Lately the news of Tabassum Sheikh, who participated in the Hijab controversy, and topped the Second PUC exam (Karnataka) exam went viral. The news drew attention to two popular narratives: 1. Minority community members, asserting their traditional identity, are backward (2) nation-building must be unilateral. Presently, nation-building feeds on the process of ‘othering’ for consolidating the image of ‘us’. These narratives impact policy-making and its execution in actual life situations. They legitimise microaggression, i.e., discrimination and violence in routine life against the ‘other’ – whether in terms of criticising hijab, changing names of the educational institutions, deleting history of minority communities from school curriculum, or treating students and teachers in stereotypical manner. Such microaggressions define and strengthen the image of ‘us’. These daily life practices reflect discriminatory macro structures of the State and society marginalising and excluding the minorities, keeping the narrative on citizenship alive. The minorities are made to remember their powerlessness and marginality. While the majority community gains legitimacy for practising discrimination and exclusion on the minority community in the name of strengthening their nation and citizenship.
The discourse surfaces important dynamics within the minority community. Some resist by asserting their community-oriented identity; some are silenced, withdrawing into the comfort zone of the community; some assert their secular front; and, some get involved in asocial activities.
The paper attempts to look at the structures of marginality as enforced through macro structures of the State and the society as well as the heterogenous reactions of community members to these structures. This paper seeks to interrogate the everyday intra/ inter-group negotiations of individuals belonging to marginal communities by drawing data from studies conducted on two schools of Navi Mumbai, as well as one university and one locality of Mumbai.
