Minority Matters

Last week, an Allahabad high court judge, observing that the Muslims “have ceased to be a religious minority community” in Uttar Pradesh, directed the state “to treat any member of Muslim community equal to other non-minority religious communities”.  He also issued a writ of mandamus to the Union of India to modify a notification it had issued on October 23, 1993 specifying the Muslims as a minority.  Though the very next day a division bench stayed its operation, the underlying ideology of defining a minority merits close scrutiny.  Whether Muslims in UP are a minority is a question more of common sense than anything else. The architects of the Indian Constitution guaranteed to minorities all necessary rights and freedoms but did not deem it necessary to define the expression ‘minority’. The Constitution speaks of two categories of minorities — religious and linguistic. There is no parliamentary legislation either defining a ‘minority’.  The National Commission for Minorities Act 1992 enabled the Centre to notify minorities for the limited purposes of that Act only and, in exercise of that power, the government had notified five religious communities — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis — to be regarded as minorities.  Applicable like its parent Act to the whole of India , except Jammu and Kashmir , this is the notification that the Allahabad judgment wanted modified. International law defines ‘minority’ as “a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a state, in a non-dominant position, whose members possess ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from the rest of the population”. To prevent the numerical inferiority of the minorities from turning into political and societal inferiority, legal protection of the distinctive characteristics of minorities — ethnic, religious or linguistic — becomes imperative in a democracy.  The duty of a democratic state is only to safeguard the rights of minorities and to protect them from the numerical majority.  In a country like India, where the constituent units are political entities enjoying wide legislative powers and considerable administrative autonomy, the determination of the majority or minority status of any community is of vital importance.  While the Constitution is silent on this matter, Parliament also has not hitherto enacted any law to settle this question.  The Minorities Commissions Acts of various states — at least eight of such bodies being statutory — mostly authorize the state government to notify the local minorities for the purposes of those Acts.  The question of determining the majority-minority status of a community was raised before the Supreme Court in the Kerala Education Bill reference case of 1958 but was not answered by the court.  In the DAV College case of 1971 the apex court ruled that the majority-minority status would be determinable at the national level for the purposes of central laws and on a state-to-state basis for the purposes of state laws.  Finally, in the celebrated T M A Pai case in 2001, the court decided that the minority status of both religious communities and linguistic groups has to be determined at the state level.  However, the majority-minority status of various religious communities at the national level and in various states is by no means uniform.  At the national level, Hindus constitute the predominant majority and in relation to them all other religious communities are minorities.  Among minorities, the Muslim community — 13.43 per cent of the population and numbering about 145 million — is much larger than all other groups.  Next to them are over 21 million Christians, closely followed by about 16 million Sikhs, the two together having a 4 per cent share in India 's total population.  Official census reports specifically mention only two more religious groups, Buddhists and Jains, whose combined population now is about 12 million (0.77 per cent and 44 per cent respectively). Smaller faith groups like Parsis, Jews and Baha’is are all covered in these reports under the head "other religions & persuasions" whose aggregate population is 0.65 per cent.  At the state level, Hindus are actually a minority in Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Punjab and in the Union territory of Lakshadweep .  In Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, they are the largest religious community but their population is much below the 50 per cent mark.  Muslims are a minority everywhere except Jammu-Kashmir and Lakshadweep , while Christians are a minority in all states except Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland where they are the predominant majority.  Sikhs are a minority in the whole of India except in Punjab . The other smaller religious groups are minorities everywhere in the country. In UP, the Muslim population is the highest in the country. Yet, being 18.5 per cent of the state's total population they continue to be a religious minority — especially in relation to the Hindu majority whose population there is 80.61 per cent.  Going by the data of census reports and rulings of the apex court, the directions given by the Allahabad judge seem, to say the least, to be factually inexplicable and legally untenable.  The conclusion that the Muslims have “ceased to be” a minority in Uttar Pradesh defies comprehension. The use of the plural expression “non-minority religious communities” is equally difficult to understand, since both at the national and state levels there can be only one "non-minority religious community" which is better known as the “majority community.” It will be interesting to see what reasons the HC judge advances for his rather astonishing directions to the central and state governments.

The writer is former chairperson, National Minorities Commission.

(Source: Times of India (Editorial Opinion), April 12, 2007)