Transforming Ethnic Divide: Comparative Analysis of India and Nigeria
Hilal Wani

Abstract
Democratic countries in developing world are going through transition. There are plethora and myriad issues related to governance problems and asymmetry in federal domain. Nigeria and India both are considered two major democracies one in African continent and one in Asian continent. Both have federal model of polity. The ethnic division and polarization in the name of religion, culture, caste, and tribe in these two nations gave birth to severe ethnic conflicts and further it has many bad repercussions and implications for the entire nation. For transforming ethnic conflict and ethnic polarization in Nigeria and India we found federal balancing, shaping and sharing of powers and segmental autonomy as better devices that can be used to transform and manage the ethnic balkanization and compartmentalization. We found that for two major democracies such as Nigeria and India federal balancing is imperative for successful functioning of democracy. We found through our research data that ethnic minorities are marginalized in both nations and therefore, we used ‘ethnic power sharing approach’ of ‘Donald Horowitz’ for managing the ethnic balkanization and ethnic division where our main emphasis is on ‘guarantees ‘for minorities in majority dominated democracies. The research data also shows extensively about the systematic and well organized killings of minorities in majority dominated democracies such as in India and Nigeria. A true democracy can be successful in practice only when it will work for both majority and minority communities on equal grounds but truth is always bitter when we say that in severely divided democracies minorities are always at risk. And we can say it based on our scholarly research data that communalism and religious hatred is too dangerous for multicultural democracies and diverse nations.

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