Five per cent trouble

It has happened again. Just over a year ago, the Andhra Pradesh High Court court threw out Y.S.R. Rajasekhara Reddy’s proposal to give Muslims 5 per cent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions on the grounds that it was not recommended by a Backward Classes Commission. On Monday, the high court quashed the law providing such reservations on the basis that the Backward Commission set up by the government did not evolve a reasonable criteria for categorising Muslims as part of the backward classes.

But Reddy doesn’t get the message. Or is it just that he doesn’t want to, in his bid to consolidate his Muslim votebank? The fact is that reservations for a religious community is bad in law and ultra vires of the Constitution. It also goes against the idea of a united, secular nation. The fact is that Muslims have not been uniformly discriminated against over the centuries, as is the case with those from Scheduled Castes/Tribes and OBCs. Reservations for the latter categories were perceived as a way of extending equal opportunity for those marginalised over the millennia through entrenched discriminatory social practices. Those comprising a religion-based community, in contrast, would be far more variegated in their social indices. Therefore the argument that the entire Muslim community constitutes a backward class is not sustainable. In any case, those within the Muslim community who fall within the ambit of the OBC category are already entitled to reservations on the basis of caste.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court observed that it found the “entire process” of identifying the beneficiaries of such reservations arbitrary. In fact, no process of this kind can ever be free of arbitrariness, for the very reason that it is based on an artificially constructed category. It would be far better if Reddy supported the Muslim community in its attempts to access educational facilities and government jobs more effectively.