Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement to the National Development Council that we need “to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development” and that “these must have first claim on resources” has sparked off a furore in and outside Parliament. The BJP and its allies have demanded an apology for what they described as “rank communalism”. The Congress sees this as a “mischievous misinterpretation” of the PM’s statement. In his response L.K. Advani, the Leader of the Opposition, stated that “there are crores in the country below the poverty line, living in miserable conditions. When the prime minister talks about priority of claims I would expect him to say that the first claim on our resources should be of those below the poverty line, particularly the dalits and tribals and backwards.” If we were, for a moment, to overlook the rhetorical dimension of competitive party politics, where grandstanding helps a party get noticed and affirms its place among its supporters, and if we were to ignore also the fact that all parties have an eye on the forthcoming elections in UP, is there anything left to discuss? If it is not rhetoric, and it is not competitive party politics, and it is not the elections in UP, then is it about the rules of a plural democracy? Are there things which a prime minister, or for that matter the Leader of the Opposition, can and cannot say? To go back to the PM’s statement, we can find several grounds for objection. The first is that the PM unjustifiably discriminated against other marginal citizens. By stating that the “Muslim minority” must get first claim on resources he discounted the claims of other disadvantaged sections, the Sachar report notwithstanding, and that this amounted to an unjust treatment of others with (at least) equal claims. No prime minister in a democracy can violate the principle of equal treatment unless there are compelling moral grounds for unequal treatment. These were not advanced. Manmohan Singh’s defence is that the “these” in his statement on “first claim on resources” referred not to Muslims alone but to the “collective priorities” including programmes for the uplift of SCs, STs, OBCs, women, children and other minorities. The charge of unjust discrimination can therefore not be conclusively established since the PM’s statement can be read either way. Depending on one’s bias, the statement appears statesmanlike or as an instance of appeasement.The second ground for objection is that the PM, by referring to Muslims as a community that must get special attention, is dividing the nation into ethnic or religious communities. This is retrograde since it weakens the shared sense of the democratic nation as a political community of citizens. If the purpose of the National Development Council meeting, where the statement was made, was to clear the XIth Plan, then the PM should have spoken of segments of the population that are marginalised rather than of communities that are marginalised. By referring only to segments of the population such as the disadvantaged, or the excluded, or those below the poverty line, he could keep the focus of the “first claim to our resources” on those whose life condition meets these aspects of marginality. While Muslims would make up a large percentage of this segment of ‘the excluded’, (their exclusion has been established by the Sachar Committee) and SCs and STs would also be present in large numbers because of their persistent deprivation, the use of the language of segment of the population rather than community would allow inclusion of members from other communities who are similarly disadvantaged. ‘Segment of the population’ permits inclusion. ‘Community’, religious, ethnic, or caste, in contrast, risks exclusion. And then there is the tricky issue of the creamy layer. However, both Manmohan Singh and L.K. Advani have used the idea of community. While Singh refers to Muslims, SCs, STs, OBCs, and women and children, Advani only refers to dalits, and tribals and backwards. They both fall short on the inclusion test. Which brings us to the third ground for objection: the prime minister of a secular democracy should not make a policy statement that recommends the special treatment of religious groups. By doing so, he is diminishing commitment to the secular goal of the polity without concomitantly enhancing the commitment to the goal of justice. This is the nub of the controversy. Are persons who occupy important political office, or any public office in a secular polity permitted to recommend policy which benefits or burdens particular religious groups? Should policy not be religion blind? Can a secular state recognise religious groups for special treatment? It can recognise secular groups such as SCs, STs, or OBCs, but not Sikhs or Jews or Muslims. Is that the argument? It is not clear in the debate whether recognising religious groups for policy attention is intrinsically unacceptable, that is, against the rules of a secular democracy, or whether it is unacceptable because of its harmful consequences, that is, it leads to a communalisation of the polity. The BJP would have performed a great service for secularism if they had persisted in debating this third objection. They would perform an even greater service if they also accept its conclusions. The writer is senior fellow and co-director of the Lokniti programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
