Today, 18 Dec, is Minority Rights Day. India should celebrate this day heart and soul for various reasons. First of all, as Shashi Tharoor claims in his new book The Battle for Belonging , everyone in India is in the minority one way or another. Take this example from Tharoor himself: A typical Indian stepping off a train, say, a Hindi-speaking Hindu male from Uttar Pradesh might cherish the illusion that he represents the ‘majority community’. He’s wrong, of course. As a Hindu he belongs to the faith adhered to by some 80% of the population, but his language, his caste, his state and its culture – none of these belongs to the majority. If he is visiting a state in the Northeast, he will be astounded by the realization of how much of a minority he really is. He will be quite an alien among the Garos of Meghalaya and the Kukis of Nagaland. The diversity of tiny Arunachal Pradesh alone will be enough to strip him of any hubris about a singular national culture. Why, in his own reli
Cerebrate and Celebrate