India is a land of bewildering diversity. It is a conglomeration of people, cultures, languages and religions. In the words of Octavio Paz, renowned Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate, "India is an ethnographic and historical museum, but is a living museum-one in which the most modern modernity coexists with archaisms that have survived for millennia." India's diversity is also reflected in the coexistence of sensuality and asceticism, carelessness and efficiency, gentleness and violence, centuries apart in time and neighbours in space. In short, India is a reality that is far easier to delineate than to define.

India is a kaleidoscope. You touch it and there is a new combination of shapes and colours. It depends on how you look at India. There are certainly the deficit sides, provoking shock and depressions. The bright sides far outweigh the deficit sides enticing romanticism and enthusiasm. Let me elaborate a bit how different societies have resolved, or sought to resolve, the problem of heterogeneity. The Anglo-Americans resolved it with the "melting pot"— the fusion of all the races, languages, and cultures into one, under the authority of the same laws and the same language, English. All the ethnic minorities in the US (with the exception of a handful of Mexicans) speak English : all enjoy certain constitutional rights, and all are believers in the "American way of life" (though no one knows exactly what that means). The minorities do not have separatist movements.

India, on the other hand, is not a melting pot; it is a mosaic. Here is a country which is a host to all the conceivable religions and ways of life— Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Jews Zoroastrians — some of which were born on this land and others were brought in by trade contracts and the successive political and cultural invasions. They all were assimilated by the people of India. India's linguistic diversity is equally bewildering. The fact that as many as 1,652 languages and dialects are spoken in India is a proof for the country's amazing diversity. India has 18 officially recognised languages. While Hindi is the official language of the Indian Union, English is an additional official language.

India has followed a principle of "unity in diversity". This unity is based on democracy, federalism, tolerance and secular character of the state. Many societies have sought to hide their diversities and refuse to accept their heterogeneity and have paid a high price. The post-Cold War world has seen the disintegration of some states which were, though federal in appearance, non-democratic to the core. The key to India's success as a federal democracy is the recognition of its diversities. Acceptance of all religions and different ways of life is the cornerstone of India's civilisational heritage and polity. India is not one civilisation but multiple. One has nursed the other. The most extreme form of monotheism has coexisted with the most varied polytheism as well as atheism. Are India's multiple religions occupying a single territory, or are multiple religions nurtured by a single civilisation? It is impossible to say.

As far as the question of religious minorities in India is concerned, the Indian Constitution has provided a paradigm which has worked well. The preamble to the Indian Constitution says that India is a secular state. Right to freedom of religion is guaranteed under fundamental rights and Indians of all religious persuasions have the freedom to profess, practise and propagate their religion. India's freedom movement provides insights into how the main pillars of the Indian Constitution - democracy, secularism, social justice and fundamental rights were forged over a period of time. The freedom movement forged unity among various groups living in isolation. The underlying message of the freedom struggle under Gandhi was that no group was privileged even if it happened to be in huge majority and that minority groups - religious, linguistic, socio-cultural — would be protected against majoritarian agendas.

Way back in 1930, India's position on the minorities has been formulated. The position taken by the leaders of the freedom movement was : "There can be no stable equilibrium in any country so long as an attempt is made to crush a minority or force it to conform to the ways of majority... We in India must make it clear to all that our policy is based on granting this freedom to the minorities and that under no circumstance will any coercion or repression of them be tolerated". Mahatma Gandhi's secularism came to represent the confluence of several religions what someone called a "federation of religions". Gandhi's politics was fully secular and his basic appeal to the people was made on economic, political and moral grounds and never on religious grounds. For centuries India has subscribed to the policy of sarva-dharma-sambhava (goodwill and tolerance towards all religions) which is a Vedantic concept. Tolerance for other faiths and ways of life and recognition of diversity form the core of secularism. India is secular because the people, its culture and national ethos are secular. Secularism is India's manifest destiny.

Article 29(1) of the Indian Constitution lays down that "Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same." This constitutional provision has two dimensions. One, it recognizes that different groups have different cultures; that these linguistic and religious cultures are valuable for their members; that members of minority cultures can face disadvantages in a majoritarian society and that, therefore, these members need to be given explicit rights to their own culture. Secondly, the right to culture is an individual right i.e. individuals are granted the right to their culture. No provision is made for those cases where the culture itself may be under threat of dissolution or where it may be subjected to calls for assimilation. Despite this drawback, this Article along with Article 30 which guarantees that all religious and linguistic minorities are given the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, constitutes cultural and educational rights. These two Articles have to be read along with Articles 25 to 30 that grant the freedom of religion in order to comprehend the range of protection afforded to religious groups.

While India continues to be a secular republic, secularism to some has become a supremely contested concept. On the one hand, supporters of secularism argue that the Indian state has not been secular enough and that the state has pitched its stand in favour of the majorities. On the other hand, critics of secularism accuse the state of practising pseudo-secularism and of pampering the minorities. The failure of the state to enact a uniform civil code is cited as an example of this amoral pampering. The balance-sheet of Indian secularism is, however, very positive.

The minority rights in India have been historically determined. More importantly, these rights have been enshrined in the Constitution. This is not to say there are no conflicts between the majority and the minority groups. India has witnessed several inter-religious riots, especially between the Hindus and the Muslims. To a great extent, these riots are the result of Partition of 1947 based on the flawed two-nation theory and the apparent conflict of perspectives between the secular model and the theocratic model. Riots are
also politically engineered socio-economic conditions to account for religious animosities. The rise of fundamentalism too has sought to create a religious divide. But the Indian state is secular to the core, so are state institutions— the judiciary, the press and the civil society. Take the question of Kashmir. While the world community is worried about the continuing tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, not many are aware that the issue is not so much one of territory, but the conflict between the two diametrically opposed models of government that the two countries represent - theocracy versus secularism. In the secular model, no official religion exists as a state policy. Religion forms the social framework in civil society.

India's linguistic diversity is even more bewildering. As per the 1961 census, there were 1652 mother tongues in India. At least 200 of these had 10,000 or more speakers each. At that time India's population was roughly 400 million. India's languages can be grouped into four
different families each of which has its own evolutionary history and distinctiveness. These are the Sino-Tibetan, the Austro-Asiatic, the Dravidians and the Indo-Aryan. The language issue in the 1950s and 1960s threatened to tear apart the national fabric. Linguistic movements in various parts of the country posed a serious threat to India's unity and integrity. But the problem was solved amicably. The recognition of all major Indian languages as national languages and the reorganisation of Indian states on a linguistic basis resolved the issue to the satisfaction of all.

Language became the key to statehood. In the 50s and 60s, India appeared to be on the verge of civil war over language. The first clearly successionist movement emerged in Tamil Nadu in reaction to perceived imposition of Hindi. However, the Indian State recognised the importance of regional languages and showed sensitivity towards the linguistic nationalisms. When the states were reorganised on linguistic basis, some feared that it would lead to disintegration. Such fears were unfounded. Today, language is no more an issue.

The Indian example can be instructive for the newly emerging states, which are wrestling with a variety of problems including linguistic. As I mentioned earlier, India has 18 officially recognised languages. These languages are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, while there are 96 non-scheduled languages. Speakers covered by the schedule languages constitute 96.29 per cent of the population. Have a look at the Indian currency notes. All the 18 official languages are printed on the currency. In order to promote and recognise the importance of the language in a particular part of the country, India has established the dominant language of the region as the language of formal education and administration. In political terms, this is an unprecedented development in Indian history. It has brought about political and cultural unification. India's language policy has improved the rate of bilingualism. The rate of national average of bilingualism in 1961 was 9.7 per cent. In 1991, it rose to 19.44 per cent. The national average for trilinguism is 7.26 per cent.

Federalism provided institutional solution to intra-societal conflicts and tensions in pluralistic and multi-cultural societies. While it strengthens national coherence, it accommodates and protects diversities within societies. Federalism provides fundamental respect for diversity of cultures, languages, laws and ways of life. Federalism also accommodates multiple identities and loyalties within a state. In the modern age, few countries are neatly filled by homogenous groups of people. But others are a diverse cocktail of people. As we are all aware, the post-Cold War world is witnessing two seemingly contrary trends-emergence of supranational entities and the assertion of separate identity. Federalism is, therefore, more relevant today than ever before.

Coming back to the Indian experience, we have now moved from one-party rule to the coalition era. India itself is a coalition. The smaller parties represent different values, demands and aspirations of the people. The shift from dominant party to multiparty politics has undone the centralising thrust of the Indian Constitution. The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution have further given a new meaning to Indian federalism.

A de facto third tier of governance, with a wide democratic base, has come into existence in the country. Till the passage of the 73rd and 74th Amendments, Parliament and Assemblies of the state and union territories of India had about 4963 elected members but today, every five years, more than three million people's representatives are being elected by this democratic process. Out of this, over one million are women. A large number of excluded groups and communities are now included in the decision-making bodies.

This marks a qualitative change in the federal character of the Indian Union. Each state has become a federating unit with three layers below it - district, block and village. This is a unique federal feature. An organic link in the democratic process has been established from Gram Sabha (village assembly) to Lok Sabha (Parliament). India has moved from administrative federalism to multi-level federalism.

I would like to end by quoting Prof Susanne Rudolph and Prof Lloyd Rudolph : "In thinking about something with which to compare India's federalism, the multilingual European Union seems more appropriate than does the United States. Much like the English and the Italians, the Hindi speakers of Bihar state in the shadow of the Himalayas and the Tamil speakers of Tamil Nadu at the subcontinent's southern tip speak quite distinct languages. They share little history and few points of contact. Their traditional rulers, legends and folk cultures are distinct from one another. Their socio-economic profiles are as different as those of Sweden and Portugal. Bihar is poor and mostly illiterate. Tamil Nadu is prosperous and advance. No contrast between any two of the 50 US states comes anywhere close. Forty years ago, there seemed good reason to fear that Selig Harrison was right to warn that India's "fissiparous tendencies", particularly its linguistic differences, would soon lead to Balkanisation or dictatorship. Today such worries seem unpersuasive. The federal system has helped India to live peacefully with its marked difference."