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Civil society is increasingly being viewed as the domain of communicative rationality; a sphere where the collective ‘we’ emerges and acts to affirm the Kantian ideals of human dignity and equal re...

First published online: 16 June 2020

In April 2016, Air France sent an email to the women crewmembers instructing them to ‘wear trousers during flights to Iran and to don a “loose-fitting jacket and headscarf” before leaving the plane in Tehran’ (Willsher 2016). Many people were outraged by this announcement. While some people saw this as a sign of France yielding, if not being subservient, to the demands of the Muslim culture, others complained that women were being compelled to wear ‘ostentatious religious signs’ – something that France prohibits explicitly in its own territory. Eventually the matter was settled as the airline gave the staff a choice: they could opt out of flying to Tehran. Air France notified that ‘If, for personal reasons, they [crewmembers] don’t want to wear the headscarf when they leave the plane they would be reassigned to another destination’ (Hickford 2016). This decision took care of the immediate concerns of the women employees but the question that remains is: why did the national carrier issue such instructions? When France prohibits the donning of a full burqa or a veil that completely covers the face in the public domain, can it justifiably ask crewmembers flying into Tehran to wear a headscarf?

Although most political theorists accept that the meaning of concepts is in part context specific, this dimension tends to be neglected when they deal with concepts that have been part of the collective political imagination for a long period of time. This has been the case with the concepts of public and private. Since the time of Aristotle, public and private have often been represented as two separate and discreet zones of activity, with the private viewed as the domain of the family, home, the indoor, and the public as the domain of the outdoor, the state and the collective body of citizens. Against the backdrop of such an analysis, the paper draws attention to the ways in which the concepts of the private and public get nuanced, modified and even redefined as we move from the ancient to the modern world, and then to contemporary liberal democratic societies. It argues that in liberal democratic societies the private and the public cannot be understood in opposition to one another. Instead of associat...

Multiculturalism appears to be under siege in Western liberal democracies. The encounter with organised terrorism has placed a question mark against the multicultural wisdom of recognising and accommodating cultural differences in the public arena. As concerns of national security dominate the post-9/11 world, distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are surfacing in a way that has prompted some to say that the present war on terror is actually a war on Islam. Will the multicultural ethic survive in this environment? Will states be willing to accommodate cultural diversity and live with the presence of visible differences? The article explores these questions through the lens of India. India has been battling with terrorism for more than a decade now. While this has severely strained the capacity of the political community to nurture multiculturalism, it has successfully resisted the challenges posed by an assertive cultural/religious majoritarianism that surfaced in the shadow of terrorism. India has dealt with the schisms produced by terrorism by drawing upon the collective imaginary and past cultural legacies that ensued from its understanding of a ‘situated self’. This was supplemented by a functioning democracy in which significant minorities were able to shape the electoral fate of political parties and reduce the political clout of those who were insensitive to their concerns. The multicultural ethic is far from secure in India, yet it does not, and has not, faced the problems that confront multiculturalism in Western Europe today. The issues before European democracies may have been accentuated by terrorism but they are linked closely to the liberal notion of tolerance. Does a notion of the ‘situated self’ that informs tolerance in India offer a viable alternative? We cannot expect any political community to erase its historically defined identity, yet a reflection on other ways of thinking and living may assuage some of our anxieties and open us to the possibility of redefining our understanding of differences.

(2002). Secularism as religious non‐discrimination: The universal and the particular in the Indian context. India Review: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 33-51.

Today, the women's movement has an uneasy relationship with liberal democracy. While most women activists continue to acknowledge the importance of democracy, they remain sceptical of the possibility of empowering women through the liberal individualist ethic. Intervening in this debate about the relevance of liberalism for women's struggles, this paper argues that in countries like India, it is the procedural aspect of liberal democracy that is a bigger stumbling block. Analysing the Indian experience, it maintains that the twin concerns of autonomy and equality are nether central to the functioning of a democracy nor realised in every democracy. Democratic practices, particularly those associated with limited representative government, are not sufficient guarantee of women's interests. In fact, the logic of representative government often goes against the interests of women. This is particularly true of democracies where equality between groups rather than individual autonomy is the operating p...

List of Abbreviations Preface and Acknowledgements 1. Religion, Community and Development Gurpreet Mahajan 2. Religion and Indian Politics: Changing Perspectives D.L.Sheth 3. Group Equality and the Public Sphere: The Sachar Committee Report and Multiculturalism in India Amir Ali 4. Hindutva's Discourse on Development Pralay Kanungo 5. Seva, sangathanas and gurus: Service and the Making of the Hindu nation Sujata Patel 6. Development as Liberation: An Indian Christian Perspective Rudolf C. Heredia 7. Indian Christians: Trajectories of Development Rowena Robinson 8. Religious Identities and Discourses of Development: The Sikhs in Contemporary Times Surinder S. Jodhka 9. A Long-Term View of Contemporary Muslim Situation in India Javeed Alam 10. Between Identity and Equity: An Agenda for Affirmative Action Tanweer Fazal 11. Struggle for the Margin or from the Margin Gopal Guru 12. Literacy, Education and Gender Gap among Socio-religious Groups Ravinder Kaur 13. Cultural Rights of Minorities during Constitution-making: A Re-reading Rochana Bajpai 14. The Goan Muslim: Presence through Invisibility V Sri Ranjani Glossary Index

Preface - Helmut Reifeld Introduction: The Public and the Private: Two Modes of Enhancing Democratization - Gurpreet Mahajan PART ONE: CONCEPTUALIZING THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE The Public as a Social Category - Andr[ac]e B[ac]eteille The Domesticated Public - Dipankar Gupta Tradition, Modernity and the Public/Private Divide The Middle Classes as Public and Private - Ute Frevert Culture, Gender and Modernization in 19th Century Europe Of the Social Categories 'Private' and 'Public' - T N Madan Considerations of Cultural Context From a 'Private' Public to a 'Public' Private Sphere - Margrit Pernau Old Delhi and the North Indian Muslims in Comparative Perspective The Struggle for Social Justice and the Expansion of the Public Sphere - Gail Omvedt PART TWO: RETRIEVING THE PRIVATE Law's Magic and Empire Revisited - Rajeev Dhavan Public Spaces and Private Lives - The Domain of the Law Transcending Categories - Neera Chandhoke The Private, the Public and the Search for Home Feminism and the Public-Private Distinction - Patricia Uberoi Protecting Individual Rights as Safeguards of the Private Sphere - Clauspeter Hill The German Setting from the Legal Point of View Voluntary Action and Citizenship - Aswini K Ray Issues of Civil Rights Public Ethics and Accountability - L C Jain PART THREE: THE PUBLIC IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION Public Sector in a Market Economy - Arjun Sengupta Privatization as Reform - Kuldeep Mathur Liberalization and Public Sector Enterprises in India NGOs in the Era of Globalization - Harsh Sethi Reworking the State-Citizen Dialectic Creating a Public: Reinventing Democratic Citizenship - Sarah Joseph Index

This edited volume reflects upon the known and received ways by which differences have been understood and accommodated within democratic theory. In addition, it presents strategies of social justice that have evolved over time to take care of the various types of discrimination that result from social and cultural differences. The concluding section contextualizes these concerns in relation to India.