HVK Archives: Defining minorities in India
Defining minorities in India - The Observer
Posted By Ashok V Chowgule (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
October 17, 1996
Even though the word "minorities' forms part of the
popular political vocabulary in the country, its precise
connotation is far from satisfactory. Usually, it is
used to denote those non-Hindu religious communities
whose members are for one reason or the other inclined to
assert their distinctiveness in relation to the Hindu
community. Thus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis and
Jews are commonly described as minorities in India.
Members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
whose members are in many ways more severely disadvan-
taged are hardly ever characterised as minorities. On
the whole, therefore, the word 'minorities' seems in
India to have been narrowly defined and denotes religious
communities whose members project themselves as being
different from the majority community-
This narrowing down of the connotation of the word
'minorities' is unfortunate. Minorities cannot be based
on religious difference. They are based on social disad-
vantage and deprivation. Even if the application of the
word 'minorities' to the religious communities carries
the connotation that they are in some ways socially
disadvantaged, arbitrarily restricting its application to
religious minorities ignores the fundamental nature of
Indian society. There is, therefore, need to see the
concept of minorities in a vastly broadened perspective.
Indian society is among the world's most inequitous.
Analyses of Indian society have tended to suggest that
such inequity as exists is associated with social commu-
nities whose boundaries are clearly defined and fixed.
Our contention is that this is a gross misrepresentation
of the reality of Indian society. Indian society is
essentially a segmentary society wherein every social
community unites itself against others and at the same
time becomes segmented into smaller social communities.
Further, inequities exist in this society at every level
of segmentation of social community. A social community
considered advantaged in relation to other similar social
communities may contain within it two sub-communities one
of which may be more advantaged than the other. Perhaps,
the case of the Brahmins in Northern India would serve to
illustrate this point. The Brahmins are recognised to be
an extremely advantaged group by virtue of their caste
standing, hold over land and access to higher education
and administration. However, this advantaged position of
the Brahmins obtains in relation to other castes and
communities. Within the Brahmin social community the
Saryupari Brahmins are disadvantaged in relation to the
Kanya Kubja Brahmins. Or, again, within the Kanya Kubja
Brahmin social community, the Bis Biswa Brahmins are more
advantaged than the Sola Biswa Brahmins. The situation
in respect of such segmentation and distribution of
social advantages is not particularly different among
other social communities whether or not they are recog-
nised as minorities.
The implications of this are obvious. Every social
community in India is a minority at some level of social
segmentation or another. In other words, it is problem-
atic in the Indian context to speak of some social commu-
nities as minorities and to contrast them with the major-
ity or to assume that the minorities are any more disad-
vantaged and deprived than other social communities.
Everyone in Indian society is in one sense or the other
disadvantaged as the claim of the Brahmins in South India
that they should be granted reservation amply demon-
strates. Perhaps, the only difference is in the degree,
scale and intensity of the disadvantage and deprivation
they can be said to suffer and reflect.
Since inequity and social deprivation is all-pervading
within Indian society, it seems that we can classify
Indian social communities at any level of social organi-
sation into two broad categories. The first category
will be of those communities which are undoubtedly de-
prived but whose disadvantage and deprivation is rela-
tive. They are advantaged in relation to some social
communities but disadvantaged and deprived in relation to
certain other social communities. The other category
will be of those social communities whose deprivation and
social disadvantage is absolute. They are disadvantaged
in relation to all other social communities and are
advantaged in relation to no social community.
It may be asked how or on what criteria is on, to deter-
mine whether a social community is to be classified as
relatively deprived or absolutely deprived. It may be
contended that attempting such a classification of social
communities in Indian society will call for evolving
elaborate indices of the decree, depth and intensity of
social and economic deprivation. Fortunately, this is
not an insurmountable difficulty. It will be conceded
that access to political power, the degree of social
homogeneity and absence or otherwise of internal economic
differentiation within the community and the intensity of
social disabilities to which a social community has been
exposed are fairly reliable indices of deprivation and
can serve as a basis for distinguishing the social commu-
nities along the relatively deprived absolutely deprived
axis. The position of each community in terms of these
three indices is already known and is a principal deter-
minant of the position which they occupy in contemporary
society.
Once we begin to look at the social communities in India
in terms of the principle already enunciated, it would be
evident that the conventional orientation to see social
communities in terms of minority-majority or even to
isolate some communities as minorities tends to distort
the nature of their social and educational disadvantages.
Some social communities -which would in terms of their
identification as minorities seem to be disadvantaged and
therefore deserving of special consideration in educa-
tional development would turn out to be merely relatively
deprived. If the objective is to work towards the all-
round educational development of social communities which
have so far been denied equality of educational opportu-
nities, we must work towards the strategies for the
purpose in terms of clear distinction of the communities
according to whether they are relatively or absolutely
deprived and not necessarily whether they are minorities
or otherwise.
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