The Hindu : New Delhi News : "Need to educate minorities and protect their rights"

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Tuesday, Mar 20, 2007
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"Need to educate minorities and protect their rights"

Staff Reporter

`The minorities in Pakistan are in quite a bad state'

NEW DELHI: Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman, former Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and Rector of the International Islamic Institute (Islamabad), on Monday said that minorities in Pakistan would have been better protected had the country not seen so many military regimes.

Addressing a gathering of intellectuals at the launch of a new book here, "Politics of Minority Educational Institutions -- Law and Reality in the Sub-Continent", the eminent jurist from Pakistan said the problem with his country was that even the majority rights had been denied thanks to military regimes taking over for long periods. He, however, added that the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan right now is a member of the minority community.

Justice Rehman pointed out that in this age of globalisation the need was not only to protect the rights of the minorities but also to educate them as only then the human rights of all the citizens could be protected.

Speaking as the chief guest at the book launch, former Attorney-General for India Soli J. Sorabjee said enforcing minority rights could not be guaranteed by the Constitution alone but also by the attitude of the majority as well as the minority communities. "The majority should not take the provisions of the Constitution as something given on a platter to the minorities to appease them," he said. Earlier, speaking about the new book, former Delhi University Vice-Chancellor and legal scholar Upendra Baxi pointed out that while it dealt with a crucial subject, the introduction mentioned that Pakistan and Bangladesh have done better in terms of protecting the rights of the minority than India - a claim that he said was rather questionable.

However, the editor of the book, Tahir Mahmood, former Chairperson of the National Minorities Commission, quickly clarified that he had purposely mentioned Pakistan and Bangladesh to bring out the fact that despite having a secular stance, India needed to do much better on this count. He even said the minorities in Pakistan were in quite a bad state. Justice Rehman was reacting to these observations when he addressed the gathering. The book has contributions by several scholars of law, journalists and other intellectuals. It also has a foreword by one of the most renowned judges of the Supreme Court, Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer.

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