Bhikhu Parekh,multiculturality,and the public culture

I first encountered Bhikhu Parekh’s work as an undergraduate in the early 1980s as I set about building a personal library in political theory. I had acquired Preston King and Bhikhu’s festschrift for Oakeshott, Politics and Experience (1968) on the cheap at a book fair and then Bhikhu’s forever useful Contemporary Political Thinkers (1982) at a real bookshop, for which I paid real coin. I have been reading and learning from Bhikhu ever since and have enjoyed our occasional conversations in Bristol, London and Florence over the years. I have been especially attuned to what Bhikhu has had to say on multiculturalism, national identity, and the conceits of liberal theory and theorists.

In this celebration of Bhikhu at 90, I would like to offer some comments on how he construes the public culture and cultural minorities’ relation to it. ¹ I think Bhikhu’s account contains some interesting tensions that we do not find in other prominent accounts. On the one hand, he presents his preferred vision of the ‘public realm’ as defined above all by ‘multiculturality’. This picture contrasts with those of liberal nationalists and Quebecan interculturalists but is similar to that of the Bristol school multiculturalists (BSM), with which I and others have associated Bhikhu (Levey, 2019; Lægaard, 2021; Uberoi and Modood, 2019). On the other hand, Bhikhu champions the concepts and practices of ‘operative public values’ and ‘intercultural dialogue’ that are, at once, deferential, dynamic, and open-ended as to the outcome, and which distinguish his position, I suggest, from all three of these other theoretical perspectives, including the Bristol school. Bhikhu’s twin commitments to multiculturality and dialogical openness come together in the deprivileging of liberalism as a political order, on which he is also at one with the BSM. I shall conclude with some general remarks on Bhikhu’s mode of theorising and this deflation of liberalism.

The theoretical point of departure of Rethinking Multiculturalism, Bhikhu’s magnum opus, is that human beings are cultural beings, imprinted with their cultural background and understandings, but their cultures harbour internal diversity, and they can assess and revise their cultural traditions and commitments (Parekh, 2000). The book begins by presenting this dialectical account as the correct basis on which to theorise the appropriate normative-cum-policy response to a culturally diverse citizenry. It is contrasted with approaches that champion either the universal rational human being, unmediated by culture, or a plethora of cultures as discrete, isolated, and fixed forms of existence. Elsewhere in Rethinking Multiculturalism, Bhikhu canvases the conditions that help to develop a ‘multiculturally constituted common culture’ and discusses how various public controversies may be resolved in a way that enhances multiculturality in the public realm. Since having cultural communities adequately represented in this process is important, Bhikhu suggests there is a ‘strong case for some form of affirmative action’ to include marginalised groups. He also thinks that a ‘multiculturally oriented system of education’ is crucial to sustaining and promoting multiculturality in the public realm (Parekh, 2000: 224). A quest to facilitate multiculturality similarly characterises Bhikhu’s policy leadership roles and public engagement (e.g., CMEB, 2000).

A public culture defined by comprehensive multiculturality is very different from the conceptions advanced by liberal nationalists and Quebecan interculturalists. David Miller’s (1995, 2016) liberal nationalism, for example, identifies the public culture with the historic culture of the majority group while deeming minorities’ freedom to express their cultures to be a private matter, though he allows that the public culture is the outcome of an ongoing process of democratic deliberation and rational debate in which minorities can participate on an equal footing (Miller, 1995: 70, 127; 2016: 149). Will Kymlicka’s (1995) multiculturalist liberal nationalism constructs the status of minorities via his concept of a ‘societal culture’ (he scarcely refers to the ‘public culture’). It assigns predetermined sets of minority cultural rights to national minorities and Indigenous peoples, on the one hand, and immigrant minorities, on the other, based on their respective experiences of disadvantage. Kymlicka insists that liberal societal cultures are thin and limited in their normative and cultural prescriptions. He allows that national and immigrant minorities’ ways of life might be incorporated into the broader societal culture (albeit differently); however, this is limited to practices that are compatible with preconceived liberal ideas. Meanwhile, Quebecan interculturalists Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor assign precedence to the historic culture and identity and on which all else follows (Bouchard, 2011; Taylor, 2012), though they agree that not all aspects of the historic culture should enjoy precedence. The Parekhian picture of a public culture characterised by multiculturality does, however, resonate with Tariq Modood’s (2013) and the BSM’s vision of a more inclusive national identity as the main vehicle for minority inclusion.

In Rethinking Multiculturalism, Bhikhu references the common culture, the dominant culture, and the public realm more than the public culture, but most of all, he deploys his term of ‘operative public values’ (OPVs), which he equates with the public culture: ‘The constitutional, legal and civic values represent society’s public culture, give shape and substance to its inevitably vague conception of the good life, and constitute what I have called its operative public values’ (OPVs) (Parekh, 2000: 269). OPVs are regulative values in the sense that they ‘represent the shared moral structure of society’s public life’ (Parekh, 2000: 270). Why the need to coin and use the term ‘operative public values’ if it stands for the conventional category of the ‘public culture’?

It is, I think, because OPVs convey an openness and a dynamism absent from and often intentionally excluded by the more settled notion of a public culture. Constitutional provisions are normally long-settled and difficult to reform, but laws are continually made and remade, while civic values, in Bhikhu’s account, are subject to change. The concept of OPVs links normativity to a society’s formal and informal governing values but not to a fixed set of values and norms, whether political, cultural or social. Bhikhu emphasises that OPVs vary across societies, including so-called liberal societies. Further underscoring this openness and dynamism is Bhikhu’s advocacy of negotiating cultural controversies through intercultural dialogue (ICD). This dialogical procedure offers the potential to reform prevailing understandings and practices, including conventional liberal norms and practices or their interpretation. ICD exemplifies how Bhikhu rethinks the modern state and develops ‘new kinds of political structures that might be better suited to contemporary multicultural societies’ (Parekh, 2000: 12). It is a procedure that allows minority cultural differences to be admitted into the OPV envelope.

It is here that I find interesting tensions in Bhikhu’s account. Bhikhu treats OPV’s and ICDs as structures that work together to help facilitate multiculturality in the public realm. Through concrete examples, he shows how they clearly can do this work. And yet, precisely because OPVs and ICDs are defined by their dynamic and open-ended character, it would seem they need not lead to increased multiculturality or all that much of it. Traditional OPVs might be reconsidered and maintained, for example, or else be reformed in ways that fall short of minority demands. ICDs might be conducted in good faith and yet not produce the minority’s desired outcome. This is not to say that ICDs simply reinforce minorities’ unequal status and domination, an argument that Paul Kelly (2001) once made, pointing to Bhikhu’s comments that in circumstances where a minority and the wider society continue to disagree over a controversial minority practice, the wider society is entitled to prevail. As Parekh’s chief expositor, Varun Uberoi, points out, this resolution only applies if there is an impasse and the matter is urgent (Uberoi, 2021: 736). Otherwise, there is reason to continue the dialogue before the matter is decided. Rather, I mean only to highlight how the outcome of meaningful dialogue of the sort ICDs are meant to instantiate cannot be specified in advance and may not produce a certain outcome. ²

A public culture that remains so dynamic and open-ended distinguishes Bhikhu’s account from liberal nationalist and Quebecan interculturalist accounts no less than does a public culture defined by multiculturality. However, an open-ended public culture also distinguishes Bhikhu’s account, I submit, from the BSM. Modood has contrasted his own political-sociological approach to multiculturalism to Bhikhu’s (and Charles Taylor’s) philosophical defences (Modood, 2013: 60–61). While there is that difference, I think that Bhikhu’s approach and account diverge from Modood’s and the BSM’s in at least three other significant respects. First, the BSM advocates remaking national identity as the main vehicle for minority inclusion and generally looks to politicians and the political class as having a leading role to play here (Uberoi, 2023; Uberoi and Modood, 2013). Bhikhu tends instead to stress the organic, grassroots basis of a national identity, even after extending its compass (under Modood’s and Uberoi’s influence) beyond political-institutional matters to include language and culture as well (cf. Parekh, 2000: 231–32; Modood et al., 2025: 127). ‘A national self-definition’, he writes, ‘cannot be imposed from above or prescribed by politicians’ (Parekh, 2009: 36).

Second, while the BSM allows that the cultural majority may have a central role in defining the national identity and culture without demanding parity of treatment for minorities (in the manner, say, of Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser, and Alan Patten), it argues that cases of majority cultural precedence require some quid pro quo measures that involve ‘giving minorities what majorities have or seek to have – namely, their own national or cultural identities folded into their citizenship’ (Modood, 2024: 94). Bhikhu’s account appears much less animated and insistent on this score. He accepts that eliminating majority cultural precedence is ‘not always practical’ and goes so far as to say that expecting Britain ‘to leap out of its cultural skin’ and ‘deny the Christian component of its identity a privileged status’ is ‘wrong’ (Parekh, 2000: 235, 259).

Third, and relatedly, Bhikhu’s pivotal concept of OPVs, whilst dynamic and substantively open in principle, conveys a certain stability and continuity in practice. These are a society’s operative values, laws, institutions, and norms, after all. Modood appeals instead to Oakeshott’s (1991) notion of ‘intimations’, which Oakeshott uses to underscore tradition, continuity, and the anchor of lived experience, but which Modood uses to leverage significant change and reform. Modood contends that the grounds for the reforms he advocates regarding Muslims and other cultural minorities are implicit in his and like societies’ traditions and practices. However, this has been contested (see Lægaard, 2021).

Bhikhu thus (1) envisages and recommends a public culture characterised by multiculturality, (2) fashions a structural response to diversity that is dynamic, reform-orientated, and open-ended, and, at the same time, (3) allows and indeed pays considerable deference to traditional OPVs. This is an unusual and fertile combination of commitments, to say the least. ³

Let me close with a comment on Bhikhu’s style of theorising and his position on liberalism.

I find in Bhikhu’s work an abiding inclination to question longstanding assumptions, explode stock identifications, unsettle conventional habits of thought, highlight the role of interpretation, and open people’s minds and hearts to alternative possibilities offered by humanity’s diverse traditions. This is not just a rejection of ‘monisms’ but of all conventional thinking. Bhikhu recently remarked that he called his book Rethinking Multiculturalism precisely to convey that multiculturalism too was to be put into question (Modood et al., 2025: 126). Uberoi (2021) argues compellingly that this posture of interrogating presuppositions reflects the influence of Oakeshott and other British Idealists and their philosophical method. It’s a posture that complements Bhikhu’s theoretical arguments in support of structures that preserve dynamic, fluid and open-ended relationships and where issues are resolved through dialogue. It is perhaps for these reasons that Bhikhu often advances normative arguments and suggestions more in the spirit of political wisdom and wise counsel than as firm prescriptions according to some preconceived plan.

Bhikhu’s cautions and challenges are often arresting, illuminating and well-taken. His grounds for deprivileging liberalism, however, strike me as overstated. Bhikhu acknowledges liberalism as an ‘inspiring political doctrine’ but argues that liberal theories are often presented ethnocentrically, that ideal theories scarcely engage real-world politics, that not all groups in so-called liberal societies are liberal (Marxists, religious, ethnic, and Indigenous groups), that not all social practices in these societies are liberal, and that even liberals aren’t liberal in everything they do (ethics, family, religion) (Parekh, 2000: 338, 112; 2019). I can agree with all of this. However, on Bhikhu’s own account, there’s still the matter of OPVs and governing arrangements. He agrees that just because a society includes religious sects (and presumably, Marxists), this does not entitle them to set the terms of their membership or impose their ‘truths’ on the rest of the society (Parekh, 2000: 138). Bhikhu additionally argues that to classify a society as liberal is to invite interminable ‘quasi-theocratic controversy’ over what ‘liberal’ truly means in the context and, in any case, liberalism does not hold a monopoly on its values, which many other traditions share (Parekh, 2000: 111, 338). Yet a society’s OPVs are a provisional resolution of contested meanings for practical purposes, and liberal democracies have survived for centuries by allowing for ordered debate and reinterpretation of their principles. While liberalism may not hold a monopoly on its values, it is unique in certain respects. Let me elaborate with a personal story.

I came to liberalism viscerally at a young age. I was the only Jew at an all-boys Christian high school in a provincial town. Every morning assembly, the Chaplain would address the staff and students by declaring that the Jews killed Christ, with some students kicking my chair on their way out. That people thought a thirteen-year-old could slay the son of God, I found somewhat empowering, but the daily indictment was also intimidating and unpleasant. At the same time, my small local Jewish community, being generally fearful and on guard, was censorious of any member who spoke publicly about Jewish matters, even if it was a story about themselves. Much later, when I was researching and writing on the political liberalism of American Jews, I read an essay by my former teacher, Michael Walzer, which pithily caught my lived experience: ‘The liberal state doesn’t protect us only against coercion by non-Jews…. It also protects us against coercion by other Jews, against the community itself’ (Walzer, 1989: 8). One might add, as does Walzer, that the liberal state protects Jews and others also from the liberal state. I know of no other political doctrine that offers these three kinds of protections at once. Different societies institutionalise them in different ways; Bhikhu is certainly correct about that.

This, anyway, is a debate worth continuing. What is beyond question is Bhikhu’s immense contribution and that we are all the wiser for his incisive, challenging, and deeply humanistic analyses.