Muslims have ceased to be minority in UP: HC

STATE AND RELIGION

In a highly controversial judgement, the Allahabad High Court today held that Muslims cannot be treated as a religious minority anymore in Uttar Pradesh.

The judgement is sure to be challenged in the Supreme Court, but not before it causes major upsets in the coming UP Assembly elections. It sets the stage for polarisation along religious lines, a move which will benefit the current Samajwadi Party (SP) regime and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the most.

It can also mar the Bahujan Samaj Party's (BSP) chances of getting enough seats to form a government in the state.

Justice S N Srivastava gave the ruling after considering various criteria, including the population of Muslims as enumerated in the census reports of 1951 and 2001.

The court said the UP government should treat members of the Muslim community as equal to those belonging to the non-minority communities without discrimination in accordance with the law.

The judgment was given on a writ petition filed by a 'madrasa' of Ghazipur district, challenging out-of-turn grant-in-aid to certain other minority institutions.

The court also asked the UP government to treat all Muslim institutions applying for grant-in-aid on a par with non-minority institutions.

As this is what the BJP claims it has been saying all along, this endorsement will make the party's chest swell.

Prospects of seeing an assertive BJP and also the theme of Muslim identity under threat is likely to send Muslims scurrying into the arms of the Samajwadi Party (SP), which has long been aspiring to be known as the only protector of the Muslims in UP.

The present controversy over the communally inflammatory CD that has been circulated by the BJP, on which the Election Commission has threatened serious action, and on the basis of which VP Singh has sought an EC ban on the BJP, had already put the communal issue squarely in the centre of the electoral stage in UP.

Now, all parties may have to recalibrate their positions. For, the central issue in the elections will no longer be good governance or law and order. It is much more likely to be the need for religious communities to either feel secure or assertive, as the case may be.

Another fallout "� unless the apex court gives a stay on the order "� of the judgment will be that the Centre's 15-point agenda for minorities, funding for the communities and other sops will either have to be renamed community-wise or wound up altogether, for the Allahabad High Court judgment means the phrase 'Muslim minority' is no longer acceptable as political lexicon.