Looking for minority status?

 

Looking for minority status?

Articles 14, 15 and 16 of our Constitution talk of Equality before law i.e. equal protection of the law, and forbid discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

What a layperson like me understands from this is whatever be my religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, I am equal to the 1.3 billion (minus me) Indians and that the state would treat me as it does the others on the basis of the above factors.

Does that also mean that since we all are equal, there is no question of any majority or minority in any respect?

No, no, this is not going to be a political essay nor is it going to be a commentary on our laws. Everyone guns for the underdog so I am only trying to measure the horizon of my own chances of being included in a minority, any kind at all.

According to  https://www.britannica.com/topic/minority

minority is a culturally, ethnically, or racially distinct group that coexists with but is subordinate to a more dominant group. As the term is used in the social sciences, this subordinacy is the chief defining characteristic of a minority group. As such, minority status does not necessarily correlate to population. In some cases one or more so-called minority groups may have a population many times the size of the dominating group, as was the case in South Africa under apartheid (c. 1950–91).

So let us take my case pointwise.

People talk of skewed sex ratio in India. In 2020, the sex ratio of the total population in India is 108.18 males per 100 females , says https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/country/india-sex-ratio.php

Arithmetically 100 men get married and get busy in blaming their female equal (according to law) for their own professional, personal or social incompetence their whole lives. If the number of the two genders was equal then there would have been no Ratan Tata, Yogi Adityanath, Salman Khan, even Rahul Gandhi  and Narendra Modi (honorary bachelor). Bachelors can qualify as a minority but women are not a minority, so sadly I too am not.

The social rule to follow a dress code while going out in public and to not venture to out of their haven because it is unsafe for them applies to all women. You might though ask unsafe from whom? Animal, birds and insects do not care for the gender of human beings when showing their affection or during attack. So naturally all women are unsafe from men, no question of majority or minority there.

My name does not explicitly mention the caste I belong to nor my social status, so I cannot contest for any claim.

Race also does not matter; all Indians are more or less the same. They may look different outwardly and speak different languages, but just prick anyone on their social, religious, racial or casteist beliefs and you would know how similar they are in their convictions.

That done, if you consider economic status, I am among the lakhs of non-working (mostly means jobless) women who are contributing to the economy by way of buying groceries. Wait, can my deficient volume of shopping for other things qualify me for being a minority?

The same yardsticks have been followed to label a group as minority for three quarters of a century, isn’t it time the law-makers got more creative and amended the conditions and qualifications for minority groups to be more encompassive?

For example, being a minority in respect of political views: solely based on my half-knowledge of facts (does anyone know it all?), I love to ventilate my criticism of the establishment as well as my appreciation for steps taken. Now how many people do that? They go either clear left or right or left or right off the centre. I go directionless, free as a bird and have no partners or followers. That is a serious minority.

In respect of following rituals and religious beliefs too, I follow what suits the other members of the family even putting myself among minority. How many people are that considerate? That also raises the selfless question whether in a country of believers, the few hundred atheists and agnostics shouldn’t be eligible for minority status.

Then comes the category of people who follow fashion and I could easily be a minority. What was comfortable for me two years ago, the same trend could last me a long time till it almost comes back again in vogue. Strike the bell-bottom from this list please.

Maybe the new list should include those who have not committed the educational sin of not having read Harry Potter or watched Game of Thrones or even Saas bhi kabhi Bahu thi or Hum Log and all the Netflix series. The only series I binge-watched has perhaps been Dhoop-Kinare, a Pakistani drama series, on which a drag-till-it-gets-unreal style Indian series was based. No wonder in a room full of people I am the only uneducated one when the discussion turns to television and OTT serials.

But honestly, in all my years on this planet and I surely have spent more than some of you, I have never been in a situation where a woman miraculously changed into a skimpy outfit and lots of make-up and broke into an energetic well-choreographed musical number or a man suddenly broke into vigorous crunches and gyrations exercise with a team of dancers behind him following the steps and singing perfectly in sync as is shown in most of our films.

On the contrary, my interest bordering addiction, in needlework has certainly extracted a derisive aaj kal yeh sab kaun karta hai (Who does all this nowadays) from people. Should that be a qualification? Obviously, I am not doing what the rest of the world is.

I did not want to talk about myself, but if I do not take care of my own self, who else will, isn’t it?

The election scene is warming up in some states in preparation for 2021 when all those who are supposedly working for our welfare would fight tooth and nail to be given the opportunity to continue their ‘good’ work for another half a decade. Before the new army of these selfless workers comes on the scene in cavalcades with pilot and police cars blaring sirens for me to clear way for them on the road, I just want to be counted among a minority so that I know they would think, or at least talk of, me and my well-being.

                                                                                                -Anupama S Mani