#dnaEdit: Minority bogey

The plans announced by the Bharatiya Shiksha Mandal (BSM), the education wing of the RSS, to seek Supreme Court intervention or constitutional amendments, to stop educational institutions from misusing their minority status, will raise concerns among the minorities. The Mandal alleges that minority institutions are misusing their privileged position by admitting more general students than the minorities they claim to represent. The Mandal wants the definition of a minority institution to be based on the number of minority students admitted, rather than the composition of the management. However, coming from a Sangh Parivar constituent the demand will raise suspicions that it is another attempt to marginalise the minorities. For example, the Christian community has achieved a fair measure of credibility in establishing and administering educational institutions. At the same time the community constitutes hardly two per cent of the country and will find it impossible to run schools and colleges if it was constrained to admit more Christian students. The question then is, why grant them the “minority” tag? Can’t they not function like other non-minority schools? To answer this, it may be recalled that the concept of “minority institutions” harks back to Partition when the Indian government hardwired the protection of minorities into the Constitution to assuage their fears of majoritarianism.

The BSM’s strategy of approaching the Supreme Court is interesting because the court has throughout held that the only test to determine the minority status of an educational institution was whether it is established and administered by minorities, and not whether it is running for the benefit of the minority. Moreover, Article 30 of the Constitution enshrines the concept of minority institutions by specifically stating the “right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions”. In 2004, the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions Act was enacted to give statutory clarity to the “minority institution” tag. The guidelines for the Act allow the state government to prescribe the percentage of minority students that have to be admitted. However, the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that where there were not enough students from the minority community, the management was free to admit students from other communities.

Of course, the benefits that come with minority status have made such institutions a lucrative and a less-regulated proposition. For instance, minority institutions are exempted from compliance with the reservation policy and are free to recruit teachers and appoint principals without following governmental prescriptions on seniority and working conditions. Further, the Right to Education Act provisions mandating reservation for economically weaker sections does not apply to them after a May 2014 Supreme Court judgment. Some of the policy decisions and rulings have admittedly created a situation where the minorities appear to be a pampered lot. But rather than being influenced by ideologically motivated entities like the BSM, it is for the State to ensure that the minority status is not being misused. For example, it can stipulate that all minority aided institutions must follow the official reservation and recruitment policies. The SC ruling on the RTE Act’s inapplicability to minority institutions is unfortunate and must be overcome by legislation. Such measures will discourage those seeking to reap monetary benefit from education without demanding minority status. An important question to be raised is the BSM’s motivations. In a country with shockingly poor learning outcomes, the BSM appears to be unhappy that more non-minority students are choosing to study in minority institutions. The BSM would have done better to campaign against schools denying admissions to EWS students under the RTI Act and the poor teaching standards in government schools. By choosing to rail against minority institutions, the Shiksha Mandal is missing the woods for the trees.