It is a rare country where the word minority can be made to bear major loads. The word encompasses a bewildering range of meanings and evokes a chaotic array of emotional, ideological and intellectual responses. Rather amusingly, a hint of these can be found in the National Commission for Minorities?s reaction to the Supreme Court?s comment that listing religious groups as minority communities should be discouraged. Also, that the existing groups should be gradually done away with. Welcoming the court?s suggestion, the NCM said that one of the goals of Indian polity is to improve the socio-economic standards of minority communities so that they do not remain ?mere minorities?. The last phrase suggests a complicated blend of concern, condescension and confidence, and mixes up the qualitative with the quantitative. The NCM says blithely that it will soon send to the government its observations about ways to create better socio-economic conditions for minorities, almost as if it has come upon a bright new idea.

The reaction and its rhetoric are manifestations of precisely the attitude that the Supreme Court has implicitly questioned in its comments. The context was the court?s rejection of the appeal of the Jain community for minority status. The confusion that has slowly grown up around the concept of minorityism is a result of politicization. Religious minorities or linguistic minorities can be seen sometimes to overlap with underprivileged classes coming under reservation quotas. The advantages or concessions given to religious minorities are perceived as desirable enough by themselves. Occasionally, these are combined with concessions given to the reserved group with which the community may overlap. The whole exercise becomes self-defeating; the constitutional ideal aiming ultimately at the creation of similar socio-economic conditions, and equal opportunities for everybody is reduced to a race for various types of special status in competition with other groups.

The Supreme Court has attempted to right the balance. Instead of encouraging division by enlarging the list of religious groups in a country torn by class and economic disparities, the aim should be to narrow the gap in socio-economic standards between the privileged and the underprivileged. As a matter of fact, socio-economic standards are not uniformly low among all religious groups. The Supreme Court?s comments expose the intentional equation of ?minority? and ?disadvantaged? by politicians for purposes of their own. The remarks can be read as a criticism of the divisive tactics of politicians in the name of social justice. The dispensing of advantages in order to nurture caste-based and religion-based constituencies is the best way to distort the constitutional goal. The Supreme Court has quietly reminded rulers and lawmakers that the way to cohesion and equality lies in exactly the opposite direction.