No reason why AMU must have minority status
The Union Government's decision to not challenge a decade-old Allahabad High Court verdict which refused to hold Aligarh Muslim University as a ‘minority' educational institution, has got nothing to do with ‘going against the interests of the country's Muslim community', as opposition parties have been alleging. When Attorney General of India Mukul Rohatgi told the Supreme Court on Monday that the Centre would withdraw the challenge filed by the then Congress-led UPA Government against the High Court order, he was only seeking to set the record straight as far as the law was concerned. The basic premise of his argument — and it is difficult to fault it — is that a Central institution which has been created through an Act of Parliament in a secular nation, cannot hold a special status on the basis of religion. While the Attorney General has sought eight weeks' time to file an affidavit formalising the official position, it is clear that the Centre is in no mood to allow the sustenance of minority status for AMU. The political storm which the Modi Government's position has aroused has its roots in the conduct of earlier regimes on this issue. Had they not played vote-bank politics, the subject would not have led to such passion or distorted interpretation. Unfortunately, AMU has today become a ‘symbol' of minority appeasement/empowerment.
To begin from the beginning, AMU was born in 1920 when the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, established by Sir Syed Ahmad in 1875, was converted into a university by an Act of Parliament. Notably, this Act, which is the legal foundation upon which the university stands, did not initially define AMU as a minority institution. It merely allowed certain privileges for Muslim students. Any lingering doubt on this matter was cleared in the 1967 Azeez Basha case wherein a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that AMU was not a minority institution. The court made it clear that even though AMU was formed upon the conversion of MAO College, it was legally brought into force by an Act of Parliament. This takes us to the subsequent argument that it is unconstitutional for the Government to set up an institution which discriminates on the grounds of religion. The situation, however, was complicated by Indira Gandhi's Government which, in 1981, bypassed the Azeez Basha judgement and amended the 1920 Act to label AMU as a minority institution in no uncertain terms. In 2006, the Allahabad High Court sought to course-correct by setting aside the 1981 Amendment. This was challenged by the Congress-led Government of that day. Now, the BJP-led regime at the Centre has sought to withdraw that challenge. In essence, this is a legal response to the Congress’s political mess. Moreover, those using the ‘minority institution' tag to judge the Government's commitment to minority communities should keep in mind that a tag doesn't guarantee quality or equality in education.