Highlights

• How do you realistically define a minority?
• Such Minorities may need some protection, but when and where and in what situations?
• When subsidies and benefits are being offered to minorities, everyone wants to belong to a minority. Hence, minorities should be better defined.
• Our Constitution does not define minorities by religion, in fact it only hints at minorities based on languages and culture.

Quotations for Consideration

• “Individual Rights are the means of subordinating Society to moral law.” – Ayn Rand
• “The smallest minority on Earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” – Ayn Rand

Individual Rights are not subject to public vote, but perhaps only to social and cultural norms.

Key Concepts

The political function of rights is to protect minorities from oppression by majorities, which means that a majority has no rights to vote away the rights of a minority. What defines a minority and why it needs protection or reservation or special consideration? How can this be done without discrimination against other people in the region and without introducing divisive tendencies?

The smallest minority on the earth is the individual hence, individual rights are inalienable and cannot be made subject to a public vote unless such rights infringe on similar rights of other individuals. Therefore, the Rights of any minority are best protected by protecting individual Rights. However, as no Individual is an island it becomes necessary to consider the Rights of the Family / Clan or Jati/ Group to which he seeks to belong and ensure that such Rights do not clash with the Rights of other Individuals in similar groups, as called for by social and cultural norms.

Also, we should not try to confuse matters by trying to put individuals into groups of race and caste and slightly different religious beliefs and hence call them a minority or a majority. Who decides which individuals go into which groups. Of course, each minority group has even more minorities within it.

Our Constitution does not define a minority; it definitely did not even contemplate a religion-based minority. The Minority Ministry / Commission etc. are all instruments of political appeasement for Votes introduced many years later and mostly even without proper procedures, and should now be done away with.

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