12 - Recognizing Diversity

Summary

Using the international recognition of Israel and Pakistan as case studies, the chapter probes the terms of recognizability in the modern liberal order, asking how religion became a recognizable criterion for sovereign statehood. It digs below the workings of the post-1945 diversity regime, arguing that, epistemologically, religion came to be knowable within the dominant frame of ‘nation’, but in the process it would become increasingly hollowed out and emptied of content, while simultaneously be tied to the thick, essential idea of collective belonging. Viewing the recognitions of Israel and Pakistan in the contexts of their imperial pasts, and analysing the two international commissions that shaped their statehood, the chapter shows how emerging modes of cultural recognition built on and sedimented very particular versions of 'religion' and funnelled certain aspects of social, political, and cultural life into coherent, representable, and recognizable forms of religious difference. By looking in detail at the epistemological politics of cultural diversity, the chapter exposes the costs that come with the diversity regimes’ recognition of cultural difference.