Explain the issue relating to ethnicity and sub-ethnicity. (UPSC CSE Mains 2017 - Sociology, Paper 2)
Ethnicity
- The word Ethnicity comes from the root word- ethnic which loosely means race. It is based on shared culture. People belonging to the same ethnic group believe in their common descent because of similarities related to physiology or culture or both.
- They need not always have the same religion or nationality. Ethnicity signifies self-consciousness of a group of people united or closely related by shared experiences such as language, religious belief, common heritage, etc.
Some characteristics of ethnicity are
It relates to ascriptive identities like caste, language, religion, region etc.
- It is socially mobilised and territorially confined and has numerically sufficient population, and is a pool of symbols depicting distinctiveness.
- It has a reference group in relation to which/whom a sense of relative deprivation (real or imagined) is aggregated.
- Being left out of the developmental process or even being a victim of uneven development, ethnicity causes ethnic movements.
- It is manifested in Indian politics not merely due to grassroot discontent but it is also a creation of vested political interest.
Ethnic groups that use ethnicity to make demands in the political arena for alteration in their status, in their economic well-being, etc. are engaged very often in a form of interest group politics.
Sub - ethnicity
Closely related to the above feature is the fluidity of ethnic identity, i.e., the absence of a strong and permanent attachment to a single identity. Unlike people of most other societies, in India, people tend to shift their preoccupations, readily and often from one identity to another and then another in response to changing circumstances. James Manor, who has highlighted this character of ethnicity, illustrates this with an example from Andhra Pradesh. In the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, a strong sub-regional movement had taken shape against the alleged unjust treatment by the state government. It succeeded in securing ten parliamentary seats in the 1970 elections. But bargains were struck with the leaders of the movement, and the Congress party, a national party, won all the seats in Telangana region in the parliamentary elections of 1977. In 1983, the people of Telangana region shifted their preoccupations again and backed a regional (as opposed to a subregional) party, the Telugu Desam, protesting about affronts to the dignity of the Telugu speaking people of the state. In early years of the 21 century, sub-regional identities once again asserted. Though the fortunes of the Telangana movement for separation from Andhra Pradesh, waxed and waned, it was eventually granted statehood in 2014. Thus, in a span of three decades, people have passionately shifted their preoccupations from sub-regional, to national, and then to regional and again to sub-regional identities. There are a number of other examples of this kind of shifting of identities. People in Punjab, for instance, have shifted their preoccupation with linguistic identity (demand for autonomy based on language in 1960s) to regional (conflict with the Center in the 1970s), religious (demand for separate state of Khalistan in the 1980s) and national identities in a span of two or three decades. It is therefore important to note that social tensions in India do not result in prolonged and intractable conflicts that might tear democratic institutions apart.
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