Article 30: To Establish and to Administer

In one line

Article 30 gives a minority two rights in one sentence, to start a school and to run it, and a claimant who cannot prove the first gets nothing from the second.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 30(1) confers on all minorities, whether based on religion or language, the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. The two words are conjunctive. As Khanna J. said in The Ahmedabad St. Xaviers College Society v. State of Gujarat, the word "establish" indicates "the right to bring into existence, while the right to administer an institution means the right to effectively manage and conduct the affairs of the institution", and the words "of their choice" show that the institutions "need not be of some particular class". Where an institution was not brought into existence by the minority, no right to administer it arises under article 30 at all.

Why the law has this at all

The right to conserve a language, a script or a culture, given by article 29(1), is empty unless there is somewhere to do the conserving. The Court has said so in terms: a minority's distinct language, script or culture "can best be conserved by and through educational institutions, for it is by education that their culture can be inculcated into the impressionable minds of the children of their community". Article 30(1) is the machinery clause for that promise, and it is more than machinery, because the institutions it protects may teach anything at all.

The provision, in its own words

Clause (1): "All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice."

Clause (1A): "In making any law providing for the compulsory acquisition of any property of an educational institution established and administered by a minority, referred to in clause (1), the State shall ensure that the amount fixed by or determined under such law for the acquisition of such property is such as would not restrict or abrogate the right guaranteed under that clause."

Clause (2): "The State shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language."

Clause (1A) was inserted by the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978, section 4, with effect from 20 June 1979. The Constitution's own footnote records it.

Broken down

1. "All minorities, whether based on religion or language." Only minorities, unlike article 29(1). Who counts is settled in [Who Is a Minority?]: the unit is the State.

2. "The right to establish." To bring into existence. This is a question of historical fact, and it is where most claims are actually lost.