IN
ALL THIS debate about St. Stephen’s College and its decision to go and
have a Dalit Christian reservation, we have not taken time to unpack
the concept of the minority institution. When the constitution
guaranteed the minorities the right to start and manage their own
institutions, they were not handing out freebies. The liberal climate
that prevailed when the constitution was being drafted had the vision
of a welfare state. They wanted the constitution to lay the foundation
of a secular state where all sections of society would live with their
identity and culture intact. It was such a benevolent gesture that made
them reserve two seats in parliament for members of the Anglo Indian
community, a practice that continues to this day, though the population
of Anglo Indians might number in thousands. Probably the two Anglo
Indian members of Parliament represent their constituency more
effectively than the elected members if the ratios and the
representation formulae are taken into consideration.
The
minority institutions that were typically envisaged to enjoy the
state’s protection were those, which would actually serve to preserve
minority languages, customs and traditions. The feeling was that
minorities could get overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the majority
community surrounding them and their culture and unique identity could
just get subsumed into one large anonymous melting pot. So they needed
a helping hand and the benign protection of the state. In this
understanding of the concept, if a minority institution is not doing
its job of preserving the ethos and culture and traditions and identity
of a community, it is not really doing its job. A bunch of Muslims or
Christians or Sikhs could get together and run a secretarial institute
or a typing college or even a degree college running conventional BA
and B.Com courses. Would such institutes qualify to be a minority
institute? Not really in the spirit of the constitution.
The Christian Medical College, Vellore
has put it well. When asked to explain why it should reserve so many
seats for Christians when it was just another medical college, it
replied that it wasn’t just another medical college. It put forward the
very correct argument that running hospitals and clinics and providing
affordable healthcare to the poor was an important function of the
church from its earliest history in India and Vellore
was training doctors to continue and preserve that tradition of the
church. It was not another commercial minded, doctor generating machine
but an instrument to preserve the identity of the Christian community
in India which has always been associated with a spirit of service and especially so in the fields of health and education.
Another example one could cite is that of the Jamia Hamdard University in Delhi.
Run by the foundation associated with the makers of the famous sherbet
Rooh Afzah, the campus has a distinctly Muslim feel to it. It teaches
conventional courses all right, but also has an impressive array of
courses relating to Islamic theology, Persian, Arabic, Unani medicine
and other facets of liberal Islamic culture.
But
not every institution is CMC Vellore or Jamia Hamdard. I know of many
several church-run institutions- (and this is very likely true in the
in instances of other communities as well) where there is very little
of Christ or His teaching to be seen or heard. What makes it a minority
institution is that the Board of Management is headed by some Bishop or
Priest or church official. The Bible is seldom referred to or opened,
students go to tepid moral science classes and the morning assembly is
anemic. When the church is persecuted from time to time, it is common
to hear that many eminent people attended such and such Christian
school. Well they might have done so but the moot question is whether
they were exposed to the teachings of Jesus in their student days or it
just happened that the school happened to be run by some religious
order or denomination but beyond these legal niceties, it ran as any
secular institution would do.
The
plumb line to determine if any institution is a minority institution –
be it linguistic or religious or ethnic is to examine what minority
values and cultures are being imparted there. If after studying in a
Christian school for ten years or more, a child comes out with
negligible knowledge of the church, its contribution to nation building
and the Bible or if a Sikh institution teaches little about the history
of the community, the valor and sacrifices of the Sikh Gurus or the
Guru Granth Sahib, then in what way is the establishment representative
of the Christians or the Sikhs? They are no more than secular
institutes, which just happen to be run by a group of people who speak
a particular language or profess a particular religion.
Let
me end with an example from my own life. I studied in a school run by
the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The Ashram management in no sense of the term
attempted to†convert†any one to Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy but in
every turn and gesture, they indicated in word and deed, that they
cherished Sri Aurobindo and his successor, The Mother and their
teaching wasn’t just lip service for them. Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy
is not easy to understand, but in the school assembly where his
teachings were unabashedly taught, the school principal and other
speakers made every effort to present them with passion and reverence
and the atmosphere was live and electric and Sri Aurobindo’s thinking
and influence was every where and it wasn’t phony.
My
Ashram school of course wasn’t a minority institution, but to me it
represents all that a minority institution should be. Its mandate was
to promote the teachings and ideas of Sri Aurobindo and it did so
earnestly and with compassion and grace. In the same way, the
definition of what is a minority institution is not to be determined by
who owns a piece of property or who sits in the board room but by the
larger question ---- is the institution fulfilling its mandate?