Introduction

Social institutions — family, market, and the rest — don't only pull people together. The last two chapters showed how the very same institutions that build community and cohesion can equally well produce inequality and exclusion. This chapter looks at a related but distinct problem: the tensions that arise from cultural diversity itself.

'Diversity' is a word about difference, not inequality — India's cultural diversity means the coexistence of many kinds of social group, marked out by language, religion, sect, race or caste. On its own, that coexistence need not be a problem. It becomes one when these diverse communities are also folded into a single larger unit, a nation, where competition or conflict between them can flare up.

Cultural identities are powerful enough to move very large numbers of people, and with real intensity. Where cultural difference is layered on top of economic or social inequality, the stakes rise further — correcting one community's disadvantage can look, from another community's vantage point, like favouritism — and matters get worse still when everyone is drawing on the same limited pool, whether that is river water, jobs, or government funds. That combination — powerful identities, real inequalities, and scarce shared resources — is what makes cultural diversity a genuine challenge, and not just a fact about India.