Celebrating difference

Preservation of diversity is the rationale behind minority rights as enshrined in the Constitution

- FAIZAN MUSTAFA

Any constitution as a social contract is a sacred covenant between people and state. The Indian Constitution as a progressive and far-sighted document made provisions for the protection of minority rights, and the Supreme Court further widened the ambit of this protection. Why are minority rights important? What are these rights? How has judiciary interpreted them? What role do minority institutions play in the nation-building? Who benefits from these institutions?

“It is well known that during the Middle Ages, the accepted notion was that sovereigns were entitled to impose their own religion on their subjects, and those who did not conform to it could be dealt with as traitors. It was this notion that was responsible, during the 16th and 17th centuries, for numerous wars between nations and for civil wars in the continent of Europe, and it was only latterly that it came to be recognised that freedom of religion is not incompatible with good citizenship and loyalty to the state, and that all progressive societies should respect the religious beliefs of their minorities. It is this concept that is embodied in Articles 25, 26, 29 and 30 of the Constitution,” observed Justice Venkatarama Aiyar in the advisory opinion of the Supreme Court in the Kerala Education Bill (1957).