End this mischief

LK Advani was looking for an issue that could be used to mobilise the already rising tide of Hindu resentment in 1986-87, when Rajiv Gandhi gave it to him on a platter, with his government's decision to reverse the Supreme Court order in the Shah Bano case concerning a divorced woman's maintenance rights.

Last week's decision by the human resource development ministry to reserve for Muslims some seats in the Aligarh Muslim University, does not have the same incendiary potential and may even have been proposed initially by the NDA government (or so it has been stated); nevertheless, it is a piece of mischief that should be ended quickly""and not just because of the fear of a backlash.

Minority-ism should be avoided in and of itself, beyond what is mandated by the Constitution as necessary in the Indian context; especially token minority-ism, because it offends those excluded without delivering anything of consequence to the supposed beneficiaries.

And the decision with regard to AMU is certainly tokenism of the worst kind because it cannot be a serious argument that Muslim education will benefit to any noticeable degree if a handful of seats in one university are reserved for the community.

An HRD ministry that has done nothing of note in the past one year to improve the low education levels of the Muslim community, certainly needs to have its motives questioned when it suddenly begins tackling the problem in this fashion.

Minority-ism has been rearing its head in other ways as well. It is worth bearing in mind, for instance, that Ram Vilas Paswan has so far prevented a new government from being formed in troubled Bihar for several weeks, through his extraordinary insistence that only a Muslim should be made the chief minister.

If this is not blatant communalism, what is? What special situation merits such a demand? If the issue is empowerment of the downtrodden, why should a Muslim candidate be preferred to a Dalit, or a tribal, or any other member of a disadvantaged community, merely because he or she is a Muslim?

Equally regrettable is the recent court decision in Gujarat that allowed a housing society to insist that its members could only be members of one community (in this case, the Parsis). What if the shoe were on the other foot, and a society were to insist that only Hindus can be members? Indeed, many housing societies in Mumbai secretly practise an implicit ban on Muslims becoming residents.

If the Gujarat court judgment is to hold, then these societies need not function in cloak and dagger fashion, they can openly declare that Muslims are not allowed""in the same way that many areas in the Southern United States have residents' agreements that ban the entry of African-Americans.

The court may have determined the issue on the sound point that private clubs and societies can stipulate any conditions they wish for membership; however, it is surely a mistake to extend this to the point where the social benefits of communities intermingling (which is a sure way to minimise communal riots) become endangered.