Minority rights have been accepted into the cannons of both the international human rights law and the constitutional laws in most of the post-colonial nation States. Minorities world over – religious, linguistic and ethnic –have been constitutionally recognised as groups needing special protection and safeguards from the majoritarian attitudes or policies of discrimination towards their legitimate interests. Indian Constitutional law is one of the best in the world to provide a detailed catalogue of human rights to which every individual, including those belonging to religious and linguistic minorities, is entitled to enjoy without any discrimination. Besides this, every minority group enjoys religious, linguistic, cultural and educational rights. This paper deals with the rights of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions under the Constitution of India. It explores the Constituent Assembly debates and text of the Indian Constitution on Article 30, which grants minorities to establish their own educational institutions. Further,the paper looks into the various Supreme Court decisions on the subject in order to better understand the jurisprudence of this fundamental right. The debate in the Constituent Assembly was full of containment as the draft articles on the minority educational institutions were criticised as being group rights and were argued as being against the concept of democracy, justice, and secularism. Also, it was feared by some that it might underpin the national unity. This is one of the reasons behind ambiguous nature of this provision. The biggest loophole of this provision is that it does not define the term “minority”. Despite these problems,the paper argues that Article 30 offers an important space to the minorities to shape their educational situation in accordance to their desires and should be encouraged as it helps the State in dealing with culture-specific factors behind their educational backwardness.
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Taking a clue from The Objective Resolution, moved by Jawahar Lal Nehru at the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly which contained a pledge that adequate safeguards shall be provided for minorities, Article 30 (1) of the Constitution has enshrined a guarantee to all minorities, whether based on religion or on language, the right to establish and administer educational institution of their choice. The state was prohibited from discriminating against any educational institution on the ground that it was under the management of a religious or linguistic minority (Article 30 (2). Several questions have been raised before the Courts in India, especially the High Coutts and the Supreme Court, whenever the state failed to provide adequate protection to minorities including the Article 30 of the Constitution. As a matter of chance, the pronouncement of the Courts have not been consistent in this regard. Sometimes the protection under Art. 30 (1) was declared as " Special Right " and other times the principle of " Equal Rights " was upheld. Similarly, the distinction between " State-aided " minority educational institutions and " unaided " ones also cost differing judgments. Even in case of Right to Education (Article 21-A), varying views were expressed by the courts regarding minority safeguards. At present, there persists a state of confusion regarding interpretation of Article 30 which needs to be clarified by a larger bench of the Supreme Court. This paper deals with such and other related issues and tries to find a few answers within the ambit of the Constitution.
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The Indian Journal of Politics
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights describes the right to education as a fundamental human right as well as a necessary means of realizing other human rights. To reach its goal, education to all, the United Nations (UN) have included the right to education in its various documents. Many regional and national documents also guaranteed this right under their territory. Minority communities are provided with some special provisions for education by the UN as well as by almost all the countries, including India. Despite national and international obligations to make education accessible to all, the reality of implementation of the provisions concerning the right to education of minorities is far different. This paper aims to shed light on the provisions related to the right to education of minorities under various international and national documents and address the issues that become a hurdle for the minorities in enjoying these rights. A detailed discussion about provisions related to minority education in India, both the constitutional and the statutory has been added in the paper. It also includes, with suggested solutions, the failure of governing bodies to eradicate the flaws at the implementation level that has become a barrier in achieving the constitutional motto of equal opportunity. Keywords: Human Rights, Minorities, Right to Education, United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals
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Economic and Political Weekly Vol.XL, No. 24
The paper looks at the social reality of minority rights in education in India, a country that is recognized as a country that acknowledges minority rights as fundamental rights. Through an analysis of court cases on Article 30 of the Indian constitution the paper sketches a disappointing picture revealing suspicious government and crunching spaces for the minorities.
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India, the largest democracy of the world is a land of religious, cultural and linguistic diversity. Correspondingly we have the division of population into a majority and several minorities on the basis of religious, cultural as well as on linguistic communities.
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