The constitution of India is the key organic document charting out the path of good governance of the country. Over the five decades, whenever and wherever bottlenecks occurred, these were sought to be removed by amendments to the Constitution. So much so, even Article 368, which lays down the procedure for amendment, was also amended so as to make our system truly parliamentary. The consultation papers issued by the National Commission to review the working of the Constitution, on the issues which relate directly to the healthy body politic and society are definitely signposts on the terrain of deliberative debates.

Partition: My chief concern here is about the condition of minorities in the country. The credit goes to the forefathers of the Constitution who created a secular State considering it as the right rebuff to the plausibility of theocratic assumptions. Partition of the country was seen as the defeat of a secular nationalist vision. It seems as if social upheavals and disruptions had torn the nationalist fabric. The communal dragon poisoned the system with its extremely harmful fangs. Nationalist politics of the pre-independence days lost its innocence. Muslim League, with religion as basis of politics, and its leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah with his loud trumpeted ‘Two Nation Theory’ succeeded in making religion as the basis of partition as well. Even large-scale migrations of population took place on religious basis. In such a communally surcharged atmosphere, drafting of a Constitution which pledged to make India a secular and democratic republic speaks volumes of social concerns and the vision of the forefathers. Concern for minorities stems from this commitment. Article 25, 29 and 30 were incorporated in the Constitution as safeguards for the minorities. In 1978, National Minority Commission was created and, in 1992, the Commission was made a statutory body standing as sentinel for the protection of the minority rights.

Confidence: In spite of these pious declarations and incorporations, the minorities still lack a sense of confidence and security. The cultural and education rights given to minorities are not unconditional as they have not absolute rights in matter of admission of candidates and in maintaining, managing and controlling their educational institutions. They do not feel free to enjoy and develop their belief, culture and language. Minorities should be understood as minorities in relation to the population of the country and not the State they are living in. Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Parsis should be considered as minorities in every State or region of the country. In many states the minority educational institutions have been denied the minority status. It should have been obligatory on the part of Government to provide this certificate to all minority run educational institutions. Various State Governments have taken different interpretations and ,in order to interfere in the management of the institutions, they have taken undue advantage of the grants-in-aid system for educational institutions. The interference by the Education Departments in all these institutions has become order of the day. Even in certain cases the courts have also given different judgements. Protection to minorities institutions which was guaranted under Article 30 is far from being real, I plead before the Review Commission that some obligatory provision be incorporated in Article 30 so as to remove confusion about this significant question.

Sikhs Wronged: I want to raise an important point before the Constitution Review Commission which concerns the Sikh community. There is no denying the fact that Hindus and Sikhs have common ancestors. Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism, was born in 1469 in a Hindu family. Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth Guru, created Khalsa in 1699 at Anandpur Sahib and, by doing so, Sikhism was given totally a distinctive new identity. The Sikh religion from that day became a separate religion having a sovereign doctrinal identity and it was given independent status as a religion in the comity of the religions of the world. The Sikhs and Hindus have been living like brothers and always fought against a common enemy who was invader from North West and they suffered jointly at the hands of those marauding tribes. It is not denying the fact that there are some similarities between the two religions. At the time of Partition of India they were jointly ousted from Pakistan and lacs of Hindus and Sikhs suffered heavily during that period. While Constitution of India was being framed, the forefathers, due to some wrong impressions and keeping in view of the gory happenings of Partition, considered Sikhs as a part of Hindus. While granting freedom of worship to all religions in India, they clubbed the Sikhs with Hindus in Article 25 of the Constitution. This diluted the independent identity of the Sikhism without considering it being an independent religion. Under this Article, Explanation II it is mentioned :

By reading this clause 2(b) and Explanation II of the Article it shows that the Members of the Constituent Assembly were not well conversant with the history of Sikhism, its tenets, traditions and culture. The clubbing in the clause certainly give wrong impression, and it has gone to the detriment of the interests of Sikhs. It has wrongly affected the identity of the Sikhs and has put question mark on their independent status as a separate religion. As I mentioned above, there are some cultural similarities between two religions but there is no ground to club them together.

The Constitution of the country is the supreme law of the land and whatever is written there is taken very seriously all over the world. Therefore, this Article has the potential of misleading the people regarding the real status of the Sikhism as a religion. It may be recalled that as a mark of protest, two Sikh members in the Constituent Assembly, who were representing Shiromani Akali Dal, namely, S. Hukam Singh and S. Bhupinder Singh Mann refused to put their signatures on the final draft of the Constitution of India. Recently, the High Court of Rajasthan gave a judgement in case of the Jain community which was granted a minority status by Rajasthan Government. The learned Judges, quoting the clubbing of Jains with Hindus in Art. 25, debarred the government from granting this status because "they are part of Hindu religion". I have a lurking fear that similar could be the fate of the Sikhs who are also clubbed in this clause with Hindus.

Confusion: There is one more confusion which has been created by the combined reading of Article 25 Clause 2(b) and Explanation II to the Article thereof, which provides for the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of public character to all classes of the Hindus. This clause creates a very embarrassing situation, when the Hindu institution is substituted by the word Sikh institution. The meaning of the same becomes as if the Sikh Institutions are not open to all classes of the Sikhs and the Government assistance is required for that purpose. In a way, it also gives clear reflection of prevailing of untouchability in Sikhism, which is against the principles of Sikhism. It is a known fact that, from the very beginning, Sikhs institutions were open to all classes of the people, not only to the Sikhs but also to all other religions. Sikhism does not believe in any kind of distinction between caste, creed and sex. Nobody can be stopped from entering any Gurdwara or any other Sikh institution on the basis of his religion. That would be something against the principles of Sikhism. The wording of this Article creates confusion regarding the history of Sikhism and the nature of its institutions. The Sikhs are also affected by other Acts, like Hindu Code Bill, Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act, etc. in violation of spirit of religion.

It is desired that Sikhism should harmoniously be mentioned in the Constitution of India and other Laws as an independent Religion keeping in view its history, traditions and culture. When Sikhism is universally acknowledged as an independent religion there is no point of describing Sikhism in any other manner in the Constitution of India. I plead before the Constitution Review Commission to do proper justice to this simple demand of the Sikhs.

It has been rightly argued that it is only the minorities who need protection, and Article 30, besides some other Articles, is intended to afford and guarantee that protection. It may seem paradoxical, but is nevertheless true that minorities can be protected not only if they have equality but also, in certain circumstances, have differential treatment. It would give them a sense of security and feeling of confidence. Special rights were designed to bring equality because that was going to be their real effect. If minorities are empowered, it will strengthen the ideological plank of secularism, pluralism and multi-culturalism. It is also to be understood that genuine struggles for identity recognition are not to be confused with aggressive regionalism.

Marginalised: The minorities do not arouse much concern although these are politically marginalized, educationally backward, socially vulnerable and economically impoverished. Any emphasis upon safeguarding the minority rights is defused by condemning it as minority appeasement. If one talks of minority rights, he or she is pejoratively labeled as communitarian. It is alleged that safeguards for minorities and socially vulnerable groups are obstacles in the course of nation building. Quite injudiciously, centrism and cultural homogenization has been equated with India’s unity and integrity. Hence, there is emphasis upon fighting the centrifugal tendencies and not upon creating decentralized structures of political and economic power. Constitution makers sought to cast Indian society and politics in the autonomous progressive, and modernizing mould. But that spirit has been lost at the altar of non-implementation. The minority rights guaranteed in the Constitution have not been fully implemented. Apparently the will to act on these is lacking.

The minorities need token representation in the Legislative Councils. The Government of India has already a provision of nominating two Anglo-Indians in the Rajya Sabha. It will be much better if a provision is made that in the list of nomination made by the Governors in their respective Legislative Councils, they include members of the minority communities in those States where they cannot be elected to the Legislative Assemblies. This will provide them a sense of satisfaction and pride to become the part of the legislative authority in the State.

Communalism: Most of the communal tensions in the country have arisen because of the misunderstanding by some of them of the freedom of the individual to profess, practise and propagate his religion as prescribed under Article 25. It is not being rightly understood by them that the right to propagate gives the right to disseminate the tenets of his religion by advocacy or preaching, but it does not include the right to convert. Taking the enormity of the problem in view, Supreme court had declared, in one of its judgments, that conversion into another religion by means of force, fraud, inducement or allurement is a penal offence. Such conversions also offend ‘public order, morality or health’. These are the three limitations upon the ‘right to propagate’. The framers of the Constitution were not aware of the misuse of the word ‘propagate’. I have observed, after going to various parts of the country, that this malady has spread in various regions. The word ‘propagate’ should be clearly defined so that one may not misuse it.

Plural Society: Need of the hour is to increase the ability of the state to accommodate pluralism, to eliminate hunger, to ensure right to survival, universal and free elementary education, basic health care, good governance and giving voice to the disadvantaged and deprived. There is a need to make effective use of science and technology. Welfare of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, backward classes; women and debilitated sections is to be taken care of. It is an uncomfortable fact that our record of human development is quite dismal. Disparities of income are increasing. Human dignity, human security and human spirit which formed the bedrock of the Constitution, starting right from the Preamble ,are not getting the place of priority. Hence reordering of priorities is needed.

Coalition Politics: We have now moved towards an era of national governments as broad coalitions comprising socially heterogeneous and politically incompatible partners. This political reality has both positive and negative aspects. It is positive because it is ascribed to participatory upsurge among the marginalized sections of Indian society and it is logical culmination of the democratic process, resulting in the unfoldment and assertion of all India polity. It is negative because regional formations do not remain confined to the regions which threw them up. They start aspiring for a share in power at the national level often at the cost of unaccommodated ambitions of the people living in that region. There should be some constitutional mechanism by way of which regionalisation may not affect the politics at the national level. Otherwise fissiparous tendencies will weaken the Indian nation. Vote bank politics which leads to ghettoized mentality and fragmentation of the social and political system is to be discouraged. Pocket boroughs are an undemocratic phenomenon.

Pledges made to the people of India have not been fully met with. To our dismay, the communal divide has been added by the economic divide and caste divide. We find ourselves standing on the edge of a dangerous cliff. These divides, if not dealt with properly, will tear the socio-political fabric of the State. Deterioration is to be stemmed. There is no room for complacency. I concede that minorities also have a constitutional duty to contribute to the vitality of the nation. Rabidly sectarian agenda will create intractable situations for them. They should not lag behind in nation building programmes and should be part of the nation as a whole where the prestige of nation is involved. Religion is truly a uniting force and should remain so.