Minorities cannot claim more rights: K.T. Thomas
June 18, 2008 Special Correspondent
‘The basis of law is justice, reasonableness’
The jurist says no minority community has the right to claim more rights than the majority.
THALASSERY: The former Supreme Court judge K.T. Thomas has said that no minority community can claim more rights than those enjoyed by the majority.
Terming the subject of minority rights as sensitive, Mr. Thomas said that as the Constitution-makers had not defined the word ‘minority’, what was normally understood by the word was only one segment of minority, namely, religious minority, even though there were minorities on the basis of language and culture.
Speaking at a seminar on ‘minority rights and social justice’ organised by the Kannur University School of Legal Studies under the auspices of the Barrister M.K. Nambiar Chair on the Thalassery campus at Palayad here on Tuesday, he observed that the Constitution conferred only educational rights as far as the rights of religious minorities were concerned.
He said that no minority community had the right to claim more rights than the majority.
Mr. Thomas, who is honorary Professor, Barrister M.K. Nambiar Chair instituted at the university, said that some people were now going to the extent of claiming that the minorities should have whatever rights the majority did not have.
Describing this as unjust, he said that though numerically the smallest minorities in the country were Parsis, Buddhists and Jains, only Muslims and Christians were arguing that the minority rights should not be touched.
He also added that in countries where Muslims and Christians were in majority, the minority rights as enshrined in the Constitution of the country were not granted to their minorities.
Dwelling on the ‘solidity’ of the minority rights on the basis of religion, Mr. Thomas said that as religion was a matter of faith and, therefore, one could always change one’s faith, the minority rights based on religion could not be seen as permanent as those based on, say, language.
In a country where minority rights were constitutionally guaranteed, no minority had to be given more rights than the majority community, he said stressing that the basis of law was justice and reasonableness.
Earlier, university Vice-Chancellor P. Chandramohan inaugurated the seminar. Saying that protection of minorities was part of social justice, Dr. Chandramohan said that there was no clarity in the Constitution as to what extend the minority rights could be invoked.
Former High Court judge P.K. Shamsuddin in his presidential address said though the protection to the minorities was an elaboration of the equal rights enshrined in the Constitution, they should not extract undue benefit.
Mr. Thomas also released a book authored by V.R. Dinkar, head of the School of Legal Studies.
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