Just before the 2014 General Election, Rahul Gandhi pushed and conferred special minority status on the Jain community. Reservations and special minority status and their attendant privileges found a place in the Constitution of India thanks to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and his experiences while growing up.
However, communities and sections of the society were granted special minority status and provided reservations to ensure that eons old prejudices and inequalities were erased giving all citizens of the country an equal chance on a level playing field.
Members of the Constituent Assembly did not want or expect reservations to exist beyond a decade. However, almost seven decades since Independence, not only do reservations and special minority statuses exist, they keep growing.
Politicians in India seem to know only one method of getting votes: creating “vote banks”. Every group of people is viewed as a potential vote bank. Politicians try to make a group feel obligated to them in some way so that when time comes to vote, that group or section chooses the obliging Party – and minority status seems to be the easiest method. (Ironically, the day the status was given to Jains, WhatsApp was filled with messages from Jains saying, “Rahul Gandhi may have called us minority and given us that status, but we will vote for Modi.”)
In making Jains “special” or “minority” the very ideal behind reservations and the special status is contravened. Like Parsis, this community that has always been peaceful and has been a homogeneous part of the society. Jains are amongst the richest community in the country and constitute a large percentage of the diamond market.
Jains did not feel underprivileged or discriminated against. They never agitated. Like Parsis again, Jains simply went their successful way building numerous institutions and interventions to take care of the less privileged in their community. Since the successful and the rich outnumber the poor in the community, no one was left wanting. In their world, India presented a level playing field.
Additionally by making Jains “minority” one more pigeonhole has been created. The evil of calling someone minority is creating a mindset of discrimination amongst them. The label carries a number of judgements within it. It makes the person labelling feel superior. It makes the person receiving the label feel a burden of prejudice against the, It creates aggression in the labelled. And most importantly it divides the society endlessly because each time a line is drawn to separate a group, it creates a new “us” and “them” where each is distrustful of the other.
By receiving this “status” an erstwhile peaceable group will now firstly feel less privileged and more discriminated against and secondly start their own agitations for their reservations.
What do all these special minority statuses and reservations mean? This is best encapsulated by Neeti Pandit (name changed to protect identity):
“I am a Hindu, so that means that I am not allowed to take pride in my religion and have to always wear a shroud of secrecy over the fact that I think Sanaatan Dharma is absolutely great.
“I am a Brahmin so that means that I have to fear discrimination because of something someone somewhere did 5,000 years ago.
“I am a Hindu Brahmin so that means that I do not deserve equal opportunity for either education or jobs.
“I am a non-Maharashtrian living in Maharashtra so I am a perennial “outsider” irrespective of the fact that I was born and brought up here.
I am a salaried person from the desperately struggling middle-class so that means that I do not deserve any consideration for shelter, on the contrary, I am expected to pay for the entire country via all the taxes which don’t apply to the poor and which don’t matter to the rich.
“I am a woman, an increasingly diminishing community in India (the gender ratios over the years prove this) and have to constantly fear emotional, verbal, physical and sexual abuse from the dominant community (men).
“I am gay. That makes me criminal.
“Who am I in India? – but saare jahan se achcha…”
This brings into sharp relief the truth that everyone in India is slowly but surely being pigeonholed into a vote bank of one person per bank. We have minorities of language, religion, caste, creed, class, gender and age. Everyone has been made “minority” on some parameter or the other.
Like Australia, India needs to end all these vote banks and view all people as equal. Irrespective of caste, creed, age, class, gender, religion or anything else, if you are a citizen of India, you are an Indian and the country will treat you equal in law, rights and duties.
Is it too much of a utopian dream to hope for personhood and equality in India?
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