Minority rights and responsibilities
By Iqbal A. Ansari
Muslims are not enjoying any `privilege' denied to others. However, the concerns raised in Parliament, during the debate on the Constitution (104th) Amendment Bill, on the reservation issue need to be addressed. One way could be to conduct a performance audit of minority educational institutions.
MINORITY EDUCATIONAL institutions have been exempted from the purview of the Constitution (104th) Amendment Act that enables the state, under Article 15(5), to provide reservation of seats in unaided educational institutions for socially and educationally backward classes or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This legislative measure seeks to harmonise the claims of citizens' right to freedom with the obligation of the state to fulfil the promise of social justice to weaker sections. Does the exemption amount to privileging minority status? The right of the unaided minority institutions not to be subjected to any regulatory measures, other than those aimed at promoting the educational standards of the institution and the interests of the community concerned, has been judicially upheld right from the Kerala opinion (AIR1958CS956) to the T.M.A. Pai Foundation judgment of the Supreme Court and in the subsequent clarifying judgments.
It is the lack of proper understanding of the legal philosophy guiding these firm directions of the judiciary that makes sections of the intellectual and political class in the country view such exclusion as minority appeasement.
The vulnerability of the minorities arising from their inadequate share in power and decision-making, and disadvantages caused by widespread discrimination and intolerance against them (and not necessarily any educational backwardness) requires special constitutional and legal provisions to enable them to secure effective equality along with preserving their distinct identity. The necessity of such special measures for the minorities to ensure substantive equality to them has been recognised by all international instruments on minorities.
The rights under Article 30 should not be taken as an affirmative measure on a par with the provisions under Article 15. The two stand on different footings. It also needs to be taken into account that social situations of minorities and majorities not only differ from country to country, but also from one minority to another within a country such as India. The Parsis, for example, are an affluent microscopic minority, who do not face any problem of discrimination or exclusion. Christians, except Dalit sections among them, are educationally advanced and are not uniformly subjected to discrimination.
The Sikhs have lately been facing problems of identity, but have the advantage of their bulk constituting a majority in one State. They are again not routinely subjected to discrimination.
Unique case
The case of Muslims as a minority is unique. Large sections of the power-wielding majority generally treat them as a suspect community held responsible for the perceived wrongs of history, including Partition.
The over-blown projection of identity issues of Urdu with its `foreign' script and Muslim personal Law, which is supposed to be causing `alarming' increase in their population, provide further justification for their exclusion, even periodic demonisation, and open boycott.
Coupled with this reality is the fact that the bulk of present day Indian Muslims are of indigenous Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class origin, whose social occupational structure has continued to perpetuate their educational backwardness.
The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986, recognised Muslims along with neo-Buddhists as being educationally most backward on an all-India basis, and included in the Programme of Action a whole range of schemes for their educational uplift. Most of it, however, remained unimplemented for lack of a conducive political-bureaucratic climate, especially in the States, as well as for lack of financial backing, and doubts about the legal validity of community-specific measures.
This non-implementation did not become a significant public issue, in spite of the V.P. Singh Government's effort to highlight the gap between the successive Congress Governments' promises and performance for Muslims, largely because of the preoccupation of the Muslim elite during the period with the Mandir-Masjid issue.
The decade following the Ayodhya debacle has witnessed Muslim urge for education as an instrument of development. But their experience of the earlier four decades had been one of bureaucratic obstruction in getting recognition and aid for their institutions and uncertainty of preferential admission of Muslim students under the pretext of secularism. The professional educational institutions recently started by Muslims, along with other minorities, have been facing problems of recognition, affiliation, and government-management share of quota.
Given the historical, political, and sociological dimensions of the Muslim educational situation, the Supreme Court's ruling in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation case upholding the right of minorities to preferentially admit students of the community without any limitation in unaided institutions and without the rigid ceiling of 50 per cent in aided institutions should receive ungrudging universal social-political support.
While endorsing such `magnanimity,' it needs to be kept in view that Muslims, though the largest minority, have so far not been the major beneficiaries of Article 30(1)'s scheme of minority empowerment. Any minority educational survey will reveal this reality.
The fact that their largest educational institution, the Aligarh Muslim University, has been denied the rights available to minorities under Article 30, especially the right to preferentially admit students of the community, should convince all honest observers of the educational scene that Muslims are not being appeased and that they are not enjoying any `privilege' denied to others.
On the contrary, their now increasing urge for secular education needs universal support, as a measure of their modernisation and integration.
Addressing criticism
However, the concerns raised during the debate in Parliament on the Constitution Amendment Bill to provide reservation for socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, are genuine and need to be addressed. One set of criticisms relates to abuse of the right by members of religious and linguistic minorities simply for profiteering. The other rightly points out that at least the weaker sections among minorities, especially Muslims and Christians of Dalit and OBC origin, should get the benefit of reservation in unaided minority educational institutions. There is no justification for either minting money in the name of minority rights, or monopolising now-expanding educational opportunities under Article 30(1) by the already advanced and affluent sections among minorities.
It requires audit of the performance of all religious and linguistic minority institutions, to ascertain the extent, nature and modalities of profiteering and to find out which minorities and sections of minorities have benefited from the empowerment under Article 30(1).
The findings may indicate that though many minority educational institutions are rendering service to all communities, like most Christian and some Muslim and Sikh institutions, they have no uniform policy of any special provision for admission of their own weaker sections. There soon may arise a need to reserve a quota for Dalits and OBCs among minorities in aided as well as unaided minority educational institutions under law. There is also a strong case for extending the benefit of reservation to all citizens of Dalit origin including Christians and Muslims — as are available to Dalits following indigenous religions.
Regarding the admission of non-minority students of any class including Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, it must be clearly borne in mind that imposition of any fixed quota for un-aided as well as aided minority educational institutions will not be valid legally or socially. However minorities must realise that social engineering for national integration, as well as the agenda of social justice, both require admitting a fair mix of students from all communities, sections and classes.
The law only prohibits imposition of any fixed quota for any category other than minority. It does not come in the way of a minority autonomously developing policy for preferentially admitting students on the basis of class and the community to fulfil the obligation of integration and social justice in their own free domain.
On the same grounds, the demand of under-represented minorities, such as Muslims, for provision of preferential admission in State educational institutions, though without fixing any fixed quota under law, deserves consideration.
(The writer is a retired professor of the Aligarh Muslim University.) [This article taken from THE HINDU, December 31, 2005]
Muslims are not enjoying any `privilege' denied to others. However, the concerns raised in Parliament, during the debate on the Constitution (104th) Amendment Bill, on the reservation issue need to be addressed. One way could be to conduct a performance audit of minority educational institutions.
MINORITY EDUCATIONAL institutions have been exempted from the purview of the Constitution (104th) Amendment Act that enables the state, under Article 15(5), to provide reservation of seats in unaided educational institutions for socially and educationally backward classes or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This legislative measure seeks to harmonise the claims of citizens' right to freedom with the obligation of the state to fulfil the promise of social justice to weaker sections. Does the exemption amount to privileging minority status? The right of the unaided minority institutions not to be subjected to any regulatory measures, other than those aimed at promoting the educational standards of the institution and the interests of the community concerned, has been judicially upheld right from the Kerala opinion (AIR1958CS956) to the T.M.A. Pai Foundation judgment of the Supreme Court and in the subsequent clarifying judgments.
It is the lack of proper understanding of the legal philosophy guiding these firm directions of the judiciary that makes sections of the intellectual and political class in the country view such exclusion as minority appeasement.
The vulnerability of the minorities arising from their inadequate share in power and decision-making, and disadvantages caused by widespread discrimination and intolerance against them (and not necessarily any educational backwardness) requires special constitutional and legal provisions to enable them to secure effective equality along with preserving their distinct identity. The necessity of such special measures for the minorities to ensure substantive equality to them has been recognised by all international instruments on minorities.
The rights under Article 30 should not be taken as an affirmative measure on a par with the provisions under Article 15. The two stand on different footings. It also needs to be taken into account that social situations of minorities and majorities not only differ from country to country, but also from one minority to another within a country such as India. The Parsis, for example, are an affluent microscopic minority, who do not face any problem of discrimination or exclusion. Christians, except Dalit sections among them, are educationally advanced and are not uniformly subjected to discrimination.
The Sikhs have lately been facing problems of identity, but have the advantage of their bulk constituting a majority in one State. They are again not routinely subjected to discrimination.
Unique case
The case of Muslims as a minority is unique. Large sections of the power-wielding majority generally treat them as a suspect community held responsible for the perceived wrongs of history, including Partition.
The over-blown projection of identity issues of Urdu with its `foreign' script and Muslim personal Law, which is supposed to be causing `alarming' increase in their population, provide further justification for their exclusion, even periodic demonisation, and open boycott.
Coupled with this reality is the fact that the bulk of present day Indian Muslims are of indigenous Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class origin, whose social occupational structure has continued to perpetuate their educational backwardness.
The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986, recognised Muslims along with neo-Buddhists as being educationally most backward on an all-India basis, and included in the Programme of Action a whole range of schemes for their educational uplift. Most of it, however, remained unimplemented for lack of a conducive political-bureaucratic climate, especially in the States, as well as for lack of financial backing, and doubts about the legal validity of community-specific measures.
This non-implementation did not become a significant public issue, in spite of the V.P. Singh Government's effort to highlight the gap between the successive Congress Governments' promises and performance for Muslims, largely because of the preoccupation of the Muslim elite during the period with the Mandir-Masjid issue.
The decade following the Ayodhya debacle has witnessed Muslim urge for education as an instrument of development. But their experience of the earlier four decades had been one of bureaucratic obstruction in getting recognition and aid for their institutions and uncertainty of preferential admission of Muslim students under the pretext of secularism. The professional educational institutions recently started by Muslims, along with other minorities, have been facing problems of recognition, affiliation, and government-management share of quota.
Given the historical, political, and sociological dimensions of the Muslim educational situation, the Supreme Court's ruling in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation case upholding the right of minorities to preferentially admit students of the community without any limitation in unaided institutions and without the rigid ceiling of 50 per cent in aided institutions should receive ungrudging universal social-political support.
While endorsing such `magnanimity,' it needs to be kept in view that Muslims, though the largest minority, have so far not been the major beneficiaries of Article 30(1)'s scheme of minority empowerment. Any minority educational survey will reveal this reality.
The fact that their largest educational institution, the Aligarh Muslim University, has been denied the rights available to minorities under Article 30, especially the right to preferentially admit students of the community, should convince all honest observers of the educational scene that Muslims are not being appeased and that they are not enjoying any `privilege' denied to others.
On the contrary, their now increasing urge for secular education needs universal support, as a measure of their modernisation and integration.
Addressing criticism
However, the concerns raised during the debate in Parliament on the Constitution Amendment Bill to provide reservation for socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, are genuine and need to be addressed. One set of criticisms relates to abuse of the right by members of religious and linguistic minorities simply for profiteering. The other rightly points out that at least the weaker sections among minorities, especially Muslims and Christians of Dalit and OBC origin, should get the benefit of reservation in unaided minority educational institutions. There is no justification for either minting money in the name of minority rights, or monopolising now-expanding educational opportunities under Article 30(1) by the already advanced and affluent sections among minorities.
It requires audit of the performance of all religious and linguistic minority institutions, to ascertain the extent, nature and modalities of profiteering and to find out which minorities and sections of minorities have benefited from the empowerment under Article 30(1).
The findings may indicate that though many minority educational institutions are rendering service to all communities, like most Christian and some Muslim and Sikh institutions, they have no uniform policy of any special provision for admission of their own weaker sections. There soon may arise a need to reserve a quota for Dalits and OBCs among minorities in aided as well as unaided minority educational institutions under law. There is also a strong case for extending the benefit of reservation to all citizens of Dalit origin including Christians and Muslims — as are available to Dalits following indigenous religions.
Regarding the admission of non-minority students of any class including Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, it must be clearly borne in mind that imposition of any fixed quota for un-aided as well as aided minority educational institutions will not be valid legally or socially. However minorities must realise that social engineering for national integration, as well as the agenda of social justice, both require admitting a fair mix of students from all communities, sections and classes.
The law only prohibits imposition of any fixed quota for any category other than minority. It does not come in the way of a minority autonomously developing policy for preferentially admitting students on the basis of class and the community to fulfil the obligation of integration and social justice in their own free domain.
On the same grounds, the demand of under-represented minorities, such as Muslims, for provision of preferential admission in State educational institutions, though without fixing any fixed quota under law, deserves consideration.
(The writer is a retired professor of the Aligarh Muslim University.) [This article taken from THE HINDU, December 31, 2005]
posted by e-tafakkur at 2:44 AM
2 Comments:
Assalam Alaikum
Though indvidually indian Muslims does not loose their savings at Scheduled commercial Banks, the community in general is facing annual financial exclusion over Rs. 22,000 by neglegant approcah of SCBs and specialized financial Institutions like SIDBI and NABARD. To see details about this exclusion, please refer the following link page
http://www.aicmeu.org/Financial_Exclusion_of_Indian_Muslims.htm
We need to raise voices againsts this exclusion. Kindly suggest, how could be get due rights?
Wassalam
Syed Zahid Ahmad
Assalam Alaikum
Though indvidually indian Muslims does not loose their savings at Scheduled commercial Banks, the community in general is facing annual financial exclusion over Rs. 22,000 by neglegant approcah of SCBs and specialized financial Institutions like SIDBI and NABARD. To see details about this exclusion, please refer the following link page
http://www.aicmeu.org/Financial_Exclusion_of_Indian_Muslims.htm
We need to raise voices againsts this exclusion. Kindly suggest, how could be get due rights?
Wassalam
Syed Zahid Ahmad
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