MINORITY STUDIES OIP

In India, The minority–majority logic has been inherited from the independence struggle and Partition history, and ratified by provisions in favour of minorities in the Constitution. Minority studies, the first volume in the series, Oxford India studies in Contemporary society, looks at issues related to the identification, definition, and categorization of religious minorities and foreboding of the significant social categories of caste, gender, ethnicity, and class. Drawing from fieldwork based on historically grounded and ethnographically researched locations, it examines how modern law creates and conditions minority identity, how groups manipulate the ground-level situation to project a certain identity at a particular point of time, and what happens when a group considered as part of the majority demands minority status. In this paperback edition, the editor adds further to the discussion by referring to the recent resurgence of majoritarian populist politics in India as evidenced in the lynching and targeted violence against Muslims and Dalits in the name of cow vigilantism and other such instances. The editor emphasizes how the minority question becomes even more potent in the current socio-political milieu.