The Indian constitution awards rights to religious minorities to practice and propagate their faith. Under Article 25 of the Constitution, freedom of religion is granted to all individual citizens. But this freedom has often come into conflict with the freedom granted to minority religious institutions to manage their own affairs. This illuminates the conflict that we highlighted between community rights and individual rights. The framers of the Constitution attempted to achieve a balance between the two; they recognised the rights of individuals but also secured the rights of minority communities through special provisions. This was premised on the idea that the cultures of minorities need to be protected and preserved. This is why the Parliament allowed the existence of personal law systems, legal systems based on the individual community and religious practices of minorities, to persist along with the secular law.
The Core Debates
The core challenge for a secular country is to address the concerns of preserving and protecting community identity while at the same time making sure that the rights of individuals are not curtailed. Societies with a wide range of ethnic and religious minorities often face this challenge. It is important to secure their rights as a group. However, individual citizens in these communities also need to be awarded rights similar to those of their counterparts in majority communities. In India, the issue has come to the fore once again in recent times with a petition pending in the Supreme Court of India asking for the banning of the practice of triple talaq, a form of instant divorce permitted by some schools of Islamic law. Interestingly, the petition has been filed by a group of Muslim women seeking to reform religious practices from within the community.
This resource will help you familiarise yourself with the debates about individual rights and religious rights in contemporary politics; we will also touch upon the issue of integration of minorities in a secular, multi-cultural society. In the activities that follow, we will take up three case studies where the questions of women’s rights, the secular state and multi-culturalism come up. Using an array of articles and videos, we will examine how religious minorities imagine their rights and the politics of integration in multi-cultural societies.
