Session 6(a): Pluralism, Others and Communities

Session 6a: Pluralism, Others and Communities
Chair: John L. Hochheimer

Social action and Indian Muslim communities: Understanding the Islamic Religious Plurality in India
Hilal Ahmed
Department of Political Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, London, United Kingdom

The notion of Islamic pluralism in India has been approached from a number of perspectives. We have a vast literature that confirms the existence of different Muslim ‘communities’ in India and different perceptions of Islamic identities. However, the ideologies and activities of different Muslim social organizations working in different parts of India have not been given adequate treatment. The popular perception that all the Muslim social organizations in India share a single common agenda and work to achieve certain common objectives for the well being of a single ‘Muslim’ community still dominates the academic discourse. The idioms like Islamic philanthropy, Muslim NGO sector and Muslim development sector are being frequently used to describe the activities of Muslim organizations in India . The social policy of the state, political actors and even the emerging third sector in India tend to generalize the social activities of Muslim organizations in a single closed category. This paper, on the contrary, demonstrates that Muslim organizations in India representing a variety of stake holders, work to achieve a variety of social objectives related to different Indian Muslim communities. We argue that the considerable heterogeneity in the ideological stands and social activities of Muslim organizations, which produces the different interpretations of ‘Muslim homogeneity’ in India , requires an adequate analysis.
This paper is an attempt to discuss the ‘functional Islamic religious plurality’ in India . The paper is based on an empirical research of 24 Muslim organizations working in 10 states of India . The first section discusses the question of relevance of social organization in studying religious plurality. The second section highlights some of the conceptual ambiguities in traditional research paradigms on Indian Muslims. The third section deals with the notion of Islamic charity in India . In the fourth section we try to classify different Muslim organizations into different categories on the basis of their ideological stands and modes of social action. And in the fifth and final section we investigate the relationship between the third sector and the Islamic social organizations in India.

Interculturalism the Capitalist Way: An Indian Example
Priya Virmani
Department of Drama, Theatre, Film and Television, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

“’Globalization’ is a non-linear, dialectic process in which the global and the local do not exist as cultural polarities but as combined and mutually implicating principles” (Becks, 2002). Embedded in this understanding of globalization are the implicated processes of interculturalism and multiculturalism. Acknowledging culture as an inherently dynamic process, in my presentation I engage with newer perspectives on interculturalism as a concept posited on the ethos of the late capitalist consumer society that owes its genesis to the west and is fast arriving in the east thereby gaining global resonance.
Situating the notion of interculturalism in a global context, my presentation will bring its workings to the fore. Focusing on the example of the fairly recent ‘dynamic’ metamorphosis of the television industry in India, brought about by a borrowing between indigenous influences and those of the west my paper will explore the understandings and consequences of interculturalism within a global society comprising constituent nation states defined by particular cultures. Elucidated by Indian television’s examples of spatio-temporal continuities of confluences of the West with that of the East, is furthered an understanding of the processes of interculturalism’s impact on television’s cultural forms (in this particular case India) as an inherently complex process of exchange as compared to one of any neat ‘mergers’, brought about and facilitated by the tenets of capitalist expansion. Consequently, the hybrid in Indian television’s cultural forms is a new entity belonging entirely not to either culture but forms a new entity which re-defines the paradigms of its cultures of origin with emphasis on the ‘adopted’ culture. Nevertheless, the new forms created by the processes of interculturalism between east and west are viewed as ‘home-grown’ indigenous produce, hence lending belonging and authenticity to the new entity.

Chinese views of Self, Others and Plurality
Limin Bai
School of Asian and European Languages and Cultures, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

Laowai is a word that is normally used by Chinese to refer to non-Chinese people. The dilemma for Chinese born overseas is that they are neither Chinese nor laowai in mainland China. Some overseas Chinese have experienced this kind of discrimination when they are looking for English teaching jobs in China. Although English is their mother tongue, they can not get English teaching jobs on the ground that they do not look like “foreigners”. Some may link this kind of practice to the treatment of African-Americans in America. This paper, however, argues that this kind of discrimination encountered by some overseas Chinese, like the privileges many foreigners have enjoyed in China, actually reflects the Chinese image of self, others and plurality. To this effect, the paper at first outlines a brief history of Chinese attitudes to laowai. This provides not only the origins of Chinese attitudes to foreigners but also a philosophical and historical framework within which Chinese conceptions of self, others and multiculturalism are discussed. It shows that the “Chineseness” in the eyes of Chinese in China has multi-layers: physical appearance (ethnic Chinese), cultural Chinese, political Chinese and economic Chinese. However, the “foreignness” is mostly determined by physical appearances, which appear to be an icon for China’s internationalization and plurality.

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