The front-page article published on Herald titled “The backdoor attempt to take over minority institutions in Gujarat should never be attempted in Goa” dated 28/06/2021 made interesting reading.
Yes, the Gujarat government has reportedly brought “The Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (Amendment) Act, 2021 under the guise of aiding minority run schools but which inwardly seeks to control appointments of key staff and influence the character of all such minority-run institutions.
Similarly, the controversial administrator Praful Patel of Union Territories of Daman & Diu and Nagar Haveli has also amended the Grant In Aid policy for primary, secondary and higher secondary schools with a similar intention.
Well, most English-speaking people in India have passed out from such minority run schools and there are hundreds of these schools scattered all over India. In the 2000s, Christian missions ran 16,500 schools and 6,500 hospitals in India. L K Advani, late Arun Jaitley, and many others from the BJP have also studied in such Christian schools.
Unfortunately, the Central government had similarly moved on a campaign earlier to de-license 4470 NGOs in India, in addition to the 8875 NGOs whose licences were revoked earlier for “violation” of rules governing foreign funds. In this revocation, it is notable that while Muslim and Christian NGOs were targeted, Hindu NGOs were largely left untouched.
When the country is battered by COVID-19, revoking the NGO licences had been a disastrous move. It is NGOs that have always risen in emergencies and national disasters to help at the risk of their own lives. The people running NGOs are doing service as their Dharma. Every religion calls for doing good for others.
The heart of every NGO and every school is a message to India that we are Indians first, not Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Atheist, etc. Ethnicity should not divide us, but the golden helping hands of humanity should unite us. This is our Dharma or faith and all religions are practised out by good works through NGOs and all such minority run schools too in our country.
The minority educational establishments have always produced distinguished great personalities over the decades with their tremendous hard work and dedication. The Constitution has given minorities the right to establish and run educational institutions thus far. It is alarming that the government of the day at the centre slowly wishes to strip away the constitutional rights of all such minority run educational institutions and which has never happened before.
It appears to be an insidious plan to take control of all the minority-run educational institutions under the pretense of providing aid/building a supreme regime and henceforth using such schools like laboratories to spread communal virus and to disturb the communal harmony of our country ones for all.
It is therefore imperative that the courts protect the secular democratic nature of our constitution that is being undermined by the above mentioned most controversial laws and the judiciary needs to have the courage to pass a fair judgment, and prove that the Constitution is still very much alive in India.
