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Rabid nationalism rules as India distances
minorities
As India's rabid nationalism brand of
patriotism is unfurled and unleashed on an unsuspecting public and
thought proccesses are nurtured by mass hysteria style of TV
reporting in this 60th year of India's Independence, the minorities
continue to be pushed away from the power core and established
structures.
At a time when the world is crying hoarse about inclusiveness as the
only way of keeping the monster of terrorism away from the door,
India is doing all it can to nurture an exclusivist philosophy of
living. This year has already seen the Parliament doing nothing
about Srikrishna Report, Godhra riots have become old news,
anniversaries of 1984 massacres come and go and Indian power elite
has sent a message of exclusivism to the Sikh masses by ordering the
hanging of Bhai Jagtar Singh Hawara and Bhai Balwant Singh.
The arrest and detention of Simranjit Singh Mann and Bhai Daljit
Singh Bittu, and the continuing apathy about Prof Devinder Pal Singh
Bhullar are hardly steps by New Delhi to instill any confidence that
India has learnt to respect its citizenry 60 years after the same
people died and shed blood for the country, and repeatedly did
since.
The year will go down in history as the one in which the
Constitution (103rd Amendment) Bill, 2004 to grant constitutional
status to the National Commission for Minorities also carried the
idea off changing the way minorities are specified. The Cabinet
approved a proposal in May 2007 to define minorities State-wise in
line with several Supreme Court judgments, most notably that in
T.M.A. Pai. For the purpose of this legislation, minority will be
specified as such in relation to a particular State/Union Territory
by a presidential notification issued after consultation with the
State Government; this will be in addition to the five minorities
(Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Parsis) referred to in
the NCM Act, 1992.
The new approach is not consistent with the understanding developed
in the Constituent Assembly on the protection of minorities and the
constitutional compact between the State and minority groups.
The Indian state is becoming blind to the fact that defining
minorities at the State level would limit the notion of minorities,
entailing as it does the adoption of an essentially statistical
conception of minorities. Thus, a religious group, which is
numerically smaller than the rest of the population of the State to
which it belongs, would be entitled to be termed a minority in that
State even though the group may be numerically in a majority in
India as a whole and hence not lacking in power or voice in the
decision-making structures.
Such a State-specific conception of minorities will result in
distortions in minority rights. If this rationale is extended,
Hindus in Punjab who are a numerical minority there though they are
a majority in relation to India as a whole will be entitled to
minority protection there as indeed they would be in Jammu and
Kashmir, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Lakshadweep.
Failing the statistical test, Sikhs in Punjab and Christians in the
above States will be held to be a majority and consequently deprived
of constitutionally sanctioned minority rights. In Punjab, the
minority Hindus will be able to set up educational institutions of
their choice and apparently Hindus from other States will be
eligible for admission to these institutions unless admission is to
be limited to minorities domiciled in the State.
It is time India’s power elite looked into a mirror and saw the
monstrosity that they havee turned the country into. Inking nuclear
deals is no achievement. Anyone can kneel before Big Brother and
claim to be in great company. That’s easy. At 60, one should think
better.
15 August, 2007
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