Distortion of the Articles 25-31 : Part 1

The Constitution of a country is the basic document for governing the country. However, if for any reason, some Articles or concepts therein get distorted and continue for decades, the distortion becomes the standard. This is the case of the Articles 25-30, and to an extent Article 31 as well.

The Fundamental Rights incorporated in Articles 29 and 30 in the Constitution were to assure minorities – linguistic, racial, caste and religious. There is no mention in the Constitution that one category of minority is more important than the other. So all four categories of minorities, according to the Constitution, are of equal status. That they shall get whatever will be available to others in independent India. But other than religious minorities, linguistic or caste minorities hardly even matter in our polity ! This is just one distortion.

Within religious minorities too, it is well-known that only one special minority community has been the centre of attention. It is a distortion when one examines various decisions and provisions in its name.

Before we go ahead, the background of these Articles may first be kept in mind. Why such Articles were put in the Constitution.

The idea of ‘minority protection’ was included in the draft Constitution in the years 1946-47, when Partition of India was not decided (in fact, till March 1947 the demand of Partition was not even taken seriously by anyone in the country). Perhaps it was written to placate the Muslim League, to dissuade it from the demand of Partition of the country. Thus in all probability it was from the beginning a political appeasement to humour the League.

But, the same idea and Articles were retained even after Partition ! In retrospect, one may observe that it was one of the great blunders the Constitution makers committed. India had not known such minority, majority problems which the term conveys in modern political parlance.

The meaning of ‘minority’ in political terms the world over is very different. It generally means a recognized community historically oppressed and threatened, irrespective of its number, in a country. That way Muslims in India, if anything, were oppressors and definitely privileged for centuries. In any case in no way were they even remotely threatened any time in Indian history. Multitude of literature, of all hues, most of them written for centuries by Muslim themselves, testify it. The Muslims attacked, conquered, subdued and ruled India. Thus, their being a ‘minority’ in a threatened sense was a very wrong assumption, an artificial construct to (unwittingly) harm Hindus by their own leaders !

The Articles 25-31 of the Constitution nowhere say that the rights and statements made are not available to non-minorities. Please note : The Constitution has mentioned ‘minority’ several times and never ‘majority’ even once in the whole Constitution. It shows that the Constitution makers presumed that the rights being re-assured for the ‘minority’ would be enjoyed by the rest, by the very fact they are not required to be mentioned, that is, the implicit majority.

To be assured of this intent of the Constitution makers, four points may also be considered. First, the Article 14 clearly says that all citizens are equal. This must be in consonance with, not in contradiction to, what follows in further Articles in the same Constitution. Otherwise it makes no sense that you declare all are equal, and then explicitly say that some sections have double rights. The Article 14 and Articles 25-30 were put in harmony, not in contradiction.

Second, the Articles 25-28 in the Indian Constitution are given under the heading ‘Freedom of Religion’. Then the Articles 29-30 are there under the heading ‘Cultural and Educational Rights’. Thus also, it is meant for all, not any particular section of the population. The rights of minorities are part of cultural, educational rights of the entire population – else the section would have been differently titled.

Third, to understand what minority rights mean internationally, it would useful to go through the UN document on the subject. The UN had adopted, dated 18 December 1992, a ‘Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities’ in New York (GA resolution 47/135). It contains 9 Articles. The entire document does not exhort or expect any special, exclusive rights for any minority anywhere in the world. The entire concern in the whole document is to shun discrimination and underline equal rights for the minorities on par with others.

Fourth, in practice too, there is no country in the world where the ‘minority’ enjoy such rights which is not available to the rest, that is, the majority. It is quite logical. Because legal equality in theory and practice of all the population, in a country, itself effectively removes any apprehension on the part of any minority.

Since the Indian Constitution was drafted with full knowledge of the best Constitutions of the world at the time, it is fair to conclude that our Constitution had no intention of creating an unheard of novelty. That is discriminating against the larger part of their countrymen !

Surely, the Indian leaders were not creating such an inexplicable thing as to give a minority (of various categories) something NOT available to others. Had it been so, there would have been undoubtedly so much discussion on this matter with lots of heated arguments and dissentions. Since there is none of it in Constitutional debates, it is an indubitable conclusion that they were only assuring the minorities of the rights on some important issues in so many words – not denying the same to non-minorities.

The text of the original Articles, before any amendment, indicated for the protection of interests of minorities is as follows :

Cultural and Educational Rights

29. (1) Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same. (2) No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them.

30. (1) All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.(2) The State shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.

The text read with an open mind (say, by a foreign reader with no prejudice) simply conveys forbidding of any discrimination. The earlier Articles, viz. Articles 25-28, also use words like ‘all persons’, ‘no person’ and ‘every religious denomination’. It only means, again and again, that the said rights are applied to all sections of the population. The mention of minorities is incidental in the reminding sense only, that they should not be discriminated against in any of the religious, educational and cultural rights, the rights which are the very subject of the Articles. The subject is not minorities.

Thus from every perspective it would appear to any un-prejudiced mind that the rights mentioned in the Articles 25-31 are given or applicable to all the citizens of India without discrimination.

So, the billion dollar question is – how have the actual practice of those Articles in Indian polity been applied to the contrary ? That the Articles 25-31 have become the exclusive, superior rights for – mind you – just one kind of minority, religious; and that too, effectively for only one religious minority, the Muslims. How did it happen ? The answer is breathtakingly simple.

Because the Hindus were oppressed for centuries, and had a troubled psyche, with meager self-confidence, their leaders were extra busy placating all kinds of bullies and smart non-Hindus. In this process they committed one blunder after another, resulting in a situation that historical bullies and cunning but resourceful Christian missionaries exploited with great success. They forced the same and similar emotionally insecure Hindu leaderships to give the Articles such interpretation that suited Muslims and Christians. Jawaharlal Nehru, totally unfettered soon after the death of Sardar Patel in 1950, being the first Prime Minister, was also a great factor. As he, also enamoured by Islam as well as Communism, was temperamentally loath to anything Hindu. The first administration of independent India had an open field to unfold whatever formulations it liked in practice of the Constitution, policies, education, etc.

Therefore, the implementation of the Articles 25-31 in a manner as if they were exclusively concerned with the rights of minorities in exclusion of the non-minorities, was a deliberate political action/distortion.

It was done slowly and quietly. It did not invite suspicion of wrongdoing and consequent outrage because the action took place at the hands of nominal Hindu leaders themselves. The leaders of the Nehruvian Congress, the Communists and the Socialists, the three most prominent political forces in independent India for the first three decades. But all the three were ideologically conditioned for an anti-Hindu stance, or at least careless about the Hindu interests.

The non-Congress, non-Communist political forces were too dumb to understand this seemingly small but highly disastrous development. They took it as just some ‘extra caring for minority’, in the same way as they later accepted socialism also as a good will gesture, not seeing its already failed practice and very harmful consequences in many countries.

– Prof. Shankar Sharan, Professor of Political
Science at the NCERT and Senior Columnist,
New Delhi. (31.1.2023)

(Courtesy : indiafacts.org)

The Muslims attacked, subdued and ruled India. Their being a ‘minority’ in a threatened sense is a wrong assumption !