Jan-March 2006 - Institute of Sikh Studies

MINORITY RIGHTS ARE INDIVISIBLE59(Cabinet Mission) Plan. It is true that Azad did his utmost to preventPartition but failed to persuade Nehru and Gandhi not to accept it.But this relates to the very end of the sad chapter.Secondly, Justice Dharmadhikari’s thesis states that in order toally the fears and apprehensions in the minds of the Muslims and theChristians, the Constitution provided them special guarantees andprotected their religious, cultural and educational rights in the formof Articles 25 to 30. This is an absurd reading of the Constitution.Articles 25-28 relate to the freedom of religion and are universal intheir application to all citizens. Articles 29 and 30 relate to culturaland educational rights of minorities. Both sets distinct from eachother, both in scope and purview, form part of the Fundamental Rights.Then the obiter dicta says that only Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indiansand Parsis are recognised as religious minorities at the national level andattributes the size of the Muslim and Christian communities to the durationof Mughal and British rule! It hints as if the objective of the Mughal Stateand British rule was conversion. This is far from the truth.The obiter dicta describes the Sikhs and the Jains as “so-calledminority communities,” which have “throughout been treated as partof the larger Hindu community”. It seeks to reduce them to sects orsub-sects of the Hindu religion.The fact is that in making the Constitution, the Sikhs, Buddhists,Jains and Parsis all were recognised as minorities.But the real purpose of Mr Justice Dharmadhikari’s travel intothe uncharted terrorities, without a compass, becomes apparent whenhe identifies Jainism with what he calls Hindu Vedic religion, thoughthe Jains reject the Vedas and the Brahminical philosophy, as theirTirthankaras and specially Mahavir have charted their own spiritualcourse like Buddhism.Then he comes to his final conclusion: “Hinduism can be calleda general religion and common faith of India.” He thus elevatesHinduism above other religions of India and equates Hinduism withIndianness. This is an anti-thesis of the constitutional principle ofequality of all religions which implies that religions, whatever thenumber of their followers, are equal before the law and that nodistinction can be made among them on the ground of origin, i.e.,where they were born! This projected superiority of Hinduism is not