Religious instruction cannot be provided by government-funded minority institutions: SC

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that no minority school receiving full government funding is allowed to require religious instruction of any type from its pupils. The court further emphasized that minority schools receiving partial government funding are not allowed to provide religious instruction.

A bench consisting of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, J B Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra, and Satish Sharma made the observation after Attorney General Tushar Mehta brought to light that mandatory religious instruction for Muslim students at the university had been abolished by Parliament in the 1951 amendment to the AMU Act, 1920.
Justice Khanna said, “We acknowledge the fact that a minority school receiving full state funding is not allowed to teach any religion to its children. The minority institution may only provide religious instruction to pupils who volunteer when it gets any funding from the government, even if that funding only makes up 1% of its total budget.”
The decision also ruled that a minority institution cannot require its pupils to take religious instruction after it has received official accreditation.
Mehta said that these requirements, which arose from government funds, were the same for everyone, regardless of whether the educational institutions were minority or non-minority.
The court said that Muslims established a reserve money of Rs 30 lakh to fulfill the need for obtaining statutory recognition for Aligarh Muslim institutions. It then questioned if this did not signify that Muslims established AMU and provided justification for the institution to be granted minority status.
Mehta said that donations totaling Rs 30 lakh came from a variety of groups, not only Muslims. He emphasized that the AMU Act’s historical non-minority nature could not be altered for post-Constitutional reasons, but said that AMU and BHU, which were established in 1920 and 1915 respectively, had previously received an annual payment of Rs 1 lakh from the British government.
“AMU now receives yearly funding from the government totaling Rs 1,570 crore. It is a highly regarded university that has national significance,” he said.