Indian Federation and the Multicultural Context

Indian federation characterizes a dual polity, power sharing between national and state governments and majoritarian parliamentary democracy, a relatively rigid constitution, and a supreme court at the apex. Constitution tries to construct the multicultural reality within political-institutional framework following the basic principles of power sharing: grand coalition governments in which all sections have representations, protection of minority rights, decentralization of power, and decision-making by consensus. Power sharing in Indian federation is a combination of ‘consociational’ that ensures group interests, group autonomy, proportionality and minority veto and ‘integrative’ that eschews ethnic groups as building blocks of a common society. Few instances that kept the Indian federation far away from consociational are like (1) de-institutionalized politics of the Congress party that was transformed from an internally democratic, federal, and consensual organization to a centralized and hierarchical party; (2) frequent use of ‘presidential rule’ for partisan purposes; (3) rise of ‘Hindutva’ and the demand for ‘uniform civil code’ due to pressure from below; and (4) growth of demand politics and the rise of greater regionalization due to pressure from below. Cultural recognition, political participation-institutionalization paradigm, pressures from below and social and political discourses following the lines of Huntington, Raymond Williams, Rudolph and Rudolph, Partha Chatterjee and Foucault are important theoretical underpinnings here.