Multiculturalism

of public discourse and so on that all citizens can be expected to

share as members of a community rather than their habits, temper-
ament, attitude to life, sexual practices, customs, family structure,
body language and hobbies. The ethno-cultural characteristics are
too vague to specify and agree upon, are rarely shared by all or even
a majority, pertain to their private lives, at best define a people and
not a political community (Germans and French but not Germany or
France), and can easily become an instrument of suppressing
unconventional lifestyles and forms of behaviour.
● Second, members of a multicultural society belong to different eth-
nic, religious and cultural groups, and these identities deeply matter
to them. The prevailing view of national identity should allow for
such multiple identities without subjecting those involved to charges
of divided loyalties. There is no reason why one cannot be both
Scottish and British, Quebecois and Canadian, Basque and Spanish,
Breton and French, and Hindu or Sikh and American. Although there
is no conflict in principle between ethnic, religious and other identi-
ties on the one hand and national identity on the other, it can arise in
practice if either of them were to be so defined as to exclude or
undermine the other. If being American means being Protestant and
Anglo-Saxon then clearly Christians of other denominations, non-
Christians, Asians and others cannot be or feel fully American. And
if being Scottish involves being anti-English, or if being Muslim
involves political loyalties and commitments incompatible with
those to Britain and its political way of life, then they cannot be
accommodated within even the most capacious definition of British
national identity. If national identity is to leave sufficient space for
other identities, both need to be defined in an open and inclusive
manner and brought into at least some degree of harmony.
● Third, the national identity of a community should be so defined
that it includes all its citizens and makes it possible for them to iden-
tify with it. National identity is about who belongs to the commu-
nity and is entitled to make claims on it. Minorities cannot feel part
of the community if its very self-definition excludes them and treats
them as outsiders. When some leaders of the Malay community
insist their country is Malay and not Malaysian Malaysia, they
make Malays the sole owners of the community and treat the
Indians, the Chinese and others as outsiders who should be tolerated
but not given equal rights and citizenship. When leaders of the
Baltic Republics, Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana and other countries define
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 233

their national identity in terms of the indigenous or the numerically

dominant community, their definition excludes minorities, such as
the Russians, Indians, Chinese and erstwhile colonizers.
In all these cases it is argued that since some groups of people
are recent arrivals, bought by the colonial powers or planted by a
dominant neighbour, they do not have as much claim on the coun-
try as the rest. The argument is flawed. Many so-called indigenous
people often turn out to be outsiders if one goes further back in his-
tory, and differ from the rest in having arrived or been brought only
a few decades earlier. Again, although it is true that some minorities
once came as colonizers or were recruited by colonial powers, it is
an irreversible legacy of history and cannot be held against their
present descendants who have known no other home, struck their
roots in the country, identify with it, and whose moral and political
claims are therefore just as strong as those of the rest. The term ‘sec-
ond or third-generation immigrant’ is deeply misleading, for the
sons and daughters of immigrants are not themselves immigrants.
● Finally, the definition of national identity should not only include
all citizens, but also accept them as equally valued and legitimate
members of the community. Although in many multicultural soci-
eties the majority community is willing to grant its citizens equal
rights, it feels possessive about the country for democratic, histori-
cal and other reasons and insists that the definition of national iden-
tity should reflect its privileged status.10 While granting equal rights
to all its citizens, including its Serbian and other minorities, the
1990 constitution of Croatia maintains that it is the ‘national state of
the Croatian people’ and realizes their ‘thousand-year dream’ of an
independent state of their own. The Constitution of Macedonia
makes it the ‘national state of the Macedonian people’, defined not
in political but ethnic terms. The Romanian Constitution goes fur-
ther. While giving equal rights to all its minorities, it makes the
unity of ethnic Romanians the foundation of the state, Romanian the
official language of the country, ‘Awake Romanians’ the national
anthem, and so on. In Malaysia, three ‘pillars’ are considered cen-
tral to its national identity, bahsa (language or Malay), agama (reli-
gion or Islam) and dan raja (monarchy), all three closely connected
with the majority. In Thailand, the three ‘central elements’ of
national identity include sasana (religion or Buddhism), mahakasat
(monarchy) and chat (nation), the first being the religion and the
second the royal dynasty of the majority community. Israel is offi-
234 Rethinking Multiculturalism

cially the state of its Jewish majority, its name and all its national
symbols are Jewish, its Law of Return privileges Jews, and so forth.
Although its Arab minority of just under 20 per cent enjoys broadly
equal civil and political rights with the rest and a reasonably secure
cultural space of its own, it is ‘exempted’ from joining the armed
forces and denied employment in enterprises associated with the
military.

In all these cases minorities feel aggrieved and alienated, and have
often protested against their inferior or ‘second-class’ status. The
Macedonian Constitution was strongly opposed by, and passed without
the consent of, its 30 per cent Albanian minority. The Croatian
Constitution was criticized by its Serb, Slovene, Slovak, Hungarian and
Muslim minorities. And the Israeli, Malaysian and Thai definitions of
national identity have provoked similar objections from their respective
minorities. Minorities contend that since the state is officially appro-
priated and declared to be the national home of the majority commu-
nity, they are seen as less authentic ‘sons of the soil’, less reliable and
patriotic than the rest, less entitled to demand respect for their culture
and religion, and passed over in politically sensitive appointments.
These fears are not ill-founded. In Malaysia, for example, making
Islam one of the three pillars of its national identity has encouraged a
general distrust of non-Muslims and led to widespread demand that the
country be declared an Islamic state. Minority spokesmen also argue
that they enjoy equal rights as individuals but not as communities for,
unlike the majority community, they do not enjoy collective rights to
cultural self-expression, access to public resources, and recognition of
their presence in the symbols of the state and the definition of national
identity.
Many of these and related minority criticisms are justified, and there
is a strong case for defining national identity in a broad and collectively
acceptable manner. By including minorities in the community’s self-
definition and giving them official recognition, such a definition legit-
imizes and values their presence and makes it possible for them to
accept it with enthusiasm. It also protects the state against nativist or
majoritarian pressures, and it does not undermine the inescapably dom-
inant status of the majority which is bound to assert itself in the normal
political process anyway. Indeed, precisely because of this, it is in its
own interest not to rub it in by explicitly enshrining its dominance in
the definition of national identity. When a majority community defines
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 235

itself as a nation and seeks to monopolize the state, it provokes its

minorities to define themselves as nations or ethnic groups. Minority
ethnicity is often a defensive reaction against majority nationalism.
Both justice and political wisdom dictate that the majority community
should resist the temptation to claim the cultural ownership of the polit-
ical community.
Although this is the ideal to aim at, it is not always practical. The his-
tory of most countries is tied up with that of particular ethnic or cultural
groups who have played a decisive role in their development, shaped
their current character, and whose values and experiences are deeply
inscribed in their major institutions; for example, the English in the UK
and the Anglo-Saxons in the USA. Furthermore, some countries such
as Israel have come into existence to realize the nationalist aspirations
of the dominant community, and cannot be expected to undergo radical
changes including give themselves different names, anthems and
self-definition without alienating their majorities and suffering a pro-
found crisis of identity. Even when countries define their identity in
non-communal terms, the influence of the majority community seeps
through its institutions, practices and symbols in subtle ways. Although
the founding fathers of the Indian republic scrupulously sought to avoid
defining its national identity in Hindu terms, its name (‘India that is
Bharat’ as the very first article of its Constitution defines the country),
national anthem (written in Sanskritised Bengali), national motto
(drawn from the Hindu epic Mahābhārata), and so on are all drawn
from the majority Hindu tradition.
All this means that defining the national identity of a multicultural
society is an exceedingly difficult enterprise involving reconciliation of
conflicting demands (Mason, 1999, pp. 271f). The definition cannot
and should not be culturally neutral as it then satisfies nobody and
lacks the power to evoke deep historical memories, nor biased towards
a particular community as it then delegitimizes and alienates others,
nor culturally so eclectic as to lack coherence and focus. There is no
easy way to reconcile these and other requirements, and each political
community has to strike its own balance. There are, however, several
general considerations that could guide its choice (Tamir, 1993,
pp. 162f).
Although a political community cannot deny or reject its historically
inherited identity, it can officially declare itself multicultural as
Canada, Australia and other countries have done. This affirms its cul-
tural plurality, legitimizes its minorities, and counters such cultural
236 Rethinking Multiculturalism

biases as its self-definition, symbols and institutions inevitably contain.

While retaining the current self-definition, it can also give it a broader
meaning as Prince Charles did when he remarked that, as a monarch,
he would like to be the ‘Defender of Faith’ including both Christian and
non-Christian religions rather than of ‘the Faith’ as is currently the
case. Even when it is unable to avoid altogether the majority-based
view of national identity, the political community can counter its sym-
bolic and practical impact by providing ample autonomous cultural
spaces to its minorities and making them a de facto part of its national
identity. Although Buddhism is part of Thai national identity and fig-
ures prominently in its national rituals, the state there has agreed to
respect the rights of the Muslims of southern Thailand to maintain their
religious schools, and of the khadi courts to adjudicate matters relating
to marriage and the family. Israel’s commitment to respect Arab cul-
tural identity, uphold their personal laws, fund their schools and so on
represents another, albeit limited way to make its national identity
effectively plural. In the ultimate analysis the definition of national
identity matters to minorities because it risks delegitimizing them,
damaging their material and other interests, and making it difficult for
them to identify with the political community. Once these are fully
taken care of, it should not much matter if the definition retains some
bias towards the dominant majority community.

Conditions of success

I have argued that a multicultural society is likely to be stable, cohe-

sive, vibrant and at ease with itself if it meets certain conditions. These
include a consensually grounded structure of authority, a collectively
acceptable set of constitutional rights, a just and impartial state, a mul-
ticulturally constituted common culture and multicultural education,
and a plural and inclusive view of national identity. None of them by
itself is enough. However legitimate its basis, no structure of authority
can hold a society together and count on its continuing allegiance
unless it acts justly and ensures its citizens the basic conditions of the
good life. Justice, however, is not enough because it is what I might call
a cold and impersonal virtue. It prevents accumulation of resentment,
frustration and anger and generates a basic sense of satisfaction with
the political community, but does not by itself foster an enthusiastic
commitment to and a sense of moral and emotional identification with
 The Political Structure of Multicultural Society 237

it, without which the community cannot sustain itself in times of crisis
or even evoke willing sacrifices of personal interest during normal
times. One might enjoy all the rights of citizenship and be a formally
equal member of the community, and yet feel that one is an outsider
and does not quite belong to it if its cultural ethos and self-definition
have no place for one. This is how, for example, many African
Americans in the United States, Asians and Afro-Caribbeans in Britain,
Arabs in Israel, and Muslims and until recently Sikhs in India feel
about their respective communities. Belonging is about full acceptance
and feeling at home, and justice, which is about rights and interests, sat-
isfies only one of its preconditions.
Justice is also inherently contentious and, contra Rawls, there is no
uniquely rational and conclusive way to resolve deep disagreements
about its criteria, limits and relative importance in the political life of
the community, especially in multicultural societies. It is also only one
of several political values, and needs to be balanced against the require-
ments of social harmony, integration of the excluded groups into the
mainstream society, a rich and vibrant cultural life, and a sense of social
solidarity. This is why, although unjust to some individuals, a wisely
applied policy of affirmative action is sometimes justified to achieve
these and other worthwhile values. For these and related reasons, jus-
tice cannot be the sole basis of the political community or even its high-
est or ‘first’ virtue. We should do justice to justice itself and keep it in
its proper place, neither underestimating nor exaggerating its impor-
tance.
While ensuring justice to all its citizens and communities, a multi-
cultural society needs a plural collective culture of the kind described
earlier and a shared sense of national identity. The former, which grows
out of a constant conversation between different cultures, both respects
them and provides a shared vocabulary of daily intercourse and com-
mon interests and sources of enjoyment. The latter enables different
individuals and communities to identify with the political community,
recognize it as theirs, and build up a sense of loyalty to it. Although
both are important, they remain relatively ineffective unless accompa-
nied by justice secured by a legitimate and consensually grounded
structure of authority.
When these and related conditions obtain in a multicultural society,
it is likely to develop a common sense of belonging among its diverse
communities. Since they are subject to the civil authority they accept as
legitimate, have their basic rights guaranteed, are justly treated and
238 Rethinking Multiculturalism

enjoy respect for their cultural identities, they have no grounds for dis-
content. And since the collective culture values and reflects their con-
tribution and provides a common bond with others, and since the
shared sense of national identity cherishes their presence, they have
every incentive to give the community their willing allegiance and even
to feel proud of belonging to it. While cherishing their respective cul-
tural identities, members of different communities also share a com-
mon identity not only as citizens but as full and relaxed members of
wider society, and form part of a freely negotiated and constantly
evolving collective ‘we’. This does not mean that members of such a
society will not deeply disagree about important issues or find each
other occasionally exasperating and incomprehensible, but rather that
they are likely to feel sufficiently committed to it to live with their dif-
ferences and not to want to harm its well-being. Political communities
are exceedingly difficult to hold together and, as history shows, there is
no means of knowing what might precipitate their break up. A multi-
cultural society that creates the conditions discussed earlier has done all
that can be expected of it. If that proves inadequate, it should avoid
repressive violence and accept its misfortune as part of the inescapable
frailty of all human institutions. As Machiavelli wisely observed virtú
minimizes but does not altogether eliminate the power of fortuna.