The Supreme Court of India.
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The verdict of a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court which by a majority of 4:3 overruled a 56-year-old judgement and laid down the criteria for deciding the minority character of an institution is a landmark decision on minority rights. The court overturned the 1967 judgement in the Azeez Basha case which had denied the Aligarh Muslim University’s minority status on a very technical and narrow ground. The majority, led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, has ruled that the focus of the matter should be on AMU’s origins rather than its formal incorporation. Article 30 of the Constitution provides minorities with the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. AMU evolved from the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College set up in 1875 but got its legal status from the AMU Act of 1920. The 1967 judgement averred that AMU was established by government legislation and not by the community, and so denied it the status of a minority institution.
Parliament amended the AMU Act in 1981 to undo the 1967 judgement. Based on this, the university decided to reserve 50 per cent of seats in some postgraduate courses for Muslim students in 2005. The decision was challenged before the Allahabad High Court which relied on the Supreme Court’s 1967 verdict to rule that AMU was not a minority institution. The HC also struck down the reservation. The Supreme Court has now reversed the High Court judgement, citing debates in the Constituent Assembly and earlier judgments of the court, and based on a more inclusive reading of Article 30. The court made a liberal interpretation of the Article and ruled that its purpose was “to guarantee a ‘special right’ to religious and linguistic minorities that have established educational institutions”. It also said that “the state must grant the minority institution sufficient autonomy to enable it to protect the essentials of its minority character.”
The bench made it clear that it is not necessary that the administration of the institution must be vested in the minority itself to determine its minority character. It also held that the provision of religious instruction or the centrality of religious buildings was not an important consideration. The ruling has deferred the final decision on AMU’s status to a three-judge bench which will be guided by the court’s guidelines on the minority status. It will, hopefully, lead to a granting of the minority status which the university has been seeking for a long time. The court’s judgement is a welcome affirmation of the rights of minorities when there are many challenges to them. It underlines the value and role of minorities in society and the need for “special or additional protection... to ensure the cultural fabric of religious and linguistic minorities”.