In 1978, the National Commission for Minorities was created and, in 1992, it was made a statutory body standing as sentinel for the protection of minority rights. Its functions are to evaluate the progress of the development of minorities, to monitor the working of the constitutional safeguards, to make recommendations for the effective implementation of safeguards and to look into the specific complaints regarding deprivation of rights and sefeguards of the minorities and to take up matters with the appropriate authorities.2 The Judiciary held in A.M. Patroni v. Kesavan case that the word 'minority' had not been defined in the Constitution, it must be held any community, religious or linguistic which was numerically less than 50 percent of the population of the State was entitled to protection of Article 30.3

Article 29 (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.

(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.

Article 30 of the Constitution of India reads as follows:

Article 30 (1) All Minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.

(2) The State shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.

Article 350 A of the Constitution of India reads as follows:

It shall be the endeavour of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups; and the President may issue such directions to any State as he considers necessary or proper for securing the provision of such facilities.

3. Article 350 B of the Constitution of India reads as follows:

There shall be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities to be appointed by the President.

4. Article 350B (2) says:
It shall be the duty of the Special Officer to investigate all matters relating to the safeguards provided for linguistic minorities under this Constitution and report to the President upon those matters at such intervals as the President may direct, and the President shall cause all such reports to be laid before each House of Parliament, and sent to the Governments of the States concerned.

Muslims are generally known as a minority group which is the largest/biggest among all minorities in India. This category is primarily based on religion (which is the main source of identification set by the National Commission of Minorities) and numerical factor (which is supported by the great expert Francesco Capotorti). There were expectations widely prevalent among the elites of the majority Hindu community during the Constitution-making phase (1946-49) that the reservations for the Muslims in elected bodies, employment and educational institutions would make them a ‘permanent minority’. The liberal-secularists have also debated on the same line that the Muslims, if given reservation, would become a permanent political minority. They were opposed to the minoritization of the Muslims who would perform better in secular and non-reserved mode. As a result they could also act and emerge as political majority based on the choice of the electorates. These ideals of the elitist leadership who were also Framers of the Constitution, and the liberal-secularists have remained the part of academic debate centred on liberal-contractualist discourse.

On the contrary, the Muslims in India have, over the last 58 years, neither been able to emerge as mainstream political community nor they could maintain their numerical proportionate strength in elected bodies and public life. Their stake in them is worse than minimum expectation. One of the main reasons for this result is the failure of liberal-individualist political culture vis-à-vis the over-arching majoritarian politics based on communal consciousness. This communal consciousness even rejected the proportionate share of the Muslims in political, economic, defense, social and cultural spheres. As a result of the vicious cyclical effects of consciousness, the largest minority got reduced to the level of ‘non-comparatibility with even those minorities which constitute two to three percent of the total population of the country.