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Prof. Balraj Madhok
Minorities problem is linked with the building up of nation-states. In a nation-state exists a national society, whose constituents have feelings of ownness with the land and the culture of that nation based on emotional attachment and common beliefs, and they are always prepared to sacrifice everything for protecting the nation-state. The national community rules over the nation-state, and the country as well as nation are known by the name of that society. In such states there are some elements or sections of people, who are less in number and different from the national community in respect of language, race or religion, and they are called minorities of that nation-state. Thus the question of minorities arises only in that nation-state, where the majority community is regarded the nation of the state. Where no specific community enjoys recognition in the form of the nation, the question of recognising any other community as minorities does not arise at all.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1950 had defined minorities as below:
`Only those communities other than the ruling national community can be termed as minorities, who want to have a language, religion or race different from the language, religion and race of the national community. It is essential for being recognised as minorities that they should be sufficient in number and their constituents should be faithful to the nation in which they live.'
All nation-states are expected to grant equal legal and human rights to such minorities, and not to practise any sort of discrimination against them. The U.N.O. lays stress on it. But in actual practice, the attitude and approach of several nation-state towards the minorities
is not alike.
Authors : Shri H. V. Seshadri, Shri K. S. Sudarshan, Shri K. Surya Narayan Rao, Prof. Balraj Madhok
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