The J&K unit of the BJP has joined the disturbing clamour being worked up by Sangh Parivar outfits for scrapping the admission list at the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence in Katra. That 42 of the 50 MBBS seats in its first batch have gone to candidates who are Muslim and belong to Kashmir is a problem, contend the Bajrang Dal and the VHP, because the institute is set up with (Hindu) donations to the Vaishno Devi shrine. They demand that the admissions be put on hold, “corrective” action taken, and admission norms reviewed. The real problem in Katra, however, is this —while the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board has done well to invest its considerable resources in setting up an institute of medical sciences, the new spaces it has opened up for the young in the region are in danger of being narrowed and overtaken by an old and cynical zero-sum politics. It is also a politics that goes against the constitutional letter and spirit.
In an institute that is not classified as a minority institution — the Vaishno Devi Medical Institute is not — and where the admissions have followed the National Medical Council guidelines, there can be no grounds to protest the entry of students of a “particular community”. In fact, any attempt to label students as “Hindu” or “Muslim” and to discriminate or exclude on the basis of religion is a violation of the students’ constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights. By all accounts, the fact that 90 per cent of the selected students are Muslims from Kashmir only follows a wider prevailing pattern — while there are more seats available in medical colleges in the Jammu region compared to Kashmir, most of these seats have reportedly been taken up by students from Kashmir in the past few years; the reverse is true in the case of engineering seats.
The Vaishno Devi Medical Institute has only just got off the ground. Hopefully, in years to come, it will grow and expand as it provides opportunities for all those who seek to learn and take forward the work of medical science, whatever their religious identity. It must not become a political battlefield. Pulling up the drawbridges now would be a grave injustice to its students, to its institutional possibilities — and flagrantly illegal.
