The National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities,popularly known as Ranganath Misra Commission (after its octogenarian head,former Chief Justice of India and first NHRC Chairman Ranganath Misra) recently hit media headlines. Its report,submitted two and a half years earlier,has been tabled in Parliament without a conventional action taken report. All sorts of comments have since been made on it in and outside official circles. While some politicians have dubbed it as anti-national others have talked of picking the sensible ones from amongst its recommendations. All these comments are focused on just one of the measures mooted by the commission that relating to reservation for minorities.
There is nothing impractical in the Misra Commission report. It did not take up the issue of reservation for minorities on its own. It was asked by the government in its Terms of Reference,to suggest criteria for identifying backward sections among minorities and recommend for them welfare measures including reservation in education and government employment. For quite some time the minorities especially Muslims had been demanding a share in government offices and state-aided educational institutions. In the 2004 general elections,the Congress manifesto promised to set up a national commission to explore the possible modalities for implementing this demand. The roadmap laid by the first UPA government reiterated the promise,and the four-member Misra Commission started work on March 21,2005. Now that it has expressed its views,it is talked of as if it raised this controversy on its own initiative. The simple fact however remains that the government asked for its views on it.
The Constitution of India prohibits discrimination between citizens on the grounds of caste,gender or religion but none of these prohibitions is absolute. Protective discrimination in favour of particular castes and of women is,constitutionally,expressly permissible. Analogously,affirmative action in favour of minorities aiming at effecting equality among un-equals would amount to protective discrimination not hit by the constitutional prohibition of religion-based discrimination. That mandate,intended to protect minorities against hegemonic domination by the majority over national resources,is being unfortunately used in the opposite direction of what was intended. The caste system pervades all of Indian society; few enough fume over the Scheduled Caste net being restricted to three chosen religions. No eyebrows were raised when the Supreme Court thought it fit to severely curtail minorities educational rights unconditionally guaranteed by the Constitution by directing minority educational institutions to keep half of their intake virtually reserved for the majority. Any proposal for a reciprocal measure for minorities by way of earmarking some space for them in non-minority institutions is,on the other hand,invariably dubbed unconstitutional.
The Misra Commission therefore talked of three alternative courses of action,in order of preference. Its first preference: that religion or caste not have any place whatsoever in determining backwardness,and a totally secular criterion should be uniformly adopted for this purpose,for all communities. This measure,if adopted,will require drastic changes in the present laws relating to Scheduled Castes,Scheduled Tribes and OBCs. Given that is likely socially unacceptable,the commission indicated a second alternative: 15 per cent space for minorities in state-aided educational institutions,government employment and welfare schemes. This alternative too,the commission knew,would not be easily digestible. It therefore suggested a third alternative measure: provision for an 8.4 per cent quota for minorities (commensurate with their numbers among the OBCs) within the already in force 27 per cent reservation for OBCs. On being asked for its views about Dalit Christians and Muslims,the commission expressed its well-considered view that since caste-based stratification is shared by the entire society in India,limiting the Scheduled Caste net to three chosen faiths amounts to religion-based discrimination.
The commission recommended much else related to minority welfare,which strangely no one is talking about. Among those ideas: reserving all resources of the Central Wakf Council for their educational uplift and empowering it for that purpose to realise a 5 per cent education cess from all wakfs; giving Aligarh University and Jamia Millia a special responsibility to ensure their educational advancement; providing enhanced aid and better facilities to all Muslim schools and colleges; and running parallel modern education schools for madrasa students. The misplaced belief rampant in society that the Constitution prohibits any kind of reservation for minorities should put no roadblock in implementing at least these recommendations.
The author is a senior professor of law and a former member of Ranganath Misra Commission
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