|
Sikhs
robbed of minority status now
WSN had warned in May this will happen
WSN Bureau
 CHANDIGARH:
It was in May that the World Sikh News had warned the Sikh community
about the Indian government's overt strategy to take away control of
hundreds of Sikh institutions from the SGPC by bringing in a
legislation and "re-defining" the term "minority". Except for a
cursory statement by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and
some politically-correct statements from former chairman of India's
Minorities Commission, Tarlochan Singh, nothing much was done as a
follow up.
Now, the chickens have come home to roost. In a shocking judgment,
the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that Sikhs were not a
minority community anymore in Punjab and thus cannot claim the
benefit of reservation as a "minority" in seeking admission to Sikh
education institutions run by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak
Committee in Punjab.
The
court set aside the Punjab notifications declaring SGPC-run Sikh
institutions as minority institutions, permitting them to reserve 50
per cent seats for members of the Sikh community.
A
Bench comprising Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Ajai Lamba
gave the judgment while allowing the petition of a Barnala non-Sikh
student who was denied admission after having been rejected in the
counseling as a fallout of these notifications.
"There was no material or even a grievance that as a group the Sikhs
apprehended deprivation of their religious, cultural or educational
rights in Punjab from any other community which may be in majority
and which may gain political power," the High Court said.
The
High Court judgment is in keeping with a draft legislation now
before the Indian parliament. Not a single Akali Dal MP has raised a
single question in Parliament, nor has the SGPC filed any
application under the Right to Information Act to seek details of
the draft law.
In
its May 9-15, 2007 edition (available on
www.WorldSikhNews.com),
the WSN had clearly warned that "the SGPC may lose its right to run
medical or dental colleges as minority institutions, while the
Christians will be able to run the CMC, Ludhiana as a minority
institution. Muslims’ institutions in Kashmir will not be treated as
minority institutions."
It
had said: "One of the biggest attacks on the status of Sikhs in
India is on way. You have been warned. The Government of India is
now set to define the term ‘minority’ and give it a clear cut legal
definition. The minorities will now be only and only at the state
level and no national minority will exist in India. In such a
scenario, Sikhs will not be a minority anymore. The central
government will soon move a constitutional amendment in Parliament
to establish the procedure for defining minorities and laying down
the criteria to be fulfilled for a group to find place in the list
of minorities."
The
draft bill is called the 103rd Amendment Bill 2004 and was cleared
in the first week of May 2007.
That amendment draft has now been cleared by the Cabinet. That it
happened under the watch of a Sikh Prime Minister is all the more
disappointing for the Sikh community. Since 1980 the Minorities
Commission had been treating Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists
and Zoroastrians as religious minorities at the national level. The
communities were notified when the National Commission for
Minorities Act came into force in 1993.
Incidentally, even as the upcoming law defines a ‘minority’ at state
level only, one clause gives Indian Parliament the final say in the
matter of defining ‘minorities’. Parliament will be empowered to
enact laws to include or exclude any section of citizens from the
list of minorities.
This means that the Indian Parliament can still term Sikhs in India
a minority even if they do not make it to the list of minorities
going by the fact that they outnumber the Hindus in Punjab. But for
this, the Sikhs will have to beseech the Centre first.
Punjab CM Badal's media advisor Harcharan Bains said the government
will move the Supreme Court against this order after looking at the
details of the ruling, and conceded that "this ruling has another
side also and can have national implications."
The
Punjab government had taken the plea that as per definition of Sikh
in the All India Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 which also governs SGPC,
only "a person who is baptized and follows religious customs of Sikh
community is a Sikh". Since the baptized Sikhs are outnumbered in
Punjab, they are a minority. The Gurdwara Act didn't recognize a
Sikh with trimmed beard and shaved head. The High Court however
didn't agree with this argument.
Many sections are blaming the Advocate General H S Mattewal and his
officers of botching up the case. It seems the government failed to
build up a case that since the SGPC is conducting an All India
Entrance Test for admissions to its professional education colleges,
the status of minority or majority of Sikhs can't be considered at
state level. Also, it failed to underline properly that only the
baptized Sikhs are covered by reservation.
19 December, 2007
|
Read Also
