ABSTRACT
Every schoolchild in India is taught the credo of ‘unity in diversity’, the formula popularized by Jawarharlal Nehru, independent India’s fi rst prime minister, who instituted it as state policy. The phrase is represented, for instance, in the ubiquitous cheap posters that paper classroom walls showing colourful tableaux of Indians in regional dress, and of various religious and sectarian persuasions. The poster children of Indian diversity are India’s many languages and religions. The dark horse is caste. Representative images of different castes never appear on classroom walls. The former, in short, are the kinds of diversity that Indian political leaders proudly showcase; the latter is an embarrassment, best relegated to the past as quickly as possible.1 When scholars, public intellectuals and media fi gures speak of religious and linguistic diversity, the focus is almost invariably on the Indian state’s protection of religious minorities, religions other than Hinduism.2 But where languages are arguably based in pre-existing (linguistic) practices,3 religious majorities and minorities are created entirely by the state itself. Moreover, while the focus of both offi cial and academic diversity talk is on how minorities are managed, what is less noticed is how majorities are thereby constituted. It is this aspect of ‘diversity management’ – what might be called its silent partner – that this essay discusses. I will argue that although religion (a form of ‘good diversity’) is seen as distinct from caste (a diversity meant to be ultimately eradicated), the two are in fact inseparably linked in the processes by which the Indian state creates and maintains its Hindu majority. I begin with a brief overview of mainstream diversity talk in postcolonial Indian statecraft and in academic discourse. I then turn to how caste difference has been conceived by the postcolonial state and targeted by its policies. This will illustrate the unacknowledged processes by which an overwhelming ‘Hindu’ majority population was created by the Indian state.4
