A strange case is being debated in the Supreme Court these days. The matter is whether Hindus should be considered a minority in some states of India or not? Should the decision of being minority and majority be taken at the national level or at the state level? Till now, the number of people who are less religiously in the whole of India, they are considered as minority. On this scale, the central government has recognized Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains as minorities.
This belief also applies to these people in all the provinces. In the provinces where these people are in majority, they get all the facilities of the minorities. The number of such minorities is about 20 percent in the whole of India. Now such a petition has been made in the court that why are the states where Hindus are a minority, they are considered to be a majority there too?
For example, in Ladakh, Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Kashmir, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Punjab, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, the number of Hindus varies from just 1 percent to as much as 41 percent. Why are they not given all the facilities that minorities get in these states? The same applies on the basis of language as well. If Kannada speaking minorities are considered in Maharashtra, then why not Marathi speaking minorities in Karnataka? If language is made the basis of minority, then almost all the linguists of India can be considered as a minority in one or the other province.
The debate that the Supreme Court will conduct on this issue will be conducted in a tight circle and it may even give minority status to Hindus in some of the said states. But this minorityism itself is discarded in my opinion. It is wrong in itself to give minority or majority status to any person of the country on the basis of caste, religion and language. If it is extended to all in the states also, it will create innumerable troubles.
People of every section, getting caught in the greed of facilities, will be bent on getting themselves declared as a minority. Apart from this, the map of the states keeps on changing. Only those who are in majority in a state today can become a minority there tomorrow. Keeping people divided into two categories on the basis of caste, religion and language is also not proper from the point of view of national integration. Before calling themselves Indians, these people would be intent on describing themselves as persons of such and such caste, religion or language. This communal and social division keeps hollowing our democracy from within.
When ordinary people go to vote, they often base it on caste, religion and language, which is nothing but a wolf. Democracy becomes strong only when the voters cast their votes on the basis of pure merit. This is possible only when caste, religion and language are given very limited importance in our public and collective life. Imposing important identities of private life on public life is dangerous for any healthy democracy.
