The issue of minority rights, that has been historically negotiated through the freedom struggie, and that has been grantéd constitutional sanction, should have been settled by now. The uncomfortable truth is that it has, in recent times, been re- opened and challenged. Whereas, well meaning sections of public opinion wonder why minorities should possess cultural rights at all, rabid groups affiliated to the Sangh Parivar have been repeatedly targeting the minorities. Witness the (recent) attacks on Christian missionary establishments in Mathura and in Agra and read it along with reports of police brutality on the students in Jamia Millia Islamia.
The PM ... has. stated. that ... "our" secularism treats all religions equally without making any distinctions ... On the face of it, this is not an illegitimate reading of secularism, which has been interpreted in and for the country as sarva dharma sambhava or equality of all religions. In effect, note that secularism is a derivative principle; derived from the precept of formal equality. Formal equality tells us that each individual or group should, be treated with equal care and concern, and that no one will be discriminated against on any ground that is morally irrelevant such as class, caste, gender, or religion. This is a familiar reading of liberal equality, and it continues to attract many informed minds ...
But matters are infinitely more complicated when we look closely at the principle of formal equality. It, in effect, may actually prove the ultimate chimera. For defenders of formal equality just do not take into account the fact that the constituency we intend to treat equally -"without making any distinctions" - is profoundly unequal. Inequality takes many forms: some are powerful others powerless, some wealthy others poor, some effective and authoritative others neither, and some are numerically superior and others numerically inferior. We, accordingly, realise that in our constituency some are deprivileged and unequal by virtue of the fact that they possess less resources or no resources for reasons that are outside their control - historical deprivation for instance. We also realise that some by virtue of numerical inferiority are simply outnumbered on matters that are vital to them, such as religious belief and practices. Therefore, they are profoundly vulnerable to majority decisions.
Note that if we treat all of them equally, we land up reproducing inequality. This is known. as the "equalitarian's dilemma". In fact, equal treatment of unequal agents cannot rectify their inequality; it may well further it. ... Formal equality reproduces and intensifies inequality within society. It is quite likely - given social and cultural inequalities - that no commitment to formal equality would prevent some from having an undue advantage over all others. The moment we recognise this, we recognise the difference between equalitarianism and egalitarianism.
There is, therefore, need to go beyond formal equality to the domain of inequality, to understand the dynamics of .the equality principle, (just) Marx invited us to leave the market place with its pretensions of formal equality, and go beyond to the sphere of production, where ostensibly equal persons, turn out to be the capitalist and the worker -the former strutting and simpering, the latter expecting nothing but a hiding. And here we may realise, that in order to ensure equality, we may have to protect the weaker sections or the minorities through special measures, so that they can aspire to some form of equality with the rest. It is only then that we make the transition from formal to substantive equality, or from equalitarianism to egalitarianism. The paradox of the equality principle is that to ensure a rough equality among groups that are unequally situated in society, we may need to treat them unequally. ... There is nothing contradictory about an argument that states that (a) we need to distribute rights unequally to ensure equality, or that (b) we protect whatever rights minorities already possess through the institutionalisation of measures that the majority does not require. For the latter are already secure in their possession of the good, whereas the former are always vulnerable.
Therefore, we adopt both differential rights, as well as protective measures to realise the fundamental assumptions of equality - in this case secularism. It was this recognition that underlay the Motilal Nehru report of 1928. The rights of minority communities to their religion in the 1928 Constitution were recognised for a variety of reasons: but primarily to guard the minorities against majoritarianism and in order to prevent harassment and exploitation of one group by another. Whereas the broader principle, i.e. sarva dharma Samabhava, served to regulate relations between communities in general, minority rights were granted to offset the fears of the religious minorities that they would be swamped in a majoritarian India.
Minority rights were ... instituted in the Constitution according to the same logic that dictated protective discrimination for the weaker sections. In both cases, special protection was enacted to institute substantive equality. And it is only substantive equality that underlies. secularism. Otherwise, secularism, operating on the understanding of formal equality, can easily slide into denial of minority rights, and the legitimation of majoritarianism. (Source: The 'Hindu, 2 May, 2000)
