Constituent assembly debates: Different approaches used to address the minority question in India

Description

Page: 1411-1416

Rozy Malik (Department of Political Science, University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir)

Since the colonial period, the special rights and representation of religious minorities as a positive discrimination has been a debatable issue. However, the Constituent Assembly period was a crucial period in deciding the pattern through, which what types of rights and representation should be given to them in order to protect their interest in the future form of government. Initially, the Constituent Assembly of India granted group rights to the religious minorities in the legislature, quotas in the civil service, and collective cultural and educational rights in order to provide their representation and to protect their rights and interests. During the initial period of framing a constitution, both the rights and representation were enjoyed by the religious minorities. However, after partition of India, criteria on the basis of which groups’ rights enjoyed by the religious minorities in the representation, service came to be fundamentally redefined, which exclude religious minorities from its scope and include the Schedule caste and Schedule tribe to avail such protection. In spite of demanding of their representation through proportional representation or reserved seats in the law making body, the nationalist opinion had decided to address the religious minority’s problem on the basis of secularism, educational and cultural rights only. It raises many questions that despite the group’s rights to the religious minorities in the law making body, government service etc. in the first draft of the constitution, what happened in India that made the Constituent Assembly to exclude them from its purview? This paper finds out the reasons of why the religious minorities have the rights only, not the representation in the form of reserved seats or proportionate representation in the post-partition period that was enjoyed since the colonial period.