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Sikhs' status as minority in India in danger,
PM clears amendment
WSN Exclusive
 Chandigarh:
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 amendment draft has been cleared by the Cabinet presided over by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India's first PM from a minority.
"The proposed amendment will do away with the very concept of
‘minorities’ at the national level. There will only be
state-specific minorities. This move is in keeping with the spirit
of a number of Supreme Court judgments," top sources have told the
WSN.
In 1980 the Minorities Commission told the government it was
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.
The new move defines a ‘minority’ as a section of citizens of a
state which has been specified as a minority in that state, by a
presidential notification issued after consultations with the state
government.
Another provision gives 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.
Thus, Muslims in UP may be a minority, but those in Kashmir may not
be.
Thus, 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 because they will be a minority. Muslims'
institutions in Kashmir will not be treated as minority
institutions.
“The amendment is a major step,” a senior government functionary who
did not wish to be named, said. “This is the first time that
minorities are going to be defined.”
The official line is that once in place, the amendment will obviate
any confusion on the question of minorities, like the one that led
to last month’s Allahabad High Court judgment. The court held that
Muslims — 18.5 per cent of Uttar Pradesh’s population in 2001 — were
not a religious minority in the state. It said the state government
should treat members of the Muslim community as equal to those
belonging to the non-minority communities without discrimination in
accordance with the law. A division bench, however, stayed the
ruling the next day .
The Cabinet cleared the official amendment to the Constitution — the
103rd Amendment Bill 2004 — at a meeting chaired by the prime
minister last week. The bill could come up for discussion during the
ongoing budget session.
9 May, 2007
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