Question

On which issues does the 'Son Of the soil' movement in India insists ?

Answer 1

Answer:

The concept of Sons of the Soil (SoS) is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Sons of the soil is an elemental concept tying people to their place of birth and confers some benefits, rights, roles and responsibilities on them, which may not apply to others.

Sons of Soil Doctrine underlies the view that a state specifically belongs to the main linguistic group inhabiting it or that the state constitutes the exclusive 'homeland' of its main language speakers who are the 'sons of the soil' or the 'local residents'.

All others who live there or are settled there and whose mother tongue is not the state`s main language are declared 'outsiders'. These outsiders might have lived in the state for a long time, or have migrated there more recently, but they are not regarded as the 'sons of the soil'.

It is a difficult concept to grasp, even though this has been explicitly seen in many countries. The problem with this concept of SoS is that it is beset between two forces, the concept of equality versus the concept of fairness. Quite a lot of insurgencies, terrorist campaigns, riots, internal disturbances, tensions and wars have been driven by this issue.

A sons-of-the-soil (SoS) conflict has the following core features:

First, it involves conflict between members of a minority ethnic group concentrated in some region of a country, and relatively recent, ethnically distinct migrants to this region from other parts of the same country.

Second, the members of the minority group think of their group as indigenous, and as rightfully possessing the area as their group's ancestral (or at least very long-standing) home.

By "conflict" we mean competition and dispute over scarce resources such as land, jobs, educational quotas, government services, or natural resources. A SoS conflict may be violent, but it need not be.