Remainder Quotes

“Once a community has been identified as the remainder minority in the nation’s foundational myth, it is futile to expect the state to undo that designation. The state always requires a remainder — someone to complete its story of belonging by embodying exclusion. And it takes immense institutional effort to construct, legitimize, and stabilize that category. Once achieved, it is rarely relinquished. Even if governments change, the structure remains: the new regime will continue to press the same community deeper into the remainder mould — unless it discovers another group that can inhabit that role more conveniently, more profitably, and with less resistance. The myth must always have its remainder; without it, the nation would lose its border, its coherence, and its illusion of purity.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan