The Times of India
June 12, 2006
Secularism Under Attack
Gurpreet Mahajan
There has been a spectacular increase in the number of institutions seeking minority status in the recent past.
In all of 2005, the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions received just 380 applications from institutions seeking minority status; this year with the government announ-cing its decision to reserve an additional 27 per cent of seats for OBCs in all centrally-funded educational institutions, the number of applications received by the commission is already more than 2,000.
At this moment, it seems that schools and colleges that had not previously sought minority status are now seeking that special status to ward off government intervention.
If the proposed reservations for OBCs come into effect, we can expect the number of minority educational institutions to steadily increase. As the number of open seats in prestigious educational institutions dec-line with increased reservation, less brilliant Hindus will be driven towards community colleges that will come up to fill their need.
The urge to woo these community educational institutions will also get stronger and these institutions will emerge as the beacon of hope. This is what has happened in south India where quotas for OBCs have been in place for several decades.
According to the Ministry of Health Report 2006, over 60 per cent of all private medical colleges in the country are located in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Pondicherry.
Now with Mandal II we can expect not just private professional colleges but minority professional colleges to proliferate.
In south India, there are already a number of mino-rity educational institutions performing this function. In Kerala, more than half of the medical and engineering colleges finan-ced by the state are run by minority communities.
These minority institutions meet the needs of a large number of young aspirants who are unable to secure seats in state-run institutions. In neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka the story is no different.
Here too linguistic minorities along with private trusts have set up professional colleges in significant numbers. There are now Telugu minority engineering and medical colleges, along with others offering MBA and MCA.
Is this the model that we wish to emulate or prescribe for the rest of the country? This is the question that policy-makers need to address urgently.It is also important to remember that minority educational institutions are administered by a range of different communities.
While those established and run by Christians, Muslims and Sikhs are readily identified as minority institutions, in reality institutions run by sects and denominations even within Hinduism have received minority status.
The most striking case is that of the Arya Samaj, which was designated as a minority in the state of Punjab by a ruling of the Supreme Court in 1971.
In fact, when the Bill on National Commission for Minority Edu-cational Institutions was discussed in 2004, members of the BJP argued that institutions run by Hindus in states like Nagaland should have the status of minority educational institutions.
More and more are now justifying such claims for Hindus in other states of the north-east, Jammu & Kashmir, and Punjab.
Besides, in India it is not just religious communities but also linguistic minorities are entitled to establish their own educational institutions. We can therefore expect Hindus as a community in some regions and linguistic groups in others to seek and obtain minority status.
It is collectively these community-run institutions that will emerge as a real option. Community identities that surfaced around narrowly conceived religious issues like mandir and Hindutva may have waned easily but similar identities consolidated around development-related needs are likely to have a longer staying power.
They are likely to bring into the public domain a more intense and resilient form of communitarian politics.
The middle class plays a crucial role in determining the nature of democratic politics. When a large segment of this class starts relying on community resources, it is community identities and networks that are going to take over the social and public arena.
This will undoubtedly give a fresh lease of life to identity-based parties which stand somewhat isolated today. Parties like BJP have so far been complaining of special treatment accorded to minorities.
But we will soon find them and other like-minded groups supporting commu-nity-based institutions and rushing to set up charitable trusts and institutions to win favour with the majority community.
In doing so they would easily emerge as saviours of the common man, and most certainly of the bourgeoning middle class within the Hindu community.
It is not the fate of political parties that is of concern here. What matters is the kind of civil society and citizens that are likely to emerge in a context where community-run educational institutions are pivotal players.
For some time now we have focused on the real possibility of caste identities becoming fixed markers of our identity on account of caste-based reservation policy.
It is time to recognise that steady increase in reservation quotas is likely to trigger a process of desecularisation along with the consolidation of majority community identity and this is going to have serious implications for the future of secular India.
The writer is professor in politics, JNU.
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