Revision as of 05:37, 5 February 2014

Definition of ‘Minority’

From the archives of The Times of India 2007, 2009

Constitution and Supreme Court Have Never Attempted To Define ‘Minority’

Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN

New Delhi: Did the Allahabad High Court, by ruling that Muslims are not a minority in Uttar Pradesh, go into a territory which both the Constitution and the Supreme Court had never ventured into?

Who is a minority? Is it on the basis of the numerical strength of persons practising a certain religion or on the basis of the language spoken by a group of people? The Constitution under a group of Articles from 25 to 30 provides for the fundamental rights enjoyed by minority groups — be it linguistic or religious. But the framers of the Constitution, fresh from the division of the country on religious lines, never attempted to define the expression ‘minority’. The Supreme Court did debate the issue on numerous occasions. Yet, it too did not attempt to give a concrete definition of the word ‘minority’ but appears to have relied on the numeric strength of a community in a particular state to classify them as minority.

Former attorney general Soli J Sorabjee, who was also a member of the UN Sub-Commission on Protection of Minority Rights, feels that the numeric classification to identify majority and minority groups has been taken as a universal standard. ‘‘Prima facie, the high court judgment appears to be absurd,’’ he said.

One of the major attempts to give a comprehensive meaning to the expression ‘minority’ and the rights they enjoyed was undertaken by an 11-judge Bench of the apex court in the famous T M A Pai Foundation case in 2002. The contentious subject created sharp divisions within the Bench and it gave as many as four judgments — the majority by six judges and the other three by single judges, one of them concurring with the majority decision. The majority judgment did not give a precise meaning of ‘minority’ but ruled that identification of a minority community — linguistic or religious — has to be done separately for each state.

‘‘Linguistic and religious minority are covered by the expression ‘minority’ under Article 30 of the Constitution. Since reorganisation of the states in India has been on linguistic lines, therefore, for the purpose of determining the minority, the unit has to be the state and not the whole of India. Thus, religious and linguistic minorities, who have been put on a par in Article 30, have to be considered statewise,’’ the 11-judge Bench’s majority verdict said.

The question of minority came up before a three-judge Bench of the apex court in 2005 in the case of Bal Patil vs Union of India. It ruled: ‘‘Minority as understood from the constitutional scheme signifies an identifiable group of people or community who were seen as deserving protection from likely deprivation of their religious, cultural and educational rights by other communities who happen to be in majority and likely to gain political power in a democratic form of government based on election.’’

From these two judgments, it is clear that the court envisaged a situation where a religious or linguistic group is in minority on the numerical strength without putting any benchmark, beyond which a community will lose its minority tag. However, it did not deter the three-judge Bench from stating that ‘‘ideal of a democratic society, which has adopted right of equality as its fundamental creed, should be elimination of majority and minority and the so-called forward and backward classes’’.

dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com

Constitution does not define minorities: Govt

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

The Times of India 2013/08/13

New Delhi: The Constitution does not define the term “minorities” anywhere but only mentions it in some Articles, the Centre said on Monday. “The Constitution of India used the word minority or its plural form in some Articles, 29 to 30 and 350A to 350B, but does not define it anywhere,” minister of state for minority affairs Ninong Ering said in Rajya Sabha.

He said though Article 29 refers to “minorities” in its marginal heading, it speaks of “any section of citizens having a distinct language, script and culture”.

An entire community or a group within a majority community could thus be seen as a minority.

Article 30 speaks about two categories of minorities — religious and linguistic — while Article 350 relates to linguistic minorities only, the minister said.

Ering clarified that the National Commission for Minorities Act has declared five communities — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis — as religious minorities

Minorities:Statute ensures minority rights

The Times of India

Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN

New Delhi: Why is the expression ‘minority’ — such a touchy word — undefined under the Constitution? Is it because a large number of benefits are conferred on minority communities through a series of inviolable fundamental rights?

The Supreme Court takes them as a protective arrangement. In its 2005 judgment in Bal Patil vs Union of India, the court said: ‘‘The group of Articles 25 to 30 of the Constitution, as the historical background of partition of India shows, was only to give guarantee of security to the identified minorities and thus to maintain integrity of the country.’’

Article 25: Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion

Article 26: Freedom to manage religious affairs

Article 27: Freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion

Article 28: Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain education institutions

Article 29: Protection of interests of minorities

Article 30: Right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions

The apex court, in its 2005 judgment, felt that the special guarantees and protection to the religious, cultural and educational rights of minorities was guaranteed as a fundamental right in the Constitution, in the backdrop of the bloody partition, to allay apprehensions and fears in the minds of Muslims and other religious communities.

‘‘Such protection was found necessary to maintain unity and integrity of free India because even after partition, communities like Muslims and Christians in greater numbers living in different parts of India opted to live in India as children of its soil,’’ the court had said.

It said the minorities initially recognised, were based on religion and on a national level, for example Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indians and Parsis. However, it had sounded a warning against votebank politics based on divisive tactics and underlined that ‘‘the constitutional ideal, which can be gathered from the group of articles in the Constitution under Chapters Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties, is to create social condition where there remains no necessity to shield or protect rights of minority or majority.’’

dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com