Abstract
How do we understand the 15th amendment of the Bangladeshi Constitution that restored the principle of secularism and simultaneously (re)inscribed certain populations as outside the cultural nation? I approach this question through a close reading of the Constituent Assembly debates of 1972. The precarious state of minorities, I contend, is not a symptom of an incomplete or failed secularism but a feature of the violence inherent to the nation-state form. The Bangladeshi example suggests not only that minority is a profoundly unstable category but that some minorities are visibly critical to national self-fashioning while others must be invisibilized as national others.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 238-258 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Asian Affairs |
Volume | 49 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 3 2018 |
Keywords
- 15 amendment
- Bangladesh
- Constituent assembly
- Constitution
- Minorities
- Secularism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Economics and Econometrics
- Political Science and International Relations
- Law