Majority groups trigger deep division by imposing their culture on the state

Evidence

Countries with distinct cultural groupings belonging to the same civilization may become deeply divided with separation either occurring (Czechoslovakia) or becoming a possibility (Canada). Deep divisions are, however, much more likely to emerge within a cleft country where large groups belong to different civilizations. Such divisions and the tensions that go with them often develop when a majority group belonging to one civilization attempts to define the state as its political instrument and to make its language, religion, and symbols those of the state, as Hindus, Sinhalese, and Muslims have attempted to do in India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 375

Categorization

• XREF: The mechanism — a majority defining the state through its own language, religion, and symbols — parallels the sumptuary-law and identity-signaling dynamics in the immodesty piece, where dress codes likewise encode majority cultural power. — connects to: Culture divides and discriminates before it ever unites a community. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 815
• SEED: Essay angle: the specific institutional levers by which majority groups constitutionalize their cultural dominance — language laws, official religions, state symbols — and why these predict civilizational fissures. ‘Cleft states vs. cohesive states.’