Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, in one of the Constituent Assembly Debates, brings the Houses attention to the concept of cultural minority: The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : ...The first point that I would like to submit to the House as to why the Drafting Committee thought it necessary to alter the language of paragraph 18 of the Fundamental Rights is this. On reading the paragraph contained in the original Fundamental Rights, it will be noticed that the term minority was used therein not in the technical sense of the word minority as we have been accustomed to use it for the purposes of certain political safeguards such as representation in the Legislature, representation in the services and so on. The word is used not merely to indicate the minority in the technical sense of the word, it is also used to cover minorities which are not minorities in the technical sense, but which are nonetheless minorities in the cultural and linguistic sense. For instance, for the purposes of this article 23, if a certain number of people from Madras came and settled in Bombay for certain purposes, they would be, although not a minority in the technical sense, cultural minorities. Similarly, if a certain number of Maharashtrians went from Maharashtra and settled in Bengal, although they may not be minorities in the technical sense, they would be cultural and linguistic minorities in Bengal. The article intends to give protection in the matter of culture, language and script not only to a minority technically, but also to a minority in the wider sense of the terms as I have explained just now. That is the reason why we dropped the word minority because we felt that the word might be interpreted in the narrow sense of the term, when the intention of this House, when it passed article 18, was to use the word minority in a much wider sense, so as to give cultural protection to those who were technically not minorities but minorities nonetheless. It was felt that this protection was necessary for the simple reason that people who go from one province to another and settle there, do not settle there permanently. They do not uproot themselves from the province from which they have migrated, but they keep their connections. They go back to their province for the purpose of marriage. They go back to their province for various other purposes, and if this protection was not given to them when they were subject to the local Legislature and the local Legislature were to deny them the opportunity of conserving their culture, it would be very difficult for these cultural minorities to go back to their province and to get themselves assimilated to the original population to which they belonged. In order to meet the situation of migration from one province to another, we felt it was desirable that such a provision should be incorporated in the Constitution. I think another thing which has to be borne in mind in reading article 23 is that it does not impose any obligation or burden upon the State. It does not say that, when for instance the Madras people come to Bombay, the Bombay Government shall be required by law to finance any project of giving education either in Tamil language or in Andhra language or any other language. There is no burden cast upon the State. The only limitation that is imposed by article 23 is that if there is a cultural minority which wants to preserve its language, its script and its culture, the State shall not by law impose upon it any other culture which may be either local or otherwise. Therefore this article really is to be read in a much wider sense and does not apply only to what I call the technical minorities as we use it in our Constitution. That is the reason why we eliminated the word minority from the original clause. But while omitting this word minority I think my Friend, Mr. Lari forgot to see that we have very greatly improved upon the protection such as was given in the original article as it stood in the Fundamental Rights. The original article as it stood in the Fundamental Rights only cast a sort of duty upon the State that the State shall protect their culture, their script and their language. The original article had not given any Fundamental Right to these various communities. It only imposed the duty and added a clause that while the State may have the right to impose limitations upon these rights of language, culture and script, the State shall not make any law which may be called oppressive, not that the State had no right-to make a law affecting these matters, but that the law shall not be oppressive. Now, I am sure about it that the protection granted in the original article was very insecure. It depended upon the goodwill of the State. The present situation as you find it stated in article 23 is that we have converted that into a Fundamental Right, so that if a State made any law which was inconsistent with the provisions of this article, then that much of the law would be invalid by virtue of article 8 which we have already passed.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:08:06 +0000
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