THE PROPOSAL of the Centre to give Jains minority status is yet another bizarre example of how warped our thinking on the relationship between identity and citizenship has become. It is pointless to enunciate the legal niceties of the issue and explore more fully why the Supreme Court dismissed a plea to direct the Center to notify the Jains as a minority. We live in an age when legal and constitutional niceties do not matter much, so one might as well come to the point gracelessly. The awarding of Jains minority status exemplifies many mistakes our society makes in thinking about the relationship between identity and citizenship. Granting Jains minority status is objectionable, because it is a step away from the goal of creating a society where citizenship rights are independent of religious identity. Not to put too fine a point on it, the whole clamour for minority status stems largely from one issue: the right to administer one’s own institutions without the state imposing its own norms. Minority status has become the identity equivalent of the exemption mania in taxation. We design bad tax policies in the first place, and then give different groups special dispensations. The same is true of the state and freedom to institutions. Instead of simple and clear rules that say people are free to run whatever kinds of institutions they wish to run, subject to certain minimal regulations, we have a legal structure that imposes draconian restrictions on institutions with respect to whom they can admit, how much they can charge, what they teach and how they are to be administered. Restrictions on institutions designated as minority institutions are less onerous; hence everyone from the Ramakrishna Mission to the Jains petitions for minority status. Why cannot we move to a regime that gives the same, less regulated, freedom to all institutions that do not get any state aid? The state can do whatever it wishes with institutions that are dependent upon it above a reasonable threshold, but it should let all other institutions free, regardless of the identity status of who runs them. This will dampen the enthusiasm for minority status, and will more effectively protect their and every one else’s rights. Identities such as Jain, Hindu or Muslim are complex constructions and carry enormous weight. But the minute the state reifies them into legal categories, the whole exercise becomes arbitrary. Why stop at granting Jains minority status? Given our traditions of what the Rudolphs once called ‘‘involuted pluralism’’, with an endless proliferation of groups, why not extend this logic further: let Digambars and Shwetambars, Teerapanthis and Anand Margis, Ramakrishna Mission and Swaminarayan, all be granted minority status in the relevant district and state. One might respond that the weight of these identities is really not as significant as the category “Jain” or “Sikh.” But who is to decide which identities deserve legal articulation and protection and which don’t? When the state begins to define categories in this way it engages in a double insidiousness. On the one hand it arbitrarily privileges some categories over others. On the other hand, it imposes upon the freedom of individuals. In a liberal society, your identity should be a matter of self definition. Who you take yourself to be should be your choice. Are you a Hindu or Jain? Do wish to be identified as something else? The answers to these questions should be entirely up to you. But the Indian state gives no choice in legal terms. It has created large categories into which everyone gets slotted, and then when those definitions do not satisfy all identities it creates new exemptions. But citizens can have a real choice about their own identities only when these identities do no matter for what rights and privileges they will enjoy. The discourse about minority status has its provenance in some genuine fears about the possibilities of majoritarian dominance. In some instances there might be a compelling case for recognizing groups that need special protection in this respect. As a contingent fact, it would be willfully distorting history to argue that Jains have in any way been systematically disadvantaged because they are a small group, vulnerable to persecution. Our Constitution is a tricky document on this matter, but the provisions for minority rights are meant to strengthen the claim that our basic rights should not be held hostage to majoritarianism. They are not meant to endorse the proliferation of special identities and rights. Interpreting them in the latter way carries two dangers: first, it encourages competitive group politics, which is alien to the ideals of citizenship enshrined in our constitution. Second, it underemphasizes the extent to which our Constitution is about furthering the freedom of every individual. If these equal protections are available to all, the construction of citizenship will not have to be mediated through identity. By the legal classifications that the state imposes upon its citizens, and by the rules of caste and religious endogamy that sustain identity in our society, I suppose I would be classified as Jain. This inheritance defines me. But it does so no more than so many other paramparas I could endlessly list. The only way to capture that complex choice of inheritance would be to resist naming myself as one thing or the other; it would be to resist benchmarking oneself, to avoid the question: What makes you one thing rather than other? For any answer to this question is disingenuous: In answering this question I abridge my possibilities, or convert my identity into a hollow state-given legal classification or, worse still, opportunistically use this legal classification to claim rights that are denied to others. We throw cynical and symbolic solutions at real problems. Does anyone seriously believe that the horrendous atrocities that Kashmiri Pandits have faced will be rectified by grating them a hollow legal status? Are the real challenges the Muslims of Gujarat face addressed by their legal status as a minority? In some respects these challenges might even be exacerbated. The government’s proposal on Jains ought to be diminishing to Jains in so many respects. They are now claiming privileges in the running of institutions that every individual and not they alone should get, they are free-riding on a historical discourse of vulnerability to which they are not entitled, and they are letting the state define their identity. It is absolutely astonishing that traditions whose whole raison d’etre is to transcend the confines of identity are now clamoring for state recognition for a pinched up conception of identity. We are becoming small indeed. pratapbmehta@yahoo.co.in
