Minority report

The concept of minority is most commonly used to refer to communities, usually those that are numerically small, that are marginalised within a nation-state. It is not the absolute number that is considered relevant. Rather, it is the size of a community relative to an identified majority that makes it a minority.

• Is the size of a community the primary consideration in determining a minority?

The relative size of the community is considered significant for two reasons: one, in a democracy it is possible for a larger cultural/religious community to become a politically dominant group; and two, the culture of the larger majority invariably shapes the cultural orientation of the state, and this can disadvantage other communities. In each case, size matters only as it can be a source of disadvantage and marginalisation of the relatively smaller communities. So size is not the primary consideration.

The marginalisation that is referred to here is cultural marginalisation. Economic and political marginalisation may enhance a community’s sense of disadvantage but the term minority focuses on cultural marginalisation, and reminds us that even economically powerful groups, like the Jews or the Indian community in America, may be disadvantaged due to cultural policies of the state.

• Is the conception of minority different in the Indian context?

The conception of minority in India is reasonably similar. The Constitution provided safeguards to religious and linguistic communities under Articles 26, 29, 30 to protect them against the possibility of — one, cultural assimilation; two, culture-related disadvantage; and three, to protect and promote India’s cultural diversity.

• If the conception of minorities is so clear, then why is it today the subject of so much litigation and judicial interpretation?

The conception of minority points to culture-related discrimination and disadvantage; hence it is accused of neglecting the issue of economic disadvantage and redistribution. When cultural communities become the unit of analysis for the purposes of development, they are open to the charge of identity politics. For communities are internally heterogeneous and individuals have multiple identities and through public policies governments can, and often do, privilege one identity over another.

This is a limitation of the concept of minority, but this is not the reason for many of the emerging disputes in India. Linguistic reorganisation created a situation where communities that were a majority at the national level in terms of religious identity became a minority in a region. Besides, a linguistic majority in one region became a linguistic minority in another. This made the idea of majority and minority context dependent.

• Is this the main source of contention?

Article 30 of the Constitution provided religious and linguistic minorities the right to set up institutions of their choice. The Supreme Court has not linked this with Article 29 and maintained that minorities can set up any kind of educational institution, including those providing professional education.

The Court, however, stipulated that a minority would be identified in the context of the state rather than the country. So long as minority institutions were set up to protect the language and culture of that community, the context of the state made perfectly good sense (as the language of the majority was protected by the official policy of the state). But in the case of higher education, particularly professional education, it was not clear why special provisions were needed. Why was it assumed that minorities would be worse off in open state-run institutions?

The only explanation can be that the Court recognised, at least implicitly, the long tradition of community-run social and educational institutions and the valuable services they can render to their community and to society as a whole. This is an element that we need to focus on in the present context.

• What, then, could be the way forward?

The present paradox cannot be resolved by saying that the SGPC is an official body of a religious minority; hence all institutions established by it must be declared minority institutions. Or that Sikhs, in the context of SGPC, implies merely the ‘puran Sikh’ and this group is a minority even in the state of Punjab.

The problem has arisen because the law only recognises minority educational institutions and private aided and unaided institutions. It does not recognise community run non-profit educational institutions as a separate category.

The Constitution recognised the contribution that communities have made to social and welfare related functions; hence, it allowed religious communities to establish and manage their own charitable institutions. We might now treat educational institutions set up by communities and religious bodies for the welfare of their members in a similar vein and provide them facilities similar to those that are given to minority institutions, so long as they operate on the principle of welfare rather than profit.

Since it is only a law of the Parliament that has stipulated the different norms for admission etc to private and minority institutions, this body can easily create enabling norms for community-managed non-profit organisations. This might well be the way forward — one that will channel resources of religious communities for the betterment of their respective communities.

gurmahajan@hotmail.com