ABSTRACT
The individual’s first point of reference was undoubtedly the ‘community’.But this ‘community’ could just as well be that of the family, the localkinship network, or the community of language, region or religion. Capping the relationship between the individual and community with the religious category in colonial schemes of enumeration did not mean that other associations fell by the wayside. Whether in conformity with or in resistance to the dominant discourse privileging religion, these relationships continued to influence an individual’s attitudes and choices in life. The ‘community’ of the individual was more variegated and creatively experienced than suggested by the homogeneities enforced by inclusion in a religiously derived statistical category. This is amply borne out when communitarian discourses on identity are exposed to more rigorous analysis than permitted by colonial epistemology.
