Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Article 30 of the Constitution of India does not define the term 'minorities'.
Reason (R)

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Article 30 of the Constitution of India does not define the term 'minorities'.
Reason (R) : The Constitution recognises only linguistic and religious minorities.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :
Codes :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A). Assertion (A) is true. Article 30(1) declares that 'all minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice' — it uses the word 'minorities' and then walks away from it. Nowhere in Article 30, and nowhere else in the Constitution, is 'minority' defined: there is no numerical threshold, no percentage, no stated unit of comparison. That gap had to be filled from outside the Constitution — by statute (the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 simply leaves 'minority' to mean whatever community the Central Government notifies) and by the courts (in T.M.A. Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka, 2002, an eleven-judge Bench held that where a State law is in question, minority status must be worked out with the State, not the whole country, as the unit). Reason (R) is also true. The Constitution's minority machinery runs entirely on two axes — religion and language: Articles 29 and 30 speak of minorities 'based on religion or language', and Article 350B creates a Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities. There is no constitutional category of ethnic, racial or any other minority. But (R) does not explain (A). Reason (R) answers a different question — on what basis a minority is recognised; Assertion (A) is about a gap the Constitution left open — what makes a community a minority in the first place (how few is few enough, and few compared with what population). A Constitution can perfectly well name two classes of minority and still decline to define the word, and that is exactly what ours does. True, true, but not an explanation — so the code is (b).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Both parts are indeed true, but the link fails. Saying that the Constitution recognises only religious and linguistic minorities identifies the two grounds on which minority status can be claimed; it says nothing about why the framers left the word itself undefined. The undefined element is the numerical and territorial test — how small a group must be, and against which population it is measured — and (R) never touches that.  (c) Reason (R) is not false. Articles 29 and 30 confine themselves to minorities based on religion or language, and the only other minority-specific provision, Article 350B, deals with linguistic minorities. The Constitution nowhere recognises ethnic or racial minorities as a protected class, so (R) states the position correctly.  (d) Assertion (A) is not false. Article 30 grants a right to 'all minorities, whether based on religion or language' without defining who they are; the absence of a constitutional definition of 'minority' is settled and is precisely why the definition had to be supplied by the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 and by judicial interpretation.

Concept: Articles 29 and 30 form the Constitution's cultural and educational rights of minorities. Article 29(1) protects the right of any section of citizens having a distinct language, script or culture of its own to conserve it; Article 29(2) bars denial of admission to a State-maintained or State-aided educational institution on grounds of religion, race, caste or language. Article 30(1) gives all minorities, religious or linguistic, the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice; Article 30(1A) requires that compensation fixed for compulsory acquisition of such an institution's property must not restrict that right, and Article 30(2) forbids the State from discriminating against a minority institution when giving aid. The one thing this scheme never does is define 'minority' — the word is used as if self-evident.

State PCS 2019 Q141 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q141 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer