The Rights of Minorities: Articles 29 and 30

In one line

Article 29 protects any section of citizens in conserving its language, script or culture and forbids exclusion from State-aided education on grounds of religion, race, caste or language; article 30 gives minorities alone the right to establish and administer educational institutions and forbids discrimination against them in aid.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the two articles stand under the heading "Cultural and Educational Rights" and do different work. Article 29(1) is a conservation right and its holder is any section of the citizens with a distinct language, script or culture, whether that section is a majority or a minority. Article 29(2) is a non-discrimination right of the individual citizen against a State or State-aided institution. Article 30(1) is the group right of a minority, religious or linguistic, to establish AND administer educational institutions of its choice; article 30(1A) protects the property of such an institution on compulsory acquisition; and article 30(2) forbids the State to discriminate in granting aid on the ground that an institution is under minority management.

The provisions, clause by clause

Article 29(1). Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part of it having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to CONSERVE the same. Three things follow. The holder is a SECTION OF THE CITIZENS, so the right is available to a section of the majority as well; the protected subject is language, SCRIPT or culture, and the script is a separate head, which decided D.A.V. College; and the verb is conserve, which the Court has read as including the means of conservation, of which an educational institution is the obvious one.

Article 29(2). No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds ONLY of religion, race, caste, language or any of them. Note three features. It is a right of the CITIZEN, not of the institution or the community. It bites only on institutions that are State-maintained or State-aided. And the word ONLY is doing work: an institution may reject a candidate on merit, on eligibility, on the discipline offered, and only a rejection on the listed grounds alone is forbidden.

Article 30(1). All minorities, whether based on religion or on language, shall have the right to ESTABLISH AND ADMINISTER educational institutions of their choice. The conjunction is important: the right is to establish and to administer, and a claim that fails on establishment cannot be repaired by long administration.

Article 30(1A), inserted by the Forty-fourth Amendment in 1978. In making any law providing for the compulsory acquisition of property of an educational institution established and administered by a minority, the State shall ensure that the amount fixed or determined would not restrict or abrogate the right guaranteed by article 30(1). This is the only place in the Constitution where the ADEQUACY of an acquisition amount is made justiciable, and it exists because article 31 had been repealed and the right to property moved to article 300A.