Quick questions on Managing ethnic and religious diversity explained: H2 History

The assimilationist strategy sought to reduce communal difference by absorbing minorities into a single national identity, typically defined around the majority's language, culture or values. The aim was to make ethnicity politically irrelevant by dissolving it into a common nationhood. Its strength was that, if successful, it produced a genuinely unified people. Its weakness was the resentment it provoked: minorities asked to abandon their language, culture or distinctiveness frequently experienced assimilation as the dominance of the majority, which could deepen rather than dissolve communal grievance and provoke resistance.

The accommodationist strategy accepted that diversity was permanent and built the nation as a community of communities. It might share power among communal groups, guarantee minority rights, protect minority languages and religions, and recognise communal representation. Its strength was that it could secure the loyalty of minorities by giving them a stake and a voice. Its weakness was that, by institutionalising communal identity, it could entrench communal politics, encourage every issue to be bargained along ethnic lines, and produce deadlock or instability if communities could not agree.

A third strategy used preferential policies to raise a disadvantaged community, often a majority that had been left behind economically under colonial rule while minorities prospered. By reserving opportunities in education, employment or business for the disadvantaged group, the state aimed to remove the economic grievance that fuelled communal tension. Its strength was that it could address a real injustice and dampen majority resentment. Its weakness was that it could simultaneously alienate the minorities it excluded, who experienced it as institutionalised discrimination, creating a new grievance even as it eased an old one.

Distinguish between an assimilationist and an accommodationist approach to managing diversity. [4 marks]

Explain why preferential policies could both contain and create communal grievance. [12 marks]

"Strong institutions, not the right policy, were the key to managing diversity in Southeast Asia." How far do you agree? [20 marks]