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Chap

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Gender,Religion andCaste

Overview

In the previous chapter we noted that the existence of social diversitydoes not threaten democracy. Political expression of social differencesis possible and sometimes quite desirable in a democratic system. Inthis chapter we apply these ideas to the practice of democracy inIndia. We look at three kinds of social differences that can take theform of social divisions and inequalities. These are social differencesbased on gender, religion and caste. In each case we look at thenature of this division in India and how it gets expressed in politics.We also ask whether different expressions based on these differencesare healthy or otherwise in a democracy.

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Gender and politics

Let us begin with gender division. Thisis a form of hierarchical social divisionseen everywhere, but is rarely recognisedin the study of politics. The genderdivision tends to be understood as naturaland unchangeable. However, it is notbased on biology but on socialexpectations and stereotypes.

Public/private divisionBoys and girls are brought up to believethat the main responsibility of women ishousework and bringing up children.This is reflected in a SEXUAL DIVISION OF

LABOUR in most families: women do allwork inside the home such as cooking,cleaning, washing clothes, tailoring,looking after children, etc., and men doall the work outside the home. It is notthat men cannot do housework; theysimply think that it is for women toattend to these things. When these jobsare paid for, men are ready to take upthese works. Most tailors or cooks inhotels are men. Similarly, it is not thatwomen do not work outside their home.In villages, women fetch water, collectfuel and work in the fields. In urbanareas, poor women work as domestichelper in middle class homes, whilemiddle class women work in offices. Infact the majority of women do somesort of paid work in addition todomestic labour. But their work is notvalued and does not get recognition.

The result of this division of labouris that although women constitute halfof the humanity, their role in public life,especially politics, is minimal in mostsocieties. Earlier, only men were allowedto participate in public affairs, vote andcontest for public offices. Gradually thegender issue was raised in politics.Women in different parts of the worldorganised and agitated for equal rights.There were agitations in differentcountries for the extension of votingrights to women. These agitationsdemanded enhancing the political andlegal status of women and improving

A poster from Bengal affirming women’sstrength.

Sexual division of labour:A system in which all workinside the home is eitherdone by the women of thefamily, or organised bythem through thedomestic helpers.

Why not? Ifpolitics is aboutpower, thensurely maledominance in thehousehold shouldbe consideredpolitical.

Why are wediscussing thingslike householdwork in thistextbook onPolitical Science?Is this politics?

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their educational and careeropportunities. More radical women’smovements aimed at equality in personaland family life as well. These movementsare called FEMINIST movements.

Political expression of genderdivision and political mobilisation on this

Discuss all these perceptions of an ideal woman that prevail in our society. Do youagree with any of these? If not, what is your image of an ideal woman?

Feminist: A womanor a man whobelieves in equal rightsand opportunities forwomen and men.

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question helped to improve women’srole in public life. We now find womenworking as scientists, doctors, engineers,lawyers, managers and college anduniversity teachers which were earlier notconsidered suitable for women. In someparts of the world, for example in

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Patriarchy: Literally,rule by father, thisconcept is used to referto a system that valuesmen more and givesthem power overwomen.

Activities Men Women

Income generating work 6:00 2:40

Household and related work 0:30 5:00

Talking, Gossip 1:25 1:20

No work/ Leisure 3:40 3:50

Sleep, self-care, reading etc. 12:25 11:10

Daily time use (hours: minutes)

Source: Government of India, Time Use Survey, 1998-99.

+A ‘time use survey’ was conducted in six states of our country. Itshows that an average woman works every day for a little overseven and half hours while an average man works for six and ahalf hours. Yet the work done by men is more visible becausemost of their work leads to generation of income. Women also doa lot of direct income generating work, but the bulk of their workis household related. This work remains unpaid and invisible.

Scandinavian countries such as Sweden,Norway and Finland, the participationof women in public life is very high.

In our country, women still lag muchbehind men despite some improvementsince Independence. Ours is still a male-

dominated, PATRIARCHAL society. Womenface disadvantage, discrimination andoppression in various ways:

The literacy rate among women isonly 54 per cent compared with 76 percent among men. Similarly, a smaller

You can conduct a similar time use survey in your own household.Observe all the adult male and female members of your family forone week. Every day note down the number of hours each ofthem spends on the following activities: income generatingactivity (working at the office or shop or factory or field, etc.),household related activity (cooking, cleaning, washing, fetchingwater, looking after children or elders, etc.), reading andrecreation, talking/gossiping, self-care, taking rest or sleeping. Ifnecessary make new categories. Add up the time taken on eachactivity for a week and calculate the daily average for each activityfor each member. Do women work more in your family as well?

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Mummy alwayssays to outsiders:“I don’t work. Iam a housewife.”But I see herworking non-stopall the time. Ifwhat she does isnot work, whatelse is work?

Map not to scale

proportion of girl students go for higherstudies. When we look at school results,girls perform as well as boys, if notbetter in some places. But they drop outbecause parents prefer to spend theirresources for their boys’ education ratherthan spending equally on their sons anddaughters.

No wonder the proportion ofwomen among the highly paid andvalued jobs is still very small. On anaverage an Indian woman works onehour more than an average man everyday. Yet much of her work is not paidand therefore often not valued.

The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976provides that equal wages should be paidto equal work. However in almost allareas of work, from sports and cinema,to factories and fields, women are paidless than men, even when both do exactlythe same work. In many parts of India parentsprefer to have sons and find ways tohave the girl child aborted before she isborn. Such sex-selective abortion led toa decline in child sex ratio (number ofgirl children per thousand boys) in thecountry to merely 914. As the map

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Can you identify your district on this map?What is the child sex ratio in it? How is itdifferent from others with a different colour?

Identify the States where most districts havechild sex ratio below 850.

Compare this map with the poster on the nextpage. How do the two of them tell us about thesame issue?

CHILD SEX RATIOBELOW 800800-849850-899900-949950 AND ABOVEDATA NOT AVAILABLE

DELHI

NATIONAL AVERAGE 914(2011 Census)

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shows, this ratio has fallen below 850 oreven 800 in some places.

There are reports of various kindsof harassment, exploitation and violenceagainst women. Urban areas havebecome particularly unsafe for women.

They are not safe even within their ownhome from beating, harassment andother forms of domestic violence.

Women’s politicalrepresentationAll this is well known. Yet issues relatedto women’s well being or otherwise arenot given adequate attention. This has ledmany feminists and women’s movementsto the conclusion that unless womencontrol power, their problems will notget adequate attention. One way toensure this is to have more women aselected representatives.

In India, the proportion of womenin legislature has been very low. Forexample, the percentage of electedwomen members in Lok Sabha hascrossed 10 per cent of its total strengthfor the first time in 2009. Their share inthe state assemblies is less than 5 per cent.In this respect, India is among the bottomgroup of nations in the world (see thegraph below). India is behind the

Could you think of somereasons why women’srepresentation is so lowin India? Do you thinkAmerica’s and Europehave achieved asatisfactory level ofwomen’s representation?

WorldAverage

Women in national parliaments in differentregions of the world (in%)

19.7

Nordiccountries

Americas *Europe Sub-Saharan Africa

Pacific ArabStates

India

Region

*Europe – OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) member countries excluding Nordiccountries.

Note: Figures are for the per cent of women in the directly elected chambers of parliament as on 31 December 2011.Source: http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm

Asia0

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12.4 11.3 10.8

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This cartoon offers an understanding of why the Women’s Reservation Bill has not been passed in theParliament. Do you agree with this reading?

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If casteism andcommunalism arebad, what makesfeminism a goodthing? Why don’twe oppose allthose who dividethe society onany lines – caste,religion orgender?

averages for several developing countriesof Africa and Latin America. In thegovernment, cabinets are largely all-maleeven when a woman becomes the ChiefMinister or the Prime Minister.

One way to solve this problem is tomake it legally binding to have a fairproportion of women in the electedbodies. This is what the Panchayati Rajhas done in India. One-third of seats inlocal government bodies – in panchayatsand municipalities – are now reservedfor women. Now there are more than10 lakh elected women representativesin rural and urban local bodies.

Women’s organisations andactivists have been demanding a similar

reservation of at least one-third ofseats in the Lok Sabha and StateAssemblies for women. A bill with thisproposal has been pending before theParliament for more than a decade. Butthere is no consensus over this amongall the political parties. The bill has notbeen passed.

Gender division is an example thatsome form of social division needs tobe expressed in politics. This also showsthat disadvantaged groups do benefitwhen social divisions become a politicalissue. Do you think that women couldhave made the gains we noted above iftheir unequal treatment was not raisedin the political domain?

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Religion, communalism and politics

Let us now turn to a very different kindof social division, the division based onreligious differences. This division is notas universal as gender, but religiousdiversity is fairly widespread in the worldtoday. Many countries including Indiahave in their population, followers ofdifferent religions. As we noticed in thecase of Northern Ireland, even whenmost of the people belong to the samereligion, there can be serious differencesabout the way people practice thatreligion. Unlike gender differences, thereligious differences are often expressedin the field of politics.

Consider the following: Gandhiji used to say that religion cannever be separated from politics. Whathe meant by religion was not any

I am not religious.Why should Ibother aboutcommunalism andsecularism?

particular religion like Hinduism or Islambut moral values that inform all religions.He believed that politics must be guidedby ethics drawn from religion. Human rights groups in our countryhave argued that most of the victims ofcommunal riots in our country arepeople from religious minorities. Theyhave demanded that the governmenttake special steps to protect religiousminorities. Women’s movement has arguedthat FAMILY LAWS of all religionsdiscriminate against women. So theyhave demanded that government shouldchange these laws to make them moreequitable.

All these instances involve arelationship between religion and politics.

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But they do not seem very wrong ordangerous. Ideas, ideals and valuesdrawn from different religions can andperhaps should play a role in politics.People should be able to express inpolitics their needs, interests and demandsas a member of a religious community.Those who hold political power shouldsometimes be able to regulate thepractice of religion so as to preventdiscrimination and oppression. Thesepolitical acts are not wrong as long asthey treat every religion equally.

CommunalismThe problem begins when religion is seenas the basis of the nation. The exampleof Northern Ireland in Chapter 3 showsthe dangers of such an approach tonationalism. The problem becomesmore acute when religion is expressedin politics in exclusive and partisan terms,when one religion and its followers arepitted against another. This happens whenbeliefs of one religion are presented assuperior to those of other religions,when the demands of one religiousgroup are formed in opposition toanother and when state power is usedto establish domination of one religiousgroup over the rest. This manner ofusing religion in politics is communalpolitics.

Communal politics is based on theidea that religion is the principal basis ofsocial community. Communalisminvolves thinking along the followinglines. The followers of a particularreligion must belong to one community.Their fundamental interests are the same.Any difference that they may have isirrelevant or trivial for community life.It also follows that people who followdifferent religions cannot belong to the

Family laws: Thoselaws that deal withfamily related matterssuch as marriage,divorce, adoption,inheritance, etc. In ourcountry, different familylaws apply to followersof different religions.

same social community. If the followersof different religion have somecommonalities these are superficial andimmaterial. Their interests are bound tobe different and involve a conflict. In itsextreme form communalism leads to thebelief that people belonging to differentreligions cannot live as equal citizenswithin one nation. Either, one of themhas to dominate the rest or they have toform different nations.

This belief is fundamentally flawed.People of one religion do not have thesame interests and aspirations in everycontext. Everyone has several other roles,positions and identities. There are manyvoices inside every community. All thesevoices have a right to be heard. Thereforeany attempt to bring all followers of onereligion together in context other thanreligion is bound to suppress many voiceswithin that community.

Communalism can take variousforms in politics:

The most common expression ofcommunalism is in everyday beliefs.These routinely involve religiousprejudices, stereotypes of religiouscommunities and belief in the superiorityof one’s religion over other religions. Thisis so common that we often fail to noticeit, even when we believe in it.

A communal mind often leads to aquest for political dominance of one’sown religious community. For thosebelonging to majority community, thistakes the form of majoritariandominance. For those belonging to theminority community, it can take theform of a desire to form a separatepolitical unit.

Political mobilisation on religiouslines is another frequent form of

I often crackjokes aboutpeople from onereligion. Doesthat make mecommunal?

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communalism. This involves the use ofsacred symbols, religious leaders,emotional appeal and plain fear in orderto bring the followers of one religiontogether in the political arena. In electoralpolitics this often involves special appealto the interests or emotions of votersof one religion in preference to others.

Sometimes communalism takes itsmost ugly form of communal violence,riots and massacre. India and Pakistansuffered some of the worst communalriots at the time of the Partition. Thepost-Independence period has also seenlarge scale communal violence.

Secular stateCommunalism was and continues tobe one of the major challenges todemocracy in our country. The makersof our Constitution were aware of thischallenge. That is why they chose themodel of a secular state. This choice wasreflected in several constitutionalprovisions that we studied last year:

There is no official religion for theIndian state. Unlike the status ofBuddhism in Sri Lanka, that of Islam inPakistan and that of Christianity inEngland, our Constitution does not givea special status to any religion.

We remain strangersEven after so many meetingsBlood stains remainEven after so many rains

‘Faiz’

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The Constitution provides to allindividuals and communities freedom toprofess, practice and propagate anyreligion, or not to follow any.

The Constitution prohibitsdiscrimination on grounds of religion.

At the same time, the Constitutionallows the state to intervene in thematters of religion in order to ensureequality within religious communities.For example, it bans untouchability.

Understood in this sense, secularismis not just an ideology of some partiesor persons. This idea constitutes one ofthe foundations of our country.Communalism should not be seen as athreat to some people in India. Itthreatens the very idea of India. That iswhy communalism needs to becombated. A secular Constitution likeours is necessary but not sufficient tocombat communalism. Communalprejudices and propaganda need to be

countered in everyday life and religion-based mobilisation needs to becountered in the arena of politics.

Caste and politicsWe have seen two instances of theexpression of social divisions in the arenaof politics, one largely positive and theother largely negative. Let us turn to ourfinal case, that of caste and politics, thathas both positive and the negative aspects.

Caste inequalitiesUnlike gender and religion, caste divisionis special to India. All societies have somekind of social inequality and some formof division of labour. In most societies,occupations are passed on from onegeneration to another. Caste system is anextreme form of this. What makes itdifferent from other societies is that in

this system, hereditary occupationaldivision was sanctioned by rituals.Members of the same caste group weresupposed to form a social communitythat practiced the same or similaroccupation, married within the castegroup and did not eat with membersfrom other caste groups.

Caste system was based on exclusionof and discrimination against the‘outcaste’ groups. They were subjectedto the inhuman practice of untouchabilityabout which you have studied in ClassIX. That is why political leaders and socialreformers like Jotiba Phule, Gandhiji,B.R. Ambedkar and Periyar Ramaswami

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Social and Religious Diversity of IndiaThe Census of India records the religion of each and every Indian after every tenyears. The person who fills the Census form visits every household and records thereligion of each member of that household exactly the way each person describes it.If someone says she has ‘no religion’ or that he is an ‘atheist’, this is exactly how it isrecorded. Thus we have reliable information on the proportion of different religiouscommunities in the country and how it has changed over the years. The pie chartbelow presents the population proportion of six major religious groups in the country.Since Independence, the total population of each group has increased substantiallybut their proportion in the country’s population has not changed much. In percentageterms, the population of the Hindus, Jains and Christians has declined marginally since1961. The proportion of Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist population has increased slightly.There is a common but mistaken impression that the proportion of the Muslims in thecountry’s population is going to overtake other religious groups. Expert estimates donefor the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee (popularly known as Sachar Committee)show that the proportion of the Muslims is expected to go up a little, by about 3 to 4per cent, in the next 50 years. It proves that in overall terms, the population balanceof different religious groups is not likely to change in a big way.

The same is true of the major caste groups. The Census of India counts two socialgroups: the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Both these broad groupsinclude hundreds of castes or tribes whose names are listed in an official Schedule.Hence the prefix ‘Scheduled’ in their name. The Scheduled Castes, commonly knownas Dalits, include those that were previously regarded as ‘outcaste’ in the Hindu socialorder and were subjected to exclusion and untouchability. The Scheduled Tribes, oftenreferred to as Adivasis, include those communities that led a secluded life usually inhills and forests and did not interact much with the rest of society. In 2001, theScheduled Castes were 16.2 percent and the Scheduled Tribes were8.2 per cent of the country’spopulation.

The Census does not yet count theOther Backward Classes, the groupwe discussed in class IX. Hencethere are some differences abouttheir proportion in the country’spopulation. The National SampleSurvey of 2004-05 estimates theirpopulation to be around 41 percent. Thus the SC, ST and theOBC together account for abouttwo-thirds of the country’spopulation and about three-fourthsof the Hindu population.

Population of different religiousgroup in India, 2001

Hindu80.5%

Muslim13.4%

Others 1.9%Christian 2.3%

Sikh 1.9%Others include Buddhist 0.8% Jain 0.4%All other religions 0.6% No religion 0.1%Source: Census of India, 2001

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Naicker advocated and worked toestablish a society in which casteinequalities are absent.

Partly due to their efforts and partlydue to other socio-economic changes,castes and caste system in modern Indiahave undergone great changes. Witheconomic development, large scaleURBANISATION, growth of literacy andeducation, OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY andthe weakening of the position oflandlords in the villages, the old notionsof CASTE HIERARCHY are breaking down.Now, most of the times, in urban areasit does not matter much who is walkingalong next to us on a street or eating atthe next table in a restaurant. TheConstitution of India prohibited anycaste-based discrimination and laid thefoundations of policies to reverse theinjustices of the caste system. If a personwho lived a century ago were to returnto India, she would be greatly surprisedat the change that has come about inthe country.

Yet caste has not disappeared fromcontemporary India. Some of the olderaspects of caste have persisted. Evennow most people marry within theirown caste or tribe. Untouchability hasnot ended completely, despiteconstitutional prohibition. Effects ofcenturies of advantages anddisadvantages continue to be felt today.The caste groups that had access toeducation under the old system havedone very well in acquiring moderneducation as well. Those groups that didnot have access to education or wereprohibited from acquiring it have naturallylagged behind. That is why there is adisproportionately large presence of‘upper caste’ among the urban middleclasses in our country. Caste continues to

be closely linked to economic status.(See Plus Box on Page 52.)

Caste in politicsAs in the case of communalism, casteismis rooted in the belief that caste is thesole basis of social community.According to this way of thinking,people belonging to the same castebelong to a natural social community andhave the same interests which they donot share with anyone from another caste.As we saw in the case of communalism,such a belief is not borne out by ourexperience. Caste is one aspect of ourexperience but it is not the only relevantor the most important aspect.

Caste can take various forms in politics:

When parties choose candidates inelections, they keep in mind the castecomposition of the electorate andnominate candidates from differentcastes so as to muster necessary supportto win elections. When governments areformed, political parties usually take carethat representatives of different castes andtribes find a place in it.

Urbanisation: Shift ofpopulation from ruralareas to urban areasOccupationalmobility: Shift fromone occupation toanother, usually when anew generation takes upoccupations other thanthose practiced by theirancestors.Caste hierarchy: Aladder like formation inwhich all the castegroups are placed fromthe ‘highest’ to the‘lowest’ castes.

I don’t care whatmy caste is. Whyare we discussingall this in thetextbook? Are wenot promotingcasteism bytalking aboutcaste?

Now you don’t likeit! Didn’t you tellme that whereverthere is domination,we should discuss itin Political Science?Will caste disappearif we keep mumabout it?

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Caste inequality todayCaste is an important source of economic inequality because it regulates accessto resources of various kinds. For example, in the past, the so-called‘untouchable’ castes were denied the right to own land, while only the so-called‘twice born’ castes had the right to education. Although this kind of explicit andformalised inequality based on caste is now outlawed, the effects of centuries ofaccumulated advantages and disadvantages continue to be felt. Moreover, newkinds of inequalities have also developed.

The relationship between caste and economic status has certainly changed a lot.Today, it is possible to find very rich and very poor people in every caste,whether ‘low’ or ‘high’. This was not true even twenty or thirty years ago – itwas very rare indeed to find rich people among the ‘lowest’ castes. However, asthis evidence from the National Sample Survey shows, caste continues to be verystrongly linked to economic status in many important ways:

The average economic status (measured by criteria like monthly consumptionexpenditure) of caste groups still follows the old hierarchy – the ‘upper’ castesare best off, the Dalits and Adivasis are worst off, and the backward classes arein between.

Although every caste has some poor members, the proportion living inextreme poverty (below the official ‘poverty line’) is much higher for the lowestcastes and much lower for the upper castes, with the backward classes onceagain in between.

Although every caste has some members who are rich, the upper castes areheavily over-represented among the rich while the lower castes are severelyunder-represented.

Percentage of poulation living below the poverty line, 1999-2000Caste and Community groups Rural UrbanScheduled Tribes 45.8 35.6

Scheduled Castes 35.9 38.3

Other Backward Classes 27.0 29.5

Muslim Upper Castes 26.8 34.2

Hindu Upper Castes 11.7 9.9

Christian Upper Castes 9.6 5.4

Sikh Upper Castes 0.0 4.9

Other Upper Castes 16.0 2.7

All Groups 27.0 23.4Note: ‘Upper Caste’ here means those who are not from SC, ST, or OBC. Below the poverty linemeans those who spent Rs 327 or less per person per month in rural and Rs 454 or less perperson per month in urban areas.Source: National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), Government of India, 55th Round, 1999-2000

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Political parties and candidates inelections make appeals to caste sentimentto muster support. Some political partiesare known to favour some castes andare seen as their representatives.

Universal adult franchise and theprinciple of one-person-one-votecompelled political leaders to gear upto the task of mobilising and securingpolitical support. It also brought newconsciousness among the people ofcastes that were hitherto treated asinferior and low.

The focus on caste in politics cansometimes give an impression thatelections are all about caste and nothingelse. That is far from true. Just considerthese:

No parliamentary constituency inthe country has a clear majority of onesingle caste. So, every candidate and partyneeds to win the confidence of morethan one caste and community to winelections.

No party wins the votes of all thevoters of a caste or community. Whenpeople say that a caste is a ‘vote bank’of one party, it usually means that a largeproportion of the voters from that castevote for that party.

Many political parties may put upcandidates from the same caste (if thatcaste is believed to dominate theelectorate in a particular constituency).Some voters have more than onecandidate from their caste while manyvoters have no candidate from theircaste.

The ruling party and the sitting MPor MLA frequently lose elections in ourcountry. That could not have happenedif all castes and communities werefrozen in their political preferences.

Clearly, while caste matters inelectoral politics, so do many otherfactors. The voters have strongattachment to political parties which isoften stronger than their attachment totheir caste or community. People withinthe same caste or community havedifferent interests depending on theireconomic condition. Rich and poor ormen and women from the same casteoften vote very differently. People’sassessment of the performance of thegovernment and the popularity rating ofthe leaders matter and are often decisivein elections.

Politics in casteWe have so far looked at what caste doesto politics. But it does not mean that thereis only a one-way relation between casteand politics. Politics too influences thecaste system and caste identities bybringing them into the political arena.

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Thus, it is not politics that gets caste-ridden, it is the caste that gets politicised.This takes several forms:

Each caste group tries to becomebigger by incorporating within itneighbouring castes or sub-castes whichwere earlier excluded from it.

Various caste groups are required toenter into a coalition with other castes orcommunities and thus enter into adialogue and negotiation.

New kinds of caste groups havecome up in the political arena like‘backward’ and ‘forward’ caste groups.

Thus, caste plays different kinds ofroles in politics. In some situations,expression of caste differences in politicsgives many disadvantaged communitiesthe space to demand their share ofpower. In this sense-caste politics hashelped people from Dalits and OBCcastes to gain better access to decisionmaking. Several political and non-politicalorganisations have been demanding andagitating for an end to discriminationagainst particular castes, for more dignityand more access to land, resources andopportunities.

At the same time exclusive attentionto caste can produce negative results aswell. As in the case of religion, politicsbased on caste identity alone is not veryhealthy in a democracy. It can divertattention from other pressing issues likepoverty, development and corruption. Insome cases caste division leads totensions, conflict and even violence.

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1. Mention different aspects of life in which women are discriminatedor disadvantaged in India.

2. State different forms of communal politics with one example each.

3. State how caste inequalities are still continuing in India.

4. State two reasons to say that caste alone cannot determineelection results in India.

5. What is the status of women’s representation in India’s legislativebodies?

6. Mention any two constitutional provisions that make India asecular state.

7. When we speak of gender divisions, we usually refer to:(a) Biological difference between men and women(b) Unequal roles assigned by the society to men and women(c) Unequal child sex ratio(d) Absence of voting rights for women in democracies

8. In India seats are reserved for women in(a) Lok Sabha(b) State legislative assemblies(c) Cabinets(d) Panchayati Raj bodies

9. Consider the following statements on the meaning of communalpolitics. Communal politics is based on the belief that:A. One religion is superior to that of others.B. People belonging to different religions can live together happily

as equal citizens.C. Followers of a particular religion constitute one community.D. State power cannot be used to establish the domination of

one religious group over others.

Which of the statements is/are correct?(a) A, B, C, and D (b) A, B, and D (c) A and C (d) B and D

10. Which among the following statements about India’s Constitutionis wrong? It(a) prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.(b) gives official status to one religion.(c) provides to all individuals freedom to profess any religion.(d) ensures equality of citizens within religious communities.

11. Social divisions based on _________ are peculiar to India. Exer

cise

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List I List II

1. A person who believes in equal rightsand opportunities for women and men A. Communalist

2. A person who says that religion is theprincipal basis of community B. Feminist

3. A person who thinks that caste is theprincipal basis of community C. Secularist

4. A person who does not discriminateothers on the basis of religious beliefs D. Castiest

1 2 3 4(a) B C A D(b) B A D C(c) D C A B(d) C A B D

Exer

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s12. Match List I with List II and select the correct answer using the

codes given below the Lists:

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