How far can tolerance extend?

Let me, as they say in the House of Lords, declare my interest. I have known Bhikhu Parekh for more than 40 years and sit with him on the Labour backbenches. He is an accomplished political philosopher who straddles both western and Indian philosophy. He has been active in the United Kingdom race relations field. The present book is a thoughtful and serious investigation into the timely problem of practical living in a multicultural society. How are we to confront its challenges creatively? Parekh's answer, in brief, is that we can do this only by patient dialogue based on an acceptance that all cultures have something we can respect and that no culture is privileged or perfect.

Rethinking Multiculturalism is written as something of a cross between a textbook for advanced courses in political philosophy and a personal credo after a long and passionate involvement with the problem. The first three chapters survey monist and pluralist approaches in western philosophy as well as modern liberal responses to diversity. This is the textbook stuff, though along the way we get the idea that none of these three approaches faces up adequately to the question of cultural diversity and how to deal with it. Even the modern liberal philosophers - John Rawls, Joseph Raz and Will Kymlicka - are found to take liberalism to be superior and non-liberal cultures to be anti-liberal, far too readily.

In the next four chapters, Parekh sets up the theoretical structures as one imagines he would like them to be. There is a chapter discussing whether human nature is trans-cultural, ie if we are all the same underneath. This simplification Parekh rejects because it leads to a monist approach. He recognises that cultures shape our natures and that we all have some autonomy to develop our potential, but that the balance is different in different cultures, with western culture being most keen on autonomy.

He follows this with a chapter on understanding culture. Here, the dynamics of cultural development, the interaction of different cultures and the difficult task of evaluating cultures are discussed. There is a short section on whether one should be loyal to one's culture, especially when one is in a minority. There are chapter-length discussions on the state, taking up the Canadian debate on Quebec, and one on human rights and national identity.

The next three chapters are the "applied" bit. Here, Parekh goes through many of the thorny issues that have cropped up mainly in the UK but also in other western societies - the wearing of scarves by Muslim schoolgirls in France, the wearing of turbans by Sikhs, the difficult issue of the Muslim practice of polygyny and the practice in some societies of clitoredectomy. There is a detailed discussion of the Salman Rushdie case and the way the white liberal community had a dialogue of the deaf with British Muslims. These are the parts of the book I believe most readers would want to read first.

I have some differences of opinion with Parekh. From a political angle, the task of fostering multiculturalism in the UK depends crucially on getting liberal opinion to believe in it. Liberalism in cultural matters is a very recent, fragile creation in western societies. Parekh is very severe on liberals for their arrogance and their privileging of liberal values. But one can only dare to have multiculturalism in liberal societies and, despite the imperial past and all that, the fact is that only western societies are liberal. I cannot conceive of multicultural practices at the level of tolerance Parekh wishes in any Asian or African country. Thus, when he criticises the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as partial to certain values, he hopes for a broader portfolio of rights reflecting other cultures. But the very notion of right and obligation is western and in other cultures rights do not have the same salience.

He criticises Rushdie for deliberately goading the Muslims. But a writer has the right, indeed the duty, to provoke. A Christian writer would have got away with insulting Christ, so why should Salman Rushdie not get away with it? Parekh shifts his argument at this stage by saying that the depiction of the face of Christ is self-censored by Hollywood. But books are different from movies and, in any case, European cinema has been less coy. Again, he would like Rushdie to be loyal to the Muslim community. Why should he be loyal to Muslim culture when his daily life has no religious content? Can a Muslim or a Hindu not be allowed to be an atheist?

The consequence of taking cultures as wholes is that differences within the culture are brushed away and the "community" is taken as an autonomous entity. But this community can become quite oppressive in silencing deviant behaviour (marriage by choice or even an extramarital affair) within its walls. As a person who likes his liberal rights, I should say that such behaviour is to be condemned; there can be no dialogue in such cases.

Maybe I am less tolerant or patient than Parekh. But in constructing multiculturalism, which I take to be a supra-liberal value, one has to hold fast to the core liberal values. This is so if only because the liberals themselves are so embattled in western societies. In the UK, if the liberals go under there is little chance that those who will take their place - the defenders of clause 28 or the mob that hounded paedophiles - will treat other cultures any better.

Lord Desai is director of the centre for global governance, London School of Economics.