Identity Groups in India

An identity refers to either a social category or socially distinguishing features that a person takes special pride in or view as unchangeable but special consequential (Fearon, 1). There are three kinds of identity groups: ethnic identity, national identity and religious identity. According to Draper and Ramsay (84), ethnicity, nationality and religion provide people with a sense of place and meaning that distinguish them from others. Ethnicity refers to the sense of belongings to a group having a common history, language, culture, religion and geographic region (Draper and Ramsay, 84 ). In India, based on the differences between castes, religions, languages, professions, etc., the ethnicities are quite complex. Basically, there are two ethnicities in India: Indo-Aryans, Dravidians (Crown 34). Approximately 70 percent of Indians belong to the Indo-Aryan group which is the largest ethnic group in India. The other ethnic group is Dravidians who occupies 25 percent of Indian populations and speak languages belonging to Dravidian language family (Crown 56) .

Besides, religious identity is also one of the most important forms of identity groups in India. Religion demonstrates people’s beliefs in deity and afterlife as well as the way to separate people from others (Draper and Ramsay, 86). Religion has ingrained into Indian people’s life and become the most important part in their life. There are mainly three religious groups in India: Hindu, Islam and Sikh. Among them, the population of Hindu is the largest which occupies around more than 80 percent of total population. Besides, Muslims also occupy quite a large proportions of the Indian populations. Another minor religious in India is Sikh, which only occupies 2 percent of Indian populations.

In India, there are lots of political conflicts because different ethnic groups and religious groups have different interests. Both of religious groups and ethnic groups are related to the concept identity politics. Identity politics refers to political activities or movements catering to the relevant groups who share the same interest such as religion and ethnic (Fearon 36). In India, the most famous ethnic conflicts are the long-time religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims as well as Hindu-Sikh conflicts. There are lots of reports about the Indian religious conflicts every day in the newspapers. Conflicts may lead to political demonstrations, riots, killings as well as deaths. As the largest religion in India, usually, the ruling class are from Hindus, who always represent the interest of their religion. In this way, other parties may ask for their demands, which may arouse conflicts. For example, the minor ethnic group Sikh asks for lots of economic demands including a greater share of river waters for irrigation and larger central investment in the industrial sector of Punjab (Weiner 1). In addition, as the largest minority ethnic group in India, Muslims also ask for lots of political demands such as asking for sharing the same political and religious position as that of Hindus. Besides, Muslims also strongly require equal political election rights as that of Hindus. When the requirements are not met, it may spark a series of violence.

However, until now, the Indian government could not figure out any efficient solution to deal with religious conflicts. For example, every time before Indian elections, there must be lots of bleeding violence which lead to many death in India. Instead of stopping the conflicts, the Indian government could do nothing but dispatch more soldiers to guard the government offices and give some money to families of the dead. Besides, since different parties in Indian stand for the interest of different religious groups, dealing with religious conflicts remains a long way.

On the other hand, the poor management also indicates the comparably poor strength of the state and intense state-society relations. The strength of the state is related to the intensity of conflicts. The more conflicts there are, the weaker the strength of the state a country is. From this perspective, it can be seen that poor management leads to the appearance of more conflicts, which decrease the strength of the state. In addition, state- society relations refers to interactions between state institutions and societal groups to negotiate how public authority is exercised and how it can be influenced by people (Haider). Since there are so many religious conflicts which the government could not handle in India, the state-society relationship has attracted increasing public attention.

In conclusion, religious identity group is the most important identity group in India. For a long time, the conflicts between different religious groups are going on. It is quite a tricky business for the Indian government to handle. The poor management of the conflicts indicates the comparably weak strength of the state in India.