India is different in having as head of state, a Muslim; as head of government, a Sikh and as head of the ruling Congress party, a Roman Catholic woman from Italy who is an Indian citizen by naturalization.

A Dalit woman ruled India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, till recently. This is a dramatic testament to the material reality of the constitutionally guaranteed principles of non- discrimination and equality for religious, linguistic and social minorities, as well as indigenous people.
But the challenge of India's plurality is enormous – eight major religions and myriad creeds, 800 languages of which 22 are 'official' languages, 8% of the population are indigenous peoples, a social mosaic of castes and sub castes and over 60 socio-cultural sub regions. Partition, the blooded separation of British India and the birth of two states, India and Pakistan (and in 1972 birth of the third state, Bangladesh), produced a definition of democracy with a strong obsession maintaining unity and integrity which nevertheless - to a certain extend - is recognizing asymmetric federalism to implement regional and community needs. Negative guarantees in the Indian Constitution provide that 'the state shall promote with special care the educational and economic interest of the weaker sections of the peoples'. But these guarantees are not enforceable by a court and their implementation is left to the discretion of the executive.

Secularism, as one of the pillars of Constitution, should treat all religions equally but in daily life it has got reduced to an administrative strategy to govern all communities without providing adequate protection for minority groups.

Especially people belonging to the main religious groups – Muslims, Sikhs and Christians – are unequal citizens and have been targets of community based violence and discrimination, particularly in relation to the 'public order'. While the Christians (2,5% of India's population) and Sikhs have not suffered from disadvantage in equal opportunities to education, employment and political representation, the Muslims, are set apart, in being marginalized and excluded.
Muslims for example, 12% of the total population of India and the third largest Muslim population in the world, have a poverty rate of 43% whereas the national average is 39% (National Sample Survey Organisation, 1999-2000). In rural areas Muslim landlessness is 51% as compared to 40% for Hindus. Literacy rates are substantially lower among Muslims, leading to deprivation of jobs in higher positions in government offices and skilled professions in the service sector. In urban areas, 60% of the Muslims have never gone to schools as against the national average of 20%. Only 5%of Muslim women have completed high school education and the income of the average Muslim is 11 % less than the national average. To this may be added the Kashmiri Muslim community, with its distinct political history and its guaranteed status of self rule in past, is a testimony to the betrayal of rights and the denial of justice to the Muslim population.

In the case of the Sikhs (2% of the Indian population), the geographic concentration of the community in the North (Punjab) has made possible the foundation of a political movement which objective was to create a single administrative unit where the interests of the Sikhs are specifically protected. The battle with the Centre over the demarcation of the boundary and the sharing of water resources started in the seventies and led to the military action in the Golden Temple on 5 June 1984 where 1000 Sikhs were killed, a large number of whom innocent pilgrims. The climax has been reached in November 1984, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards (31 October). For four days and four nights, Sikhs were beaten, hacked into pieces and burned to death by Hindu mobs. According to official estimates, at least 3000 Sikhs were killed. Some 50,000 people were displaced and tens of thousands of Sikh homes and business establishments were razed. This planned and by the authorities accepted violence produced consciousness of a Sikh 'ethnicity', among a community that had till then been well integrated.

Dalits, untouchables are over 16 % of the population, an overwhelmingly rural, poor and landless society excluded in the Indian Caste system. Although they have been beneficiaries of affirmative action for more than five decades, Dalits are still living in a subhuman way and suffering a form of apartheid. The category 'Scheduled Caste' for Dalits is a criteria for affirmative actions as reservations in educational institutes, public jobs or elected positions. Despite this, Dalits continue to be one of the most underprivileged groups in India. So in many parts of India, they are often excluded to enter Hindu temples or other holy places. Especially Dalit Christians and Muslims are even denied the status of 'Scheduled Caste' which would make them eligible for special development programmes or reserved seats in public institutions.

Adivasi (forest dwellers) historically treated as outside the caste system, continue to suffer severe discrimination and socio-economic marginalization. These 88 million people speak some 200 distinct languages and are concentrated largely, in the tribal belt of central India, with a second concentration in the northeast. The most significant concentration of tribal populations (2001 census) is in Chattisgrah (38%), Jharkhand (26%), Madhya Pradesh (20%), Orissa (22%), Andhra Pradesh (6%), Gujarat  (15%), Rajasthan (12%), Maharashtra (9% ) and Bihar (0,9%). 

The central government has carried out several plans of territorial reorganization, but finally failed to create new states with tribal concentrations. Instead of creating 'ethnic' states as Meghalya (85% tribal population), Nagaland (88%), Mizoram (95%), Arunachal Pradesh (64%), Manipur (34%), Tripura (31%) or Assam (12%), it has produced other ethnic groups to organize movements demanding special autonomy or separate states.
The majority-minority relationship becomes particularly problematic, when the public sphere is accessible to being taken over by the Hindu-majority determined to impose its values in large or total measure on state institutions, thereby equalizing the public and group interest. The convergence of state and majority community is most dramatically demonstrated in the anti Muslim violence in Gujarat 2002, and the tacit and active collusion of state institutions in abetting the carnage. The rise and hegemony of the homogenizing Hindutva movement led to the communalization of the fundamentalist politics of the former BJP-ruled government in institutions, police, administration and judiciary. The BJP slogan for the last election campaign "Shining India" underlined the economical prosperity of the country but has to be translated into "Shrinking India" in the case of minority protection.

More info:
"The No-Nonsense Guide to Minority Protection in South Asia"
http://www.eurac.edu/Press/Publications/Monographs/0059701.htm

10.01.07

Günther Rautz