Supreme Court is not the final stop for application of common sense. Anything can be defined as a minority right.
For example does it make sense to give exemption to a christian businessman calling it a minority right ? You can but that would be against common sense just like in the education case.
The serious effects of this law is that while Hindus have to jump through the draconian provisions of RTE, a church run school need not. Guess which schools will run more efficiently and grow at a faster rate and provide better education ?
I am not sure why minorities should have a different set of rights than the majority. Uniformity should be the foundation of law.
Because these rights are necessary for minorities to be protected from majoritarian excesses in a democracy. It's really not that hard to understand if you try to think of it from a neutral standpoint.
Regardless of that, as everyone in aware, religious minorities perform poorly on most social indicators - often ranking even below the scheduled caste. The Sachar committee report [1] is full of examples which illustrate this point.
So it also makes pragmatic sense for state to proactively work for their upliftment. We also do it for schedule/backward caste members even thought they belong to the majority religion.
Btw, I would just say that your point about draconian provisions is simply unsubstantiated.
I'm proactively repeatedly countering you on unsubstantiated facts, just because I don't want such misinformation to spread around and influence other minds.
I don't see how giving blanket exemption to a completely secular industry (education in this case) under the pretext of religion has anything to do with majoritarian excesses. Why not do it in Taxi business or Restaurants or why not let a Muslim get away with 1 murder per year or something like that ?
Unless you are ignoring a distinction no one should be given a right that grossly violates rights of someone else.
I would have agreed with you if the exemption was limited to religious education meant for that community only.
Under the current law Hindu schools can not operate and compete with Church run schools and I find that vile and against basic sense of justice.
Sachar committee is a heap of garbage for many reasons. But even if we accept it only Muslism community among minorities seem to suck not Christian or Parasis or Jains or Sikhs. That despite being the most politically influential community in India.
(This trend is seen in USA too where politically influential Irish Americans score worse than least influential Japanese Americans on socio economic indicators).
RTE's draconian provisions and how they hurt both Hindu community and schools is well documented. Over 15K schools are in danger of losing their legal status because of this law.
Also I am completely unaware how it can be justfied that a Hindu can not preside over NMEC which happens to be a government's administrative body!
There's no official data to say over 100,000 schools have been shut down. You linked to some blog which just reported some figures which some "Civil society coalition" fed to them. Without any reference. Please cite an official or reputed sources if you have.
The "National Independent School Association", NISA, have been lobbying unsuccessfully against RTE for years. That's just because most private schools don't want to reserve 25% seats for backward/schedule caste. It's as simple as that. Someone should tell them it is 2015!
You can't expect minority institutions to adhere to this quota for backward hindus, since minorities such as muslims are socially, economically, and educationally backward themselves.
Also, it's not that a NCMEI chairperson can not be a hindu, but that he should be a minority himself. It makes total sense to me since it's the "National Minority Education Commission".
I'll again rephrase.
RTE needs to be applied to private schools so backward/schedule caste have access to education just like you and me. It does it by reservations and regulations.
It doesn't apply to minority institutions because bulk of minorities are backward/scheduled themselves. So they can't be expected to have reservations for backward/scheduled from mainstream.
I can't see how anyone can consider this to be vile from a neutral standpoint. In fact to me it just illustrates some of the most peculiar strengths of the Indian system.
For example does it make sense to give exemption to a christian businessman calling it a minority right ? You can but that would be against common sense just like in the education case.
The serious effects of this law is that while Hindus have to jump through the draconian provisions of RTE, a church run school need not. Guess which schools will run more efficiently and grow at a faster rate and provide better education ?
I am not sure why minorities should have a different set of rights than the majority. Uniformity should be the foundation of law.