Over the last couple of decades, the idea of universalist citizenship increasingly became the subject of criticism owing to its inadequacies in dealing effectively with the complexities of a plural society. Scholars like Iris Marion Young, while acknowledging its emancipatory potential, argued that the strict equality envisioned in universalist citizenship often leads to perpetuation of oppression. Differentiated citizenship, in contrast, acknowledges the importance of diversity and allows for differential treatment and special rights for groups as a way of realizing equality. In this article, I provide a brief overview of the debate between differentiated citizenship and universalist citizenship while arguing that differentiated citizenship helps in enhancing the prospects of a civic community of equals.

According to T.H. Marshall, citizenship “is a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community”. Citizenship, in the Marshallian model, has three elements: — civil, political and social. These elements directly correspond to the institutional structure of society. Civil rights i.e. the right to own property, freedom of speech and right to justice are provided by the judiciary. The right to participate politically as a representative or as a voter corresponds to the institution of parliament while economic and social welfare are provided by education system and the welfare state. Tracing the trajectory of these elements historically, Marshall argues that they are often interdependent. Civil rights, for instance, initially did not include the creation of new rights as much as it included the expansion of old rights to new groups. This is evident through the expansion of the franchise which is reflective of the overlap between the different elements. Marshall moved beyond the merely legal aspect of citizenship by emphasizing on these rights. This made him one of the earliest to implicitly distinguish between formal and substantive citizenship.

Marshall’s focus was specifically on Britain and his essay was written in the aftermath of World War II. The conflicts of citizenship that concern us now are thus not addressed by Marshall: — particularly concerning multi-ethnic societies and accommodation of difference on account of racial and gender inequality. Marshall’s conceptualization of three distinct elements does help in providing an undifferentiated framework under which women can be charted. An attempt can be made to move away from elaborating only on the political extension of rights to the related question of the right to own property, justice etc. However, as Ursula Vogel points out, these rights are premised upon the assumption that all individuals are placed at an equal distance to law. Marshall’s evolutionary model only functions when it excludes women from the realization of the universal. In his discussion of civil rights, Marshall notes the gradual expansion of rights to all adult members of the community while adding a caveat concerning the “peculiar” status of women in the same period. It was only in 1988 that the British government sought to abolish the taxation system that treated married women as chattel of their husbands. Marshall’s conceptualization of the past in terms of a gradual, evolutionist model towards the realization of the rights from the elites to the masses as a whole provides the framework for further expansion of rights in relation to different classes. The recognition of gender as a crucial element serves as an obstacle to this narrative.

Universalist citizenship demands that citizens, at least in the public realm, give up their claims to particular group identities and interests in order to foster a general will. The political theorist Benjamin Barber is representative of this view. Barber, while making a case for participatory democracy, draws a clear distinction between the public aspect of citizenship and the private affiliation to other forms of identity. The existence of one’s membership to the community of citizenship depends on their ability to form a single vision for future. It becomes necessary for individuals to give up their needs and desires to realize the universal. Such commonness is only possible when citizens are assumed to be homogenous and willing to collectively rise beyond their particularities. This assumption can also be found in Rawls’ “ideal theory”. An attempt to reconstruct a perfectly just society appears reasonable at the first glance. Nevertheless, critical race theorists like Charles Mills have pointed out that such a society can only exist without prior experience of injustice[1].

Given the limitations of the universalist conception of citizenship, how should one accommodate pluralities of identities and interests? Amy Guttman has shown how participatory democracy in community control of schools had often led to increased segregation as the privileged whites were able to present their case better[2]. An explicit recognition of oppression via group differentiated citizenship can help us navigate such complexities better.

A common objection to differentiated citizenship is the presumption that it will lead to essentializing and concretizing difference instead of alleviating existing oppression. It has been argued, for instance, that the British empire in India helped in concretizing caste by socially classifying groups for administrative purposes like the census[3]. This does not mean that caste did not exist or that it was any less oppressive and hierarchical before the arrival of British. A census would be unnecessary and meaningless without prior social and historical identification of a group. A social group exists not because of essential characteristics but because of social status ascribed to members of the group, self-identification and common historical experience[4]. Young (1989) posits that we occupy a group-differentiated society wherein some groups are privileged while others are oppressed through exploitation, marginalization, prejudice and violence[5]. Differentiated citizenship is justified on the basis of a group’s oppression, not it’s essential characteristics. In Young’s conception of group-differentiated citizenship, institutional mechanisms ought to be set up to encourage self-organization of the oppressed group members, helping generate and voice concerns regarding policy proposals where decision makers would be obliged to take their considerations into account and the availability of veto power in policies specifically affecting the group such as reproductive rights and autonomy for indigenous peoples[6]. Enhancing the voices of the oppressed group will also help in ensuring the privileged group understand experiences and perspectives different from their own.

There are gaps in Young’s analysis that need to be probed. It is not self-evident that veto power would necessarily lead to the realization of equal respect. This can be illustrated through the instance of the Shah Bano case in case. In 1985, the Indian Supreme Court granted the divorcee Shah Bano the right to maintenance from her husband through the criminal law[7]. This led to strong reactions within sections of the Muslim community and eventually culminated in the government enacting a law that shifted the onus of maintenance to relatives. This case is reflective of the conflict between gender rights and community rights. It is a difficult question to navigate through precisely because a cultural community’s rights to practise its own traditions must not be impeded upon, except under extraordinary circumstances where the rights of others are affected. Jayal (1997)[8] proposes that while community rights must be protected and encouraged in a plural society, it must not be allowed to impede the non-negotiable democratic core.

A related problem for Young’s conception is the precise basis on which groups ought to be represented. Young specifically lists women, Puerto Ricans, LGBT members, working class, the poor, the old, disabled people, Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans etc. as being part of oppressed groups. Critiquing this potential of endless fragmentation, Kymlicka poses a question about the exact manner in which such groups ought to be represented adequately[9]. Kymlicka does not see universalist citizenship to be contradictory with differentiated citizenship. Differentiated rights can be pursued through special representation rights i.e. self-government or reservation/affirmative action for certain minorities and polyethnic rights i.e. the right of religious or ethnic minorities to follow certain practices like wearing the turbans for Sikhs or the yarmulka for Jews. Kymlicka, however, restricts such representation to only national and ethnic minorities. Thus, while this framework is specific, it fails to acknowledge or redress adequately the way in which institutional and societal oppression is experienced by sexual and gender minorities. A more inclusive approach would be to set up an institutional mechanism which facilitates conversation with decision makers and permits the granting of special rights to oppressed communities while ensuring the democratic core is not impeded upon.

A major objection to group-differentiated rights is its potential to threaten the civic community of equals. This is essential to address as citizenship and the rights associated with it are accompanied in contemporary society almost exclusively in relation to the nation-state. The breakdown of a national community is accompanied inevitably in the loss of substantial rights. This can be analysed with reference to India.

In the aftermath of partition on the basis of religion, calls for the reorganization of states on the basis of language grew. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had previously supported the linguistic basis of states in principle, considered it disruptive post-independence[10]. Deputy Prime Minister Patel too voiced concerns over the movements for linguistic states and considered it to be an obstacle in the growth of nationalism[11]. Yet, the government was unable to resist the demands and eventually caved in. Contrary to suspicions that recognition of states on linguistic basis would harm social cohesion, it helped in fostering stability. India’s constitution granted special rights/reservations to it’s historically discriminated and socially ostracized lower caste groups. The discomfort to accommodate special rights can be seen again through the category of “backward classes”. Prominent sociologists like G.S. Ghurye denied the existence of this category and saw it as a detriment to building a casteless society[12]. The fears expressed by the government concerned the question of social cohesion again. The eventual extension of reservations to “Other Backward Classes” was followed by massive political mobilization. This has been referred to as the “silent revolution”[13]. The accommodation of these differences did not lead to any call for secession. In fact, it led to greater representation of these classes in the political and social space.

The dichotomy between universalist and differentiated citizenship falls down when one notices the case of Hindu nationalism. Jayal (2013)[14] argues that Hindu nationalism is a form of exclusionary universalism. V.D. Savarkar, one of the originators of Hindu nationalism, argued for the Indian state to treat its citizens equally. This existed comfortably with his majoritarianism wherein all the decisions were to be made by the Hindu community. For the Hindu nationalists, majoritarianism can be achieved by utilizing the democratic framework as long as the seeds of their ideology are properly dispersed in society. In Savarkar’s conceptualization, the Indian nation was formed after Prince Ramachandra violently invaded Ceylon and bought the Hindus under one imperial reign[15]. Savarkar celebrates Hindu colonization outside the geographical boundaries of India. It is in this vein that he praises Vikramaditya for recolonizing the Indus[16]. The exclusionary-universalism of Hindu nationalism, which at first glance appears to be merely majoritarian, provides ideological justification of imperialism. M.S. Golwalkar, the second chief of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), dispensed with Savarkar’s nominal support of equal rights and argued that minorities do not even deserve citizens’ rights[17]. The tendency to portray Hindus as the universal does not merely manifest in relation to religious minorities. It is also reflected in the Hindu nationalist’s refusal to support special rights for lower castes. In recent times, this can be seen through dilution of special rights rather than an explicit disavowal. Jaffrelot (2019) has argued that the rise of Hindu nationalism can be partly explained as a counter revolution of the social elites against the silent revolution of the lower castes[18].

The distinction between group-differentiated citizenship and universal citizenship manifests primarily through their approach to dealing with plurality. Contrary to the claims of its proponents, universal citizenship can often be exclusionary and lead to the endangering of the sentiment of belonging for minorities. Group-differentiated citizenship, on the other hand, has helped in enhancing the feeling of belonging and strengthening civic community through the granting of special and celebration of plurality. While there are practical unresolved issues concerning the particular groups to be granted special rights and recognition, this approach as a whole has been much more successful in accommodating difference than universalist citizenship.

Notes

[1] Mills, C. W. (2017). Black Rights/white Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

[2] Gutmann, A. (1980). Liberal equality. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Dirks, N. B. (2001). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.

[4] Young (1989), p. 260

[5] Ibid, p. 261

[6] Ibid, p. 261–262

[7] https://main.sci.gov.in/jonew/judis/9303.pdf

[8] Jayal, N. G. (1997). Secularism, identities and representative democracy. Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East, 17(2), 11–20. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-17-2-11

[9] Kymlicka, W. (1996). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. United Kingdom: Clarendon Press.

[10] Guha, R. (2008). India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. India: Macmillan.

[11] Guha (2008), p. 183

[12] Jayal, N. G. (2013). Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History. Germany: Harvard University Press.

[13] Jaffrelot, C. (2003). India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. India: Permanent Black.

[14] Jayal (2013), p. 217

[15] Chaturvedi, V. (2022). Hindutva and Violence: V. D. Savarkar and the Politics of History. United States: State University of New York Press.

[16] Chaturvedi (2022), p. 172

[17] Jayal (2013), p. 217

[18] Jaffrelot, C. (2019). Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.