Article 29(1) of the Constitution, which is included in Part III, confers upon any section of citizens residing in the territory of India, the right to conserve its language, script or culture. The text of the provision reads as follows:
“29. Protection of interests of minorities. — (1) Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.”
Discussion and Debate in Constituent Assembly
Incorporated into the constitutional framework with a distinctive approach to bestowing rights upon a segment of the populace, this provision underwent extensive debate and scrutiny within the halls of the Constituent Assembly. The deliberations surrounding this provision serve as an invaluable resource for comprehensively understanding the significance of Article 29, affording us insight into the overarching intent of its framers during the formulation of this particular provision.
Article 29, which was then draft Article 23 prior to its inclusion into the Constitution, was the subject matter of intense debate, with respect to both the terms used in the provision itself and the import of the rights it conferred. Although draft Article 23 initially used the term ‘minority’, it was substituted for the words ‘section of citizens’. This change was made keeping in mind the diversity of India and with the aim of ensuring that children received education in the language of their choice, while simultaneously making sure that they continued to learn the language of whichever State they may be a part of.
Thereafter, the term ‘section of citizens’ got crystallised to the extent that attempts to replace it with the term ‘minority’ were negatived by the Assembly. With that, Article 29, as we are familiar with today, found its place as a part of the Constitution.
Provisions akin to Article 29(1), which establish a right to preserve culture, can be identified in numerous Constitutions across various jurisdictions. For instance, Article 20(2) of the Constitution of Albania grants the right to ‘preserve and develop’ ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity. A similar right is articulated in Article 56 of the Armenian Constitution, Article 11 of the Georgian Constitution, Article 59 of the Kosovan Constitution, Article 114 of the Latvian Constitution, and Article 35(1) of the Polish Constitution. While these provisions share the common objective of cultural preservation, they vary slightly from Article 29(1) by incorporating the term ‘develop’.
When read in conjunction with Article 30, the overarching objective of Article 29 is to allow minority communities to establish educational institutions to preserve and fortify their cultural, linguistic, or scriptural heritage.
Standing under Article 29(1)
Article 29(1) effectively has two key aspects that need to be determined: first, whether there is a ‘section of citizens’ seeking to conserve their language, script or culture and second, that such language, script or culture in question is ‘distinct’.
Article 29(1) begins with the term ‘any section of citizens’. Though the term ‘minority’ is used in the marginal heading, the scope of Article 29(1) is not restricted to minorities as understood in the technical sense. It instead extends to any section of citizens residing in the territory of India. This was a conscious choice on the part of the framers of our Constitution, as is apparent from the following words of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar:
“For instance, for the purposes of this article 23, if a certain number of people from Madras came and settled in Bombay for certain purposes, they would be, although not a minority in the technical sense, cultural minorities. Similarly, if certain number of Maharashtrians went from Maharashtra and settled in Bengal, although they may not be minorities in the technical sense, they would be cultural and linguistic minorities in Bengal. The article intends to give protection in the matter of culture, language and script not only to a minority technically, but also to a minority in the wider sense of the terms as I have explained just now.
That is the reason why we dropped the word “minority” because we felt that the word might be interpreted in the narrow sense of the term, when the intention of this House, when it passed article 18, was to use the word “minority” in a much wider sense, so as to give cultural protection to those who were technically not minorities but minorities nonetheless. It was felt that this protection was necessary for the simple reason that people who go from one province to another and settle there, do not settle there permanently.
They do not uproot themselves from the province from which they have migrated, but they keep their connections. They go back to their province for the purpose of marriage. They go back to their province for various other purposes, and if this protection was not given to them when they were subject to the local Legislature and the local Legislature were to deny them the opportunity of conserving their culture, it would be very difficult for these cultural minorities to go back to their province and to get themselves assimilated to the original population to which they belonged. In order to meet the situation of migration from one province to another, we felt it was desirable that such a provision should be incorporated in the Constitution.”
Thus, Article 29(1), while conferring the right to conserve, does not restrict itself only to the notion of a minority as understood in the technical sense but includes any group that may seek to conserve a distinct language, script or culture.
This interpretation of Article 29(1) has also been established by a 9-judge bench of Supreme Court in Ahmedabad St. Xavier’s College Society v. State of Gujarat, wherein it held that:
“6. I this Court t will be wrong to read Article 30(1) as restricting the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice only to cases where such institutions are concerned with language, script or culture of the minorities. The reasons are these.
First, Article 29 confers the fundamental right on any section of the citizens which will include the majority section whereas Article 30(1) confers the right on all minorities.
Second, Article 29(1) is concerned with language, script or culture, whereas Article 30(1) deals with minorities of the nation based on religion or language.
Third, Article 29(1) is concerned with the right to conserve language, script or culture, whereas Article 30(1) deals with the right to establish and administer educational institutions of the minorities of their choice.
Fourth, the conservation of language, script or culture under Article 29(1) may be by means wholly unconnected with educational institutions and similarly establishment and administration of educational institutions by a minority under Article 30(1) may be unconnected with any motive to conserve language, script or culture. A minority may administer an institution for religious education which is wholly unconnected with any question of conserving a language, script or culture.”
In State of Karnataka v. Associated Management of English Medium Primary and Secondary Schools, the imposition of a particular language by the State in primary schools was under challenge. Rights under Article 29(1) were asserted by an association representing private schools.
Similarly, in State of Bombay v. Bombay Education Society and others, the right of the Anglo-Indian community to conserve their culture and language under Article 29(1) was upheld. The parties invoking the right were the Bombay Society and its two directors, which sought to ensure value-based education for the underprivileged. Thus, notwithstanding the language of Article 29(1), it is not necessary that the right must be invoked by the entirety of the section of citizens belonging to a particular community, or that such community must collectively seek redressal.
Substance of Article 29(1)
As discussed previously, Article 29(1) aims to ‘conserve’ the language, culture or script of a section of citizens. Instead of obligating the State to make any special provisions for the development of such language, script, or culture, the ambit of the term ‘conserve’ is to prohibit state intervention in these aspects. This intent to proscribe interference, though not apparent, has been explicitly emphasized in the discussions of the Constituent Assembly and has consistently been underscored by Supreme Court in various decisions.
A dialogue between K. Santhanam and Hasrat Mohani during the Assembly debates notably encapsulates this dimension of non-intervention. It suggests that the objective of Article 29(1) was envisioned to forestall any potential harm to cultures by fascist regimes, should such a scenario arise. K. Santhanam, in particular, had stated in this regard as follows:
“Sir, you will remember that throughout Europe, after the first World War, all that the minorities wanted was the right to have their own schools, and to conserve their own cultures which the Fascist and the Nazis refused them. In fact, they did not want even the State schools. They did not want State aid, or State assistance. They simply wanted that they should be allowed to pursue their own customs and to follow their own cultures and to establish and conduct their own schools. Therefore, I do not think it is right on the part of any minority to depreciate the rights given in article 23(1).”
Likewise, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar gave his perspective on the matter, echoing the sentiment that the State should refrain from intervening and imposing any culture, whether local or otherwise, upon a community.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar further underscored that the provision does not levy any burden or obligation upon the State. In this regard, he articulated the following:
“I think another thing which has to be borne in mind in reading article 23 is that it does not impose any obligation or burden upon the State. It does not say that, when for instance the Madras people come to Bombay, the Bombay Government shall be required by law to finance any project of giving education either in Tamil language or in Andhra language or any other language. There is no burden cast upon the State. The only limitation that is imposed by article 23 is that if there is a cultural minority which wants to preserve its language, its script and its culture, the State shall not by law impose upon it any other culture which may be either local or otherwise […]”
The original article as it stood in the Fundamental Rights only cast a sort of duty upon the State that the State shall protect their culture, their script and their language. The original article had not given any Fundamental Right to these various communities. It only imposed the duty and added a clause that while the State may have the right to impose limitations upon these rights of language, culture and script, the State shall not make any law which may be called oppressive, not that the State had no right to make a law affecting these matters, but that the law shall not be oppressive.
The nature of the protection afforded by Article 29 also came up before Supreme Court in D.A.V. College v. State of Punjab, which analysed a counterfactual and held that had the State intervened in compelling affiliated colleges, including minority institutions, to provide instruction in the Punjabi language, it would have impeded the right to conserve their language, script, and culture. It held that such an intervention would have amounted to stifling the language and script of other sections of citizens and encroaching on their right to conserve their own culture and language.
At this juncture, it is imperative to recognize that Article 29 does not advocate for absolute governmental abstention in matters involving culture, language or script. In fact, to some extent, government intervention is unavoidable as regulation is essential for the maintenance of public order and for upholding constitutionalism. State actions and regulations with an insignificant or merely incidental effect on a community’s cultural rights might also not be caught in the crosshairs of Article 29(1). This is also seconded by various decisions of Supreme Court, where some such regulatory interventions by the State were held to not constitute a curtailment of Article 29(1) rights.
In addition, the supreme court added a word of caution that not all cultural practices of a section of citizens—for example, those blatantly running against the spirit and grain of our Constitution, like casteism and gender discrimination—would be protected by Article 29(1).[1]
A violation of Article 29, therefore hinges on the ‘nature’ and ‘degree’ of State intervention and not merely on the simpliciter fact of intervention. In other words, the violation of Article 29 is necessarily a question of law which requires adjudication of the circumstances, intention and effect of the state intervention on the aggrieved section of citizens, as well as the society at large.
To sum up our discussion, the rights conferred by Article 29(1) require that the State not take any steps to erode a community’s culture, language or script; and concomitantly accords to such section of citizens the freedom and independence to preserve and conserve their culture, language and script, by themselves. At the same time, the right under Article 29(1) does not necessitate the Government to enact specific provisions for its enforcement and also does not altogether restrict the State from enacting regulations.
Reference
In Re: Section 6(a) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (2024)
[1] In Re- Section 6(a) of the citizenship act, 1955