Revisiting the Republic’s relations with minorities

There is a unique feature of our republican democracy, which is mostly ignored in our public debates. For the sake of analysis, we may talk about three unwritten theses, which have emerged in post-1950s India to deal with the question of minority: One, the protection of minority cultures and religions is a precondition for the success of democracy; two, the minority-majority framework is completely irrelevant in the Indian context; hence it must be abandoned to achieve the equality of all citizens; three, a minority community is not a monolith, they are internal divisions within. The Principles and Policies of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh published in 1973 notes: “It is wrong to classify Indian people into majority and minority sections on the basis of their religion and to formulate political, social or economic policies on that basis.” It further suggests that the government “will have to make conscious efforts to change the historical thought processes which have given birth to the Pakistani mentality” and that “Christian and other missionaries… will have to be freed from foreign influence”. The Constitution also celebrates India’s religious and cultural diversity and directs the State to create an environment in which all minority groups can express themselves freely. The three positions emphasised in the Constitution — protection of minority rights for democratic success, rejection of a majority/minority framework for achieving oneness of a people, and the acceptance of minorities within the minority community — underline the ever-evolving meanings of republican democracy in the Indian context.