Perceived justice of available opportunities and self-esteem, collective esteem and social exclusion: A study of three religious groups in India

摘要

Groups have their own social realities which determine their perceptions of justice having impact on their well- being and consequent integration with the mainstream society. The objective of the present study was to understand variations in perceived justice in terms of opportunities existing in five different domains, i.e. social prestige, economic, educational, employment and political by the Hindu Majority (N = 100) and Muslim (N = 100) and Christian (N = 76) minorities in India. In addition, the study also aimed to understand the relationship of perceived justice with self-esteem, collective esteem and social exclusion. Male and female participants (N = 276) of the study were either of high or low caste, and were of employed or unemployed status from a north Indian city. The results indicate that justice perception is determined by religion and caste not by gender and employment status. The majority Hindus perceived significantly higher perceptions of justice than Christians and Muslims minorities on all four domains except education. For education the minority Muslim group had lower justice perceptions than Hindus and Christians who did not differ significantly. The three groups differed significantly in their ratings of social exclusion with maximum exclusion perceived by Christians and minimum by Hindus. Results have implications for development initiatives. Keywords Justice - Self-esteem - Exclusion - Majority and minority groups