Jyotirmaya Tripathy - The Democratic Predicament: Cultural Diversity in Europe and India

First published 2013 in India
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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2013 Jyotirmaya Tripathy & Sudarsan Padmanabhan

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-415-81189-7

For
V. R. Muraleedharan

the Sutradhara

J YOTIRMAYA T RIPATHY AND S UDARSAN P ADMANABHAN

R IVA K ASTORYANO

S UBRATA K. M ITRA

A NANTA K UMAR G IRI

L ISE R OLANDSEN A GUSTN AND B IRTE S IIM

K ATE H ELEN S ULLIVAN

R AHUL R AO

N EERA C HANDHOKE

D ANIELE C ONVERSI

L UCIA M ICHELUTTI

M ARYNA R AKHLEI

M ANDAKINI V. J HA

We are considerably indebted to the European Commission for its generous financial support for the establishment of the Centre for Comparative European Union Studies (CCEUS) in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, which was the forum for organizing an international seminar on Democratization and Cultural Diversity in June 2010. A few papers presented in the seminar partially form the basis of this book. Over the last two years, the CCEUS and the present book project have benefited from many people in a myriad of ways: M.S. Ananth, the former Director of IIT Madras, for playing a key role in the birth of the centre; Gerard Delanty who was instrumental in conceiving the idea of the book; Sudheer Chella Rajan for his advice and unconditional involvement in the project; Sonika Gupta for her critical interventions; Nanjunda Reddy and V. Rajesh for their organizational ability and editorial help; S. Mohan for virtually everything and for being our last line of defence; Anjana Raghavan and Raphael Joseph for their uncanny ability to find reading materials at a short notice, and other department colleagues who provided all kinds of academic and non-academic help. We express our gratitude to all the contributors who went through a gruelling time while dealing with us, but still sticking to the almost impossible time line. At a personal level, we are thankful to Sanghamitra, Akankhya and Hema for their toleration. We are also deeply indebted to Routledge, Taylor and Francis, New Delhi, for their cooperation and commitment to the project.

Jyotirmaya Tripathy
Sudarsan Padmanabhan

Europe and India offer puzzling realities. They are two of the most culturally diverse regions in the world with several religions, languages and ethnic groups and polarized social structures, and yet cope with this diversity from within a democratic framework. The present anthology is intended to highlight these problematic issues when they are negotiated, contested and articulated in different geographies.

Europe has had varied degrees of success in negotiating diversity and achieving consensus in the economic, political and cultural spheres. The economic sphere, for its obvious instrumental and developmental benefits, has seen the most robust integration through the European Union. However, the political cooperation is still directly tethered to the nation-state framework driven by domestic necessities and problems rather than by cosmopolitan ideals. But most of the contentious issues have emanated in the cultural sphere, the reason why in this volume, the idea of Europe as an arena of constant negotiation of cultural, religious and ethnic diversity is discussed and questions addressed. What could be the reasons for the lack of consensus in the social and cultural spheres? Does the negotiation of identities in an agglomeration of diverse cultures suffer from the lack of intersubjective engagement at the individual and social realms in negotiating vexatious issues?

A Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Breivik bombed government offices in Oslo and then went on a shooting spree at a youth camp of Labour Party in Utoya island that killed more than 70 people. His logic: the pro-immigration and pro-Islam policies of the Norwegian Labour Party. In a 1500-page manifesto titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence , Breivik invites allies (including right-wing groups in India like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) across the globe to stem the spread of Islam.

In January 2011, the Daily Mail reported that London police had busted gangs of men of Pakistan origin which had been allegedly using British teenage girls as sex slaves. The modus operandi of these groups was to target white girls as young as 11 with drinks and drugs and then force them to work as prostitutes, making money out of the racket. In 2007, when the Dutch Queen pleaded in her Christmas speech for tolerance and diversity, a right-wing politician Geert Wilders responded by saying that the Queens multicultural rubbish made him feel like vomiting. In October 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued, while addressing the members of Christian Democratic Union, that the attempt to create a multicultural society in Germany had failed, but there was no reason to be sad about it. She went on to add that anybody who did not believe in the Christian foundation of the country was not welcome there. A similar suspicion of multiculturalism and xenophobia whether in the banning of minarets and hijab s or tightening of visa rules in Britain, France and other countries of Europe has resulted in renewed debates on immigration, integration, democracy and cultural diversity.