The problem

‘MINORITY’ and ‘majority’ are relational categories. More than about numbers, they refer to relations of power and domination, prejudice and exclusion. They are also modern categories. Though power and prejudice have long existed in human societies, their form and content has changed over time. Contemporary nation states, particularly those that have evolved as liberal democracies, perceive of themselves as secular institutions founded on the idea of individual citizenship and universal adult franchise. However, as historians and sociologists inform us, nation states, when they first appeared in the West European context were almost always marked by strong ‘ethnic-origins’, with a particular ethnic or linguistic group being the prime mover of the idea of a given national identity.

Thus even when the context of their origin is ‘secular’, nation states tend to produce their own ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ through classificatory categories for enumerating populations. In other words, states tend to reconstitute their populace in consonance with the given interests and ideas of the dominant elite. Equally, while history and tradition are important sources of legitimation, their relative value is a matter of political expediency. Demographics thus has close ties with power.

After due process of deliberation, the native elite of independent India introduced a new Constitution which clearly articulated the values and ideals that modern India stood for in its Preamble, prohibiting any form of discriminatory practice on grounds of ‘religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth only.’ Though independent India was not conceived of as a land of communities, it identified communitarian categories for special treatment to help them come at par with others. It also provided space for the minority religious communities to establish their own educational institutions as also instituted some other rights that would enable them to protect their distinct identity.

However, the Constitution was consciously selective in making different provisions for different types of communities. For example, only those ex-untouchable communities who declared their religion as Hindu were given the benefit of reservations under the Scheduled Castes quota (later extended to Sikhs and Buddhists). Similarly, while enumeration on the basis of caste, except for the Scheduled Castes, was discontinued, the population of religious communities continued to be enumerated. The so-called ‘depressed classes’, which were often referred to as ‘minorities’ during the colonial period, were no longer described as so after independence. Thus, the majority-minority distinction has over the years come to be identified solely with religion. Other matrices, such as those of language, region or race are rarely included in this frame.

Even when confined only to religion, the minority question in India is very complex and diverse. While India declared itself a secular state and did not subscribe to the two-nation theory, Partition in 1947 played a crucial role in shaping our discourse on the minority-majority question. Even today the minority question in India gets equated with the Muslim question and invariably it is this that tends to shape both the popular opinion and state policies on the subject. Though Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis too are formally recognized as ‘national minorities’, their concerns tend to remain peripheral. Not only are their demographics different from that of the Muslims, their substantive contexts too vary a great deal.

Another important issue in relation to the minority question is that of identifying its ‘other’, the majority. Demographics do not always help. Even though Hinduism today may have acquired the features of a single religion, divisions of caste and other distinctions make it extremely difficult to speak of its adherents as constituting a common religious majority.

The recent years have seen some important shifts in the discourse on religious minorities in India, a shift which parallels the changing attitude of social scientists and the states in other parts of the world towards religion. While on the one hand there is a growing ‘fear’ of Islam in post 9/11 America and indeed the world, there has also been, on the other, a growing interest in religious communities and faith-based organizations and their potential role in enhancing development and service delivery. While this ‘positive’ view of religion is not entirely new in the western world, it has certainly led to a renewed interest in the study of religion.

A continuous flow of migrants across continents has also made the contemporary nation states far more diverse, as many of these new ethnic minorities often show a great deal of resilience against assimilation. Today, not only is this diversity increasingly politically accepted under rubrics like ‘multicultural citizenship’, many nation states have also begun institutionalizing new and innovative group-based policies for equal opportunity and affirmative action for the socially excluded and marginalized.

In the Indian context, it was the Sachar Committee Report (SCR) on the ‘development deficit’ among the Muslims of India, submitted to the Prime Minister in 2006, that best captures this shift. It is one of the few official documents that have become a subject of serious public debate. Many would argue that it not only generated a good deal of popular discussion and debate and altered the public discourse on the minority question, but has also influenced the political outlook and behaviour of our Muslim communities. The SCR, in short, opened up new ways of talking about Indian Muslims. For a start, the large volume of official data diligently organized and presented by the report, shows that notwithstanding the alleged ‘appeasement’ of nearly five decades, the reality is one of economic and social deprivation among large segments of our Muslim population.

In the past, talking about caste and other forms of diversities was often seen by ‘spokespersons’ of the Muslim community as ways of dividing them, a conspiracy of the enemies. However, when these features are presented to the nation in the language of social science, they appear as ‘hard facts’ that no one can ignore. In separating the officially classified ‘other backward class’ Muslims from their ‘general’ category, the SCR not only argued for the need to recognize the historically and traditionally marked differences within the community, such as those between ashrafs, ajlafs and azrals, but also suggested policy initiatives on the same patterns as applicable to the similarly deprived sections of the Hindu community.

So far, the minority aspirations have almost always been articulated in terms of their distinct religious identity. Such articulations invariably feed into the right-wing communal politics. The Sachar Committee shifted the discourse from identity politics to concerns for development, participation and citizenship by articulating the anxieties of a large cross-section of the Muslims about the deep-rooted prejudice and discrimination they often experience in everyday life – be it the job market, in housing and in civic life.

Following the report, the Government of India initiated some fresh policy measures in the form of special scholarships and identification of minority dominated areas. It appointed committees for implementation of some specific proposals of the SCR. Two important initiatives in this direction are the proposed Equal Opportunity Commission and introduction of a Diversity Index for assessing the inclusiveness of different organizations/public institutions and government departments.

Without undermining its value, the Sachar Report in no way exhausts the debate on the minority question in India. The problems and priorities vary across communities. The Sikhs and Christians, for example, do not suffer from ‘development deficits’ in the way the Muslims do. But they too have their own concerns and anxieties and are often reminded of their marginal positions in the larger structures of power in a variety of ways. The fact that violence in Kandhamal continued for fairly long time and the state government hardly showed any willingness to act against the perpetrators of violence, reminded the Indian Christians of their fragile position. Similarly, 25 years after the large-scale and organized violence against the community in Delhi, the Sikhs continue to wait for meaningful justice.

While the religious self-image is important for lay members of the communities, one must not forget that their social locations are always diverse. The questions of caste, class and occupation are also important. Similarly, in some contexts, the regional and denominational differences could become crucial, or even more important markers of distinction.

Equally, it is important to remember that being classified as a religious minority is not always an indication of deprivation, discrimination or marginality of a community. There are instances when a religious community may in fact struggle for a minority status. The case of the Jains in Rajasthan or Tamil Nadu is instructive. So also is the attempt of the Ramakrishna Mission adherents to opt out of the Hindu fold and get classified as a minority. The concern in these cases is to ensure additional control over their educational and religious institutions. To state sharply, the classification of a community as a religious minority is not merely a historical, demographic given but an attempt to work through the policy regime and political context to avail of ostensible ‘advantages’ guaranteed to so classified communities under our constitutional arrangements.

Where do we go from here? How could we articulate the minority question in India today so that it does not simply become a discourse of communities and their communal or sectarian concerns? How do we make sure that the internal diversity and complexity of the minority question in India is not forgotten and concerns for democratic citizenship and development remain foregrounded in the policy initiatives? In other words, the challenge is to reconcile community-centric anxieties and the positive of diversities with the goal of building a secular nation state with the idea of citizenship and participation at its centre.

SURINDER S. JODHKA