States can declare Hindus as minorities, Centre tells SC

State governments can decide which communities in their jurisdiction can be declared as a minority or not, the Centre told the Supreme Court. As such, states can declare Hindus as a minority community if they felt so, as has been done in states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and others, it said.

This would have implications for the running of educational institutions in the respective states.

Since the identification of minorities comes in the Concurrent List, both states and the Centre can decide on the matter, the government told the apex court in response to an affidavit filed by senior advocate Ashwini Upadhyay.

Minorities can be decided based on the religious or linguistic proportion of their population in the state, it said.

State such as Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland have declared Hindus as minorities but they have also declared the majority population in their states as minorities. The Centre said that this was because these communities were declared minorities by the Centre in the country. The Centre has declared Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists as minorities.

“The state governments can also declare a religious or linguistic community as ‘minority’ community within the said state,” it said. “For instance, the government of Maharashtra has notified Jews as a minority community within the state. The government of Karnataka has notified Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Lamani (Lambadi), Hindi, Konkani and Gujarati languages as minority languages within the state,” the Centre said.

Also read: Bengaluru is most linguistically diverse city in country: Study

States can also certify institutions established by smaller linguistic or religious communities as ‘minority institutions’ within their territorial jurisdictions. “The government of Karnataka on February 13, 2020 had declared Telugu private unaided schools as ‘minority’ schools,” it said.

It also noted that since India is a country with very unique characteristics, a religious group that is in majority in one state may be in minority in another state

“Religious and linguistic minorities are spread all over the country and are not related or restricted to any single state/UT of India,” it said.