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Religious reservation and AMU

It was a flawed move from the start. When Aligarh Muslim University announced that 50 per cent of its seats in some post-graduate courses would be reserved for Muslim students, there was doubt whether this could be legally sustained. The decision, which was formally endorsed in February 2005 by the Human Resources Development Ministry, has predictably run into rough legal weather. With a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court upholding a judgment by a single judge of the same court and ruling that admissions from 2006 onwards would be "free to all," AMU's ill-advised religious reservation system — which reversed a tradition established since it was founded in 1920 and drew opposition from a progressive section of its faculty — has been nullified. The Division Bench has also upheld the view that AMU, which was established by statute and has the status of a Central university, is not a minority institution. Striking down two sections of the Aligarh Muslim University (Amendment) Act, 1981, that purportedly gave the university a minority status, the High Court echoed the Supreme Court's 1968 judgment in the Azeez Basha case. In that judgment, the apex court held that AMU could not claim minority status as it was set up by an Act of Parliament. In consequence, it was held that the University does not have the protection of Article 30(1), which gives linguistic and religious minorities "the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice," and ipso facto the freedom to reserve seats for students belonging to the community they represent.

That there is a serious problem of educational backwardness among vast sections of India's 130 million-plus Muslims and that the Central and State Governments have failed to address it effectively are facts that are not in dispute. The limited issue addressed by the Allahabad High Court judgment is the propriety of extending religious reservation to an institution such as AMU. Politicians with vested interests must be discouraged from giving this issue a communal twist. As the great historian of Mughal India who has long taught at AMU, Irfan Habib, has pointed out, "it is clear from Article 30 of the Constitution that its framers had in mind only educational institutions with private managements when they conceived of minority institutions." Religion-based reservation also militates against the broad-minded, secular tradition of AMU. As Professor Habib has noted, at no time did "the founder [Sir Syed Ahmad Khan] and his successors ... see any conflict in the university keeping its doors open to all, while promoting the spread of modern education among Muslims." The Allahabad High Court has declined permission for a special leave petition to be filed against its judgment in the Supreme Court. The Centre would do well to allow the matter to rest and refrain from promulgating an Ordinance to nullify the judgment — a drastic step it reportedly has in mind.

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