The Ministry of Minority Affairs was setup for the welfare, development and empowerment of India’s minority communities. It was formed by the Indian Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance in 2006. The ministry is tasked with protecting the rights of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, who are designated as minority communities by the National Commission for Minorities Act of 1992.

The ministry is an extension of the cabinet of the government. Before the formation of an independent ministry, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment handled minority-related issues. Politicians like Lal Krishna Advani, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has said that the ministry was introduced to regain the faith of the minorities in the wake of communal riots across the country.

The ministry is also responsible for maintaining communal peace in India. India has long history of violence against religious minorities. The most famous example of communalism occurred during the partition of British India, when somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people where killed, mostly in the Punjab region.  This violence has continued over the last generation. After the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 by her two Sikh bodyguards, many Hindus turned against their Sikh neighbors and about three thousand people were killed in Delhi and nearby areas. In Gujarat, on India’s west coast, more than a thousand Muslims were killed during communal riots of 2002. In 2008, communal riots broke out between Christians and Hindus in Kandhamal, a district of Odisha in southeast India. Most of the 38 people who died were Christians.

During the campaign for the 2004 election, the Congress Party promised to create a body to improve the lives of India’s minority citizens. After winning the election, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first established the Sachar Committee in 2005. Headed by Rajinder Sachar, a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, the committee prepared a report on the social, economic and educational status of India’s Muslim community. The committee submitted its report in 2006. The report found that Indian Muslims were among the country’s most disenfranchised citizens. The committee also suggested remedies to close gaps between Muslims and other Indian citizens in levels of education and income. In January 2006, Congress made good on its campaign pledge from a-year-and-a-half earlier, forming the Ministry of Minority Affairs.

The ministry works to improve access to education, employment and business opportunities for minorities. Through bettering the socioeconomic conditions of minority communities, the ministry is attempting to ensure that every citizen has an equal has an opportunity to become a part of India’s growth story.

The ministry has several responsibilities. It is officially responsible for Wakf properties, a religious endowment in Islamic law, typically a building or piece of land donated for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. The minister in charge, Salman Khurshid, is also chairperson of Central Wakf Council, which manages all state Wakf boards across the country. The ministry is also responsible for implementation of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Act, (1992) and administering policy initiatives for the protection of minorities and in consultation with Central and State governments. The ministry also represents Anglo-Indians, people of mixed European-Indian ancestry who speak English as their primary language.

One important branch of the ministry is the Maulana Azad Foundation, which was established in 1989 to promote education amongst minorities. The Azad Foundation provides scholarship and loans for higher education. The ministry also provides employment opportunities for minorities both private sector and central and state-level public sector companies.

The ministry is also responsible for uplifting economically disadvantaged minorities. The implementation of the Sachar Committee’s recommendations to improve the status of Indian Muslims and the Prime Minister's 15 Points Programme for the Welfare of Minorities are among the ministry’s most important responsibilities.

The 15 Points Programme was inaugurated in 2006 for the welfare of religious minorities. It provides steps for improving the conditions of minorities. The 15 steps are:

1. Equitable availability of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
2. Improving access to school education
3. Greater resources for teaching Urdu
4. Modernizing Madrasa Education
5. Scholarships for meritorious students from minority communities
6. Improving educational infrastructure through the Maulana Azad Education Foundation
7. Self-Employment and wage employment for the poor
8. Upgrading of skill through technical training
9. Enhanced credit support for economic activities
10. Recruitment to state and central services
11. Equitable share in rural housing scheme
12. Improvement in condition of slums inhabited by minority communities
13. Prevention of communal incidents
14. Prosecution for communal offences
15. Rehabilitation of victims of communal riots.

Attached Bodies

Constitutional and Statutory Bodies

Central Wakf Council (CWC): The Central Wakf Council was established in 1964 under the Indian Wakf Act 1954. The council’s core role is to advise the government of India on matters concerning the workings of the state Wakf boards to ensure proper administration of Wakf properties countrywide. The State Wakf Boards manage, regulate and protect the Wakf properties by overseeing District Wakf Committees, Mandal Wakf Committees and Committees for the individual Wakf Institutions. The council consists of a chairperson, who is appointed by the minister of minority affairs in the government of India. The secretary is the chief executive of the council.

National Commission for Minorities (NCM)

The National Commission for Minorities is a body constituted in 1993 to monitor and evaluate the progress of minority communities in India. It is an outcome of the United Nation’s declaration for the minorities, which holds that “States shall protect the existence of the National or Ethnic, Cultural, Religious and Linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity.”

Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities (CLM)
The core responsibility of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities is to look after linguistic minorities. The commissioner safeguards the interests of linguistic minorities, who are protected
by the constitution. People who don’t speak the mother tongue of the majority in each state are considered linguistic minorities.
 

Autonomous Bodies

Maulana Azad Education Foundation: Maulana Azad Education Foundation was established to promote education amongst educationally backward sections of society. It provides scholarships and loans for education. The foundation is a voluntary, non-political and non-profit social service organization. The Ministry of Minority Affairs funds it.

Public Sector Undertakings and Joint Ventures

National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC): The NMDFC makes loans and arranges micro financing for minority communities across India to establish their own businesses. It also helps poorer minority citizen’s access funding for education. The NMDFC was founded in 1994.

In response to a Right to Information act request, the Ministry of Minority Affairs provided a breakdown of their spending. Staff salaries for the calendar years of 2009–10 and 2010-11 were Rs. 428,970,00 ($877,059.91USD) and Rs. 435,150,000 ($889,695 USD) respectively. Up to September 30, 2011, the ministry had spent Rs. 190,220,000 ($389,630 USD) for calendar year 2011–12.

As a relatively small ministry, their expenses over the last five years weren’t very high, the ministry provided a vague date range, fall into three broad categories: taxis Rs 2299286 ($47,010), computer programming Rs. 278,055 ($5,685) and housekeeping Rs. 2,525, 422 ($51,634).

Is the Ministry Just a Political Ploy?

Controversies have dogged this ministry since its formation. The opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have frequently characterized these government initiatives as a cynical political strategy aimed at gaining votes from minority communities. This refrain grew particularly loud after the release of the Sachar Committee report and PM’s 15 Points Programme. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is amongst the plan’s loudest critics. Modi, a BJP hardliner who has been accused stoking tensions during the 2002 communal violence in his state, characterizes the program as reverse discrimination.

Misuse of Wakf Properties

The ministry, through the Wakf Board, also acts as a caretaker for Wakf properties. According to Islam, Wakf is a voluntary and permanent dedication of a portion of one’s wealth–in cash or kind–to Allah. Once given as Wakf, an asset should never be given away, inherited, or sold. In practice, however, this isn’t the case in India. The properties are being misused; there are cases of illegal possession and many are in dire need of renovations. There is currently a lack of legal recourse to prosecute people who are misusing Wakf properties for financial gain. Several vacancies on the board are unfilled. Even in Delhi, the chairman’s position has remained vacant for the last two years.

According to the Sachar Committee report there are about 500,000 registered Wakf properties with 600,000 acres (2,400 km²) land in India. These properties have an appraised value of Rs. 6,000 crore (about $130 Million).

Must the Head of Wakf be a Muslim?

The largest minorities in India, Muslims constitute around 12% of the country’s population. Indian Muslims demanded an Indian Wakf Service (IWS), as recommended by the Sachar committee to look after Wakf properties across the country. They claim that it is their fundamental right. But the Minorities Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid rejected the idea, dismissing it as ghettoizing.

According to the Indian Wakf Act, passed in 1954 and amended in 1995, the chief executive officer should be Muslim. There is currently an argument ongoing about this requirement in several states. Under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, government bureaucrats are selected through provincial public service commissions to look after Hindu temples. There is no requirement that this position be filled by a Hindu. Critics of the Wakf Act have similarly argued that the CEO shouldn’t be required to be Muslim.

In 2011, the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament passed the Wakf Amendment.

Salman Khurshid

Salman Khurshid was the cabinet minister of Minority Affairs from May 2009 to October 2012. He is a Muslim member of Indian National Congress party.

His father, Khurshid Alam Khan, is a former Union Minster of External Affairs, and he is the maternal grandson of India’s third president, Dr. Zakir Hussain.

Born in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, on January 1, 1953, Khurshid earned a B.A. in English from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and BCL from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. He worked as a lawyer at the Supreme Court of India before beginning his political career as an officer on special duty in the Prime Minister's Office during Indira Gandhi's reign in the early 1980s. In June 1991, he became the Deputy Minister of Commerce, and then in January 1993, Minister of State for External Affairs. He is also an elected Member of Parliament from the Farrukhabad constituency in Uttar Pradesh.

Khurshid is also a playwright. He and his wife, Louise, have three sons and one daughter.

Salman Khurshid (Wikipedia)

Abdul Rehman Antulay (January 2006 to May 2009)

Abdul Rehman Antulay was the first Minister of Minority Affairs. He was born in 1929 in Maharashtra and started his political career as Maharashtra Youth Congress’ chief in 1960. He was previously a Member of Parliament and a member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly. Antulay served as Maharashtra Chief Minister between June 1980 and January 1982. He was forced to resign after a conviction in a corruption case. He also served as Union Minister of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare between June1995 and May 1996. Antulay earned his B.A. from Bombay University and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, London. He is married with one son and three daughters.