This paper is an analysis of the identity patterns of Muslims and Christians, the two largest minority communities in India, based on a field study in Lucknow. The focus of the paper is on 'ethnicity' as a social construction of reality by the individual as a member of the minority ethnic group. The self-society axis in the ethnic sphere of existence manifested in private and public identities has been studied from the perspective of the phenomenological sociology of knowledge Theoretical partnership with structural Marxism permits the construction of a mapping of 14 identity categories of minoritiness-minoritisation for 230 case histories which cast doubt on mechanistic and monolithic notions of minority communities