Critically examine the concept of communalism and its relevance for

Model answer

Introduction

Communalism is the political use of religious identity as a bloc that claims the state. In a multi-religious and multiethnic India it is both a colonial inheritance and a living electoral language.

Body

The concept

Colonial census and separate electorates taught Indians to count as Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian publics.
Bipan Chandra and many historians treated communalism as modern politics, not ancient faith war.
Anthropology adds M. N. Srinivas’s jati and Louis Dumont’s hierarchy: everyday life is ranked and mixed; communalism flattens it into two or three armies.

Relevance for the polity

A multi-religious republic needs Articles 25–30 and a common roll. Communalism tries to make the roll a religious census.
Multiethnic reality includes language, tribe, and region. Communal frames hide Fifth and Sixth Schedule questions and linguistic minorities inside a Hindu–Muslim plot.
Riots, personal-law fights, and conversion panics are the operational face. They punish mixed towns and mixed marriages.

Critique

The concept can itself become too Hindu–Muslim, ignoring caste blocs and tribal faiths.
Not every festival or shrine dispute is communalism. The test is whether religion is organised to capture the state against others.
N. K. Bose’s civilisational unity and Nehru’s civic nation are the counter-concepts: diversity housed by law, not by a single sacred majority.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  C[Communalism] --> B[Religious blocs]
  J[Jati tribe language] --> P[Plural polity]
  C --> R[Riot electoral veto]

Conclusion

Communalism remains relevant because it still converts faith into a vote and a veto. A multiethnic polity survives by keeping jati, language, and tribe visible, and by refusing a two-community state.

Students also ask

Is communalism the same as religiosity?

No. Faith can be local and mixed. Communalism organises faith as a political army.

Does ethnicity replace communalism?

Language and tribe are other politicised identities. Communalism is the religious form.

When UPSC asked this

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Critically examine the concept of communalism and its relevance for multi-religious and multiethnic polity of India

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