Cultural diversity and community identity

Cultural diversity means many communities within one nation, each defined by language, religion, sect, race or caste. India is one of the most diverse countries in the world.

Diversity is rich, but it is also a challenge:

• Identities arouse strong passions; people may feel ready to fight for them.
• Differences of identity often coincide with inequality: one group may be richer or more powerful.
• Scarce resources (jobs, water, land, government funds) must be shared, which sets groups against each other.

How do we get our community identity? Through socialisation: the process by which family, school and community teach us how to live in society. Our community gives us our mother tongue, our cultural values and our sense of who we are.

Community identity is ascriptive: it comes from birth, not from what we achieve. No one chooses which family, caste, religion or language group to be born into.

Strangely, we feel deep attachment to these identities, even though they are:

• accidental: we did nothing to earn them;
• unconditional: we belong whatever we do;
• almost inescapable: they are hard to leave.

We are each part of widening circles of community: family, kin, caste, religion, region, nation.

Why conflicts are hard to resolve: because everyone has such identities, when two communities clash, each sees the other as the enemy in the same way. The two sides create mirror images of each other: the same accusations, reversed. Each feels it is the victim, and the other the aggressor. This makes compromise very hard.