Events & Issues

New Delhi, 11 May 2015

Minority Rights in India

VITAL TO DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

By Dr S Saraswathi

(Former Director, ICSSR, New Delhi)

As a strategy to end the growing menace of vote bank politics, a Shiv Sena MP, recently resurrected a 15-year-old suggestion attributed to the late founder-leader of the party, Bal Thackeray, to revoke the voting rights of Muslims. It is sought to be justified by further explanation that it is a means of freeing Muslims from being exploited in the game of vote bank politics and not meant to deprive them of their legitimate rights.

This argument, however, is lost sight of in the bitter exchanges that the suggestion has evoked. The editorial by Sanjay Raut, as editor of party mouthpiece Saamna, is received and commented upon as a considered view of a responsible Member of Parliament. As such, reference to the context, its import, its punch, and implications, become secondary. The responses address the literal meaning of the remarks.  

The MP was giving the idea with an eye on the by-poll due in Bandra East constituency in Maharashtra last month. But, his comments only earned him the wrath of opposition parties who demand his resignation from the Rajya Sabha membership.

Before the controversy had shown signs of subsiding, a BJP MP Sakshi Maharajhas came out with another startling advocacy for introducing a stringent law for enforcing family planning among all sections to control population by adding a clause to withdraw voting rights for those not adopting it. This was aimed at reducing the family size of Muslims, who are presently following their own traditional injunctions in family matters. He called for sterilization of Muslims to contain their population.

This MP had earlier asked Hindu women to bear at least four children in order to maintain parity in the growth rate of Hindu and Muslim population. Religion-wise increase of population has become a political issue and is raised in elections.

These statements, coming from MPs, are politically more significant than similar views of non-political leaders who have been voicing such opinions for quite some time. They demand responses and deserve sharp reactions.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh then had promptly come out to remove any suspicion of BJP’s association with these apparently anti-Muslim remarks. He tried to assure the Lok Sabha that the Government did not endorse these anti-Muslim propositions.

However, this controversy is one between two religious groups and can also be treated as one between the majority and a minority in a democracy. “They are misusing their power to intimidate and victimize the minority communities”, stated Singh in the Lok Sabha to clean the image of the BJP. 

Ever since the revocation of quota for Muslims in jobs and educational institutions in Maharashtra in March 2015, majority-minority frictions are on the surface of State politics. It is bound to erupt loudly on the eve of every election from panchayats onwards.

More recently, the issue of comparative rate of increase of the population of different religious groups is being raised frequently.  After all, the consciousness of majority and minority is basically rooted in numerical size. Officially, six religious groups are recognized as minorities in India – Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, and Jains.

A majority by the size of population may also claim a minority status on the plea of holding less power and lower status, say,  fewer number of jobs and seats in colleges than their number warrant. The Non-Brahmin Movement in the southern India and the Backward Classes Movement in many States sprang from group consciousness of a State of contradiction of being majority by number and minority by empowerment.    

Demographic statistics have become issues in politics in India. It is used to widen the gulf between groups recognized as distinct categories for presenting the social structure of the population in the census. It is lamentable that there are a considerable number of leaders who are advocating further categorization of the population like caste census instead of promoting assimilation.

A study conducted by the PeW Research Center at Washington has found that India would have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world surpassing even Indonesia by the year 2050.  Their growth rate is higher than that of all other religious groups all over the world.

“Muslim vote bank” is an established political term by which the voting behaviour of Muslim communities in India is understood and sought to be analysed. Muslim votes are solicited in various ways like tendering an open apology to Muslims, promise of job quota, call to fight “Hindutva” forces suspected to be anti-Muslim also, opposition to law against conversion, assurance to uphold the Muslim personal law and so on.

Politics of appeasement, which is the major component of vote bank and minority politics, normally becomes vigorous on the eve of elections. Such appeals to capture solid Muslim votes go on despite the findings of political analysts that there is no homogeneous political group as Muslims or any other minority group in India to form a solid bloc in elections.

The pluralist nature of Muslims in India is a well-established fact. But, efforts to create a pan-Indian Muslim identity encompassing ethnic and other diversities, economic inequalities, linguistic differences, and social and cultural differentiation may go on politically. In the political scenario existing today, such efforts at homogenization are promoted not only by insiders, but also by outsiders by their politics of exclusion.

Raut’s suggestion is a pointer to the politics of isolation and not assimilation. Depriving any community or a social group of voting or any other right in a democracy is an immature and rather childish idea besides being unconstitutional. We are already suffering from a number of social-political issues due to undue stress we place on groups or categories. 

“It is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities. It is equally wrong for minorities to perpetuate themselves”, said Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly in November 1948. He wanted a solution to the majority-minority problem that will ultimately lead to the merger of the two some day. Today’s politics of identity and exclusion has adopted a directly opposite path.

Ambedkar remarked that it is for the majority to realize its duty not to discriminate against the minorities. He believed that “the moment the majority loses the habit of discriminating against the minority, the minorities can have no ground to exist. They will vanish”.

Non-discrimination has been interpreted by some political parties as out and out appeasement politics and by others as imposition of majority culture. There is no genuine effort to promote nationalism – Indianness that will churn the diversities into a homogeneous whole as Indian citizens.

The Constitution and laws safeguard cultural autonomy and promote diversities of both majority and minorities. This is not intended to maintain separatism but to foster the rich cultural varieties. Separatism will promote minorities within minorities endlessly and permanently mar the spirit of unity and solidarity.

Social welfare legislations and schemes such as family planning are meant for all sections uniformly. While they have to be applied uniformly without exemptions, penal provisions like withdrawal of voting rights cannot be imposed on particular groups. Minority rights are integral to democratic politics. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)