India's Minorities. Their Rights Protection

Like China, India is a unified multiethnic country. The word "Nation" has a variety of explanations. It covers language, religion, nationality, race, group, tribe and other meanings in India.Since the independence in 1947, India's nationality, caste and religion issues have become a concern. However, the issue of Indian nationality does not get consensus because of its complex. Academics believe that India is a multi-national country. There are more than 10 main nationalities such as Hindustanis, Telugus etc. and also over 10 minorities such as Santals, Andamanese, Khasis. But the Indian government does not admit the fact that India is a multiethnic country, just thinks that India has culture differences, religion difference, language difference, caste difference and class difference. The Indian government only classifies its people into the majority and the minority. Minority in this paper refers to backward classes, which includes scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward classes (OBCs). The scheduled tribes are equivalent to Chinese ethnic minorities.Due to the protection of minority rights has become one of the most important issues in contemporary social development, therefore, this paper will focus on India's experience in the protection of minority rights.Part I introduces the aims and research methods of the paper, and also the academic research fruit about Indian nationality.Part II refers to India's geography, regionalism and race, nationality, language and brief history etc.Part III discusses academic circle's viewpoint for classification of India people, according to which, I also discuss the majority nationalities and minority nationalities composition and distribution of India people.Part IV relates to the Indian government how to classify India people, and discusses the background, classification of Indian minorities.Part V analyses the Indian government's policies to protect minority rights, and the effectiveness of these policies.Part VI commends the fruits of Indian multi-cultural harmonious development.This article is based on historical materialism and cultural materialism, uses the ethnic theories and historical materials, the paper focus on applied research and cross-cultural comparison. We hope it can give some contribution to in-depth understanding of India. Since I myself did not have chance to do fieldwork in India, so I will very appreciate any advice about my paper.