Q.How is a democracy more effective than authoritarian governments in dealing with conflicting nationalist aspirations?

Once the idea that every distinct culture must have its own separate state is abandoned, a different and more workable question follows: how can many different cultures and communities live together, and even flourish, within a single country? Democratic societies have generally answered this by introducing measures that specifically recognise and protect the identity of cultural minority communities within their territory — the Indian Constitution, for example, contains an elaborate set of provisions protecting religious, linguistic and cultural minorities.

The kinds of group rights granted across different democracies typically include constitutional protection for the language, culture and religion of minority groups and their members, and in some cases an explicit right for an identified community to be represented as a group in legislatures or other state institutions. Such rights are usually justified on the grounds that they secure equal treatment and protection of the law for members of these groups, while also protecting the group's distinct cultural identity as such. What this really requires is that "national identity" itself be defined inclusively enough to recognise the importance and the unique contribution of every cultural community that makes up the state, rather than being tied to any one dominant culture. …