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Why exempt minority institutions?

Swami Agnivesh

The 104th Constitution Amendment could prove a curse if turned into an alibi for unbridled profiteering and commercialisation in education.

THANKS TO the 104th Constitution Amendment, Article 15 of the Constitution now carries an enlarged space for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This is a timely corrective to the unwitting misdirection the Supreme Court imparted to education, in an effort to minimise state interference. The prime purpose of this amendment is to heed the cry for social justice in respect of education. Exempting private unaided educational institutions from providing reservation on the ground that the taxpayers' money is not involved is unfair to the needy. Surely, there is more to education than receiving or not receiving aid.

For that reason I am also disappointed that minority educational institutions have been exempted from the ambit of social justice and social responsibility. I say so even though the Arya Samaj, whose International President I am at present, stands to benefit from this exemption, as the Samaj enjoys minority status in Bihar and Jharkhand.

Minorities subject themselves to self-contradiction in seeking to bypass the demands of social justice. By doing so, they are cutting the branch on which they are sitting. This may not be so in a legal sense. But it is certainly so in a moral and logical sense, which will catch up with the law sooner or later. The rationale for minority rights to preserve language and to propagate education is the numerical disadvantage the minority communities suffer vis-à-vis the majority community. It is right and proper that the disabilities are addressed; but they need to be addressed right across the board. Disabilities can have no discriminatory labels.

A disability is a disability, and needs to be treated as such. Illiterates and dropouts of all communities suffer disability and degradation equally. No nation that takes its progress and social health seriously can abandon any segment of its population to illiteracy, unemployment, and poverty. The purpose in giving special rights to religious and linguistic minorities is not to indulge them, but to neutralise their handicaps. It is to empower them to empower others and to serve the nation more effectively. Minority communities that enjoy this constitutional magnanimity must not contradict the logic that sanctions it.

Awesome responsibility

Minority rights comprise a unique privilege and an awesome responsibility. Privileges are double-edged swords. They cut both ways. Every privilege is liable to abuse and every abuse is sure to activate resentment and alienation. In the long run, minorities could end up as big losers if they remain mute witnesses to the misuse or abuse of minority rights. To misuse something is to use it unmindful of its inherent logic as well as its shaping purpose. The inherent logic is the need to eradicate disability. The shaping purpose is to empower the communities to embody and preserve their culture. Surely, it is nobody's case that allergy to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is part of the culture of the minorities. Rather the contrary. The hallmark of the spiritual culture of the minorities is a proactive commitment to social justice, articulated often as a "preferential option for the poor."

The Supreme Court has been, quite rightly, seized of the growing commercialisation of professional and technical education in this country. Yet, strangely, it exempted the unaided private institutions from even a modicum of social responsibility. The only outcome is unfettered commercialisation of education, which is an injustice to the nation at large. Unaided private educational institutions — barring a few glorious exceptions — are all the same, whether they are established by the minorities or non-minorities. Profiteering is a "minority activity" not in the religious or linguistic sense. It is a minority privilege only in the sense that only a microscopic minority can afford to indulge in it. It is the privileged economic minority. The Bill seeks to sanctify the greed and covetousness of this privileged minority, using Article 30 as a convenient alibi.

Those who know the ground realities would agree readily that exempting unaided minority institutions from providing reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes would not benefit the minority communities concerned. Minority educational institutions are of two kinds. First, there are a few upright institutions of excellence — for example, the Christian Medical Colleges at Vellore and Ludhiana and St. Johns Bangalore, as the Supreme Court observed — that strive to harmonise their commitment to excellence and to social justice. They endeavour to embody a spiritual culture and make an upright use of the rights envisaged in Article 30(1).

Secondly, there are institutions, no doubt founded by members of the minority communities, where profit and prestige are the dominant interests. These institutions are apathetic, even hostile, to the educational needs of the underprivileged in their own communities. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, over 9,000 engineering seats in various minority colleges remained vacant in the last academic year simply because rich enough buyers could not be found.

Religious communities make much noise about the rights of the Dalits and the downtrodden among them. But they fail miserably in doing justice to them. The Nais (barbers), dhobis (washermen), Mehtar (sweepers), and the Ansaris (weavers) among Muslims and the Mazabi Sikhs remain socially degraded and economically dis-empowered. Are the leaders of minority communities concerned about them? Christians cry hoarse about discriminations against Christian Dalits. But how many Christian institutions of higher education seek to empower them? Minority rights are claimed on their behalf too. I wish there had been a provision in this Amendment to compel minority educational institutions to reserve at least 25 per cent of their seats for the Dalits and the underprivileged among them. This is rudimentary justice as 70 per cent of these communities come from Dalit backgrounds.

For better or for worse, the unaided minority educational institutions are now outside the ambit of socially pro-active reservation. They are not required by law to admit students from the socially and educationally backward sections. But the fact that one is not required to do what is right and soulful does not mean that one does not have to.

We do not have to be always coerced by law to do what is right and what is basic to our spiritual culture. Now that the nation as a whole has endorsed this amendment, the minority communities must reciprocate this over-generous gesture of goodwill and announce, on their own, a policy of reservation for the socially, economically, and educationally disadvantaged sections.

Even more importantly, they need to have a clear-cut reservation policy for the Dalits and the poor in their own midst. Concern for the poor is the most effective antidote to corruption and commercialisation. Where the poor are denied, it is not God but Mammon who rules. This amendment, that now appears to be a boon to the minorities, could prove a bane and a curse if the minorities turn it into an alibi for unbridled profiteering and cancerous commercialisation in the domain of education.

(The writer is president, Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, New Delhi. He can be contacted at agnivesh@vsnl.com.)

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