Political Participation Research Paper

iv) Active membership of a quasi-political organization.
v) Passive membership of a political organization. vi) Participation in public meetings, demonstrations etc. vii) Participation in formal political discussions. viii) General interests in politics. ix) Voting
X) Total apathy.

In fine, it can be concluded that political participation ranges from decision-making process and involvement of people in it to pose a challenge to the existing system either through agitation, coup or some other type of violent activity. And the process of political participation is influenced by social, economic, political, cultural, environmental and psychological factors.

COMMUNALISM AND COMMUNALISATION:

COMMUNALISM: Communalism as it exists in India may

Imtiaz Ahmed points out that group-consciousness of Hindus and Muslims evolved contextually only towards the end of the 19th century. Earlier, that is untill the second half of the nineteenth century, Islam and Hindus no doubt existed as religious traditions but their adherents had not come to constitute closed communities. It was only with the social and political changes at the close of the nineteenth century that the idealogy of group consciousness emerged among the Hindus and Muslims. Paul Brass rightly asserts that it was not the objective differences between Hindus and Muslims that produced the emergence of Muslims as an articulate solidarity group, but the uses which were made of these differences through the manipulation of symbols of Muslim unity and Hindu-Muslim separateness by an elite concerned to preserve its political privileges. According to Brass the political organization of Muslims as a self conscious community began in the early 20th century, when dominant upper class Muslim elite in north India sought to preserve its dominance and prevent the rise of Hindus in education and government employment, in the wake of the social and political changes effected by the Nationalist movement. It was the idealogy of this elite that spread throughout India and lead to the formation of a set of political demands by Muslim political leaders for political concessions, not because they were a numerical minority but because “of their desire to remain, if not dominance, at least equality with the much large Hindu population of the country.”

Thus, for Brass, communalism in India was fostered by the emergence of a radical political consciousness which led to competing economic and political interest among the Hindu and Muslim political