从印度的视角观照印度“民族问题”:官方范畴与制度框架的历史形成

Understanding the “Nationality Issue” of India from Indian Perspectives:The Official Categories and Basic Institutions Historically Formed

关于印度“民族问题”,本文提出应从印度出发理解印度,跳出“民族”框架,研究其上一级问题,即印度在向现代国家转型的过程中如何对待内部文化多样性的问题。独立后的印度在“多样性中的统一”的国族叙述之下,并没有一个像中国的“民族”一样具有政治和治理意义的统一范畴来水平划分组成国族的多元单位,她的多样性范畴和制度可分三个层面:联邦结构之下多层次的政治自治权与地区-文化单位的叠合;以语言和宗教为依据划分的文化范畴和少数社群范畴及相关的文化权利;旨在提升落后群体的保留名额制度又将全部人口分成了三类,分类识别的基本单位是种姓、部落和宗教少数社群整体或其内部的亚社群(类种姓)。这些范畴和制度的形成,要追溯到自英国殖民以来的印度国家建构过程。

As to the “nationality issue” of India with which the Chinese ethnologists are generally concerned,this paper posits that we must understand the issue from the perspectives of Indians themselves,put aside the prevalent conceptual framework of “nationalities” in China,and ask the question of higher level,that is,how India deals with her inner diversity in the process of transformation into a modern state. In independent India,under the national narrative of “unity in diversity”,there is no a universal category of political and governance significance like Chinese minzu 民族(nationalities) to classify the people. What India has,are categories and institutions of three levels:the multi-level structure of political autonomy overlapping with the regional-cultural units under federalism;cultural categories and minority categories based on languages and religions,and related cultural rights;under the quota system which is aimed at uplifting the backward communities,the whole population is divided into three categories and the basic units used for classification and identification are caste,tribes,religious minority communities as a whole or their sub-communities. The formation of such categories and institutions can be traced to the process of state construction of India which started from the British colonial period.