Explained : When Exclusion Becomes Celebration: Hindutva Politics and the Cost of Denying Education and Its Impact

The revocation of recognition by the National Medical Commission (NMC) granted to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Medical College at Katra was followed not by concern for students, workers, or institutional due process, but by celebration from Hindutva right-wing groups. This celebration was not incidental. It was ideological. It revealed a politics that treats the exclusion of Muslims from public institutions not as collateral damage, but as achievement.

The focus, disturbingly, shifted away from regulatory standards and toward the religious identity of those admitted. What should have remained an administrative question was transformed into a moral spectacle, where merit itself was rendered suspect because it produced an outcome ideologically inconvenient to majoritarian politics.

Merit Recast as a Provocation

Admissions to the medical college were conducted through nationally mandated procedures, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which governs entry into undergraduate medical education across India. The resulting cohort included a significant number of Muslim students — a reflection of merit, eligibility, and competitive examination outcomes. Yet this demographic reality was framed not as proof of equal opportunity at work, but as evidence of alleged wrongdoing. Merit, when it benefitted Muslim students, was treated as an aberration demanding correction.

This inversion is telling. It suggests that the problem was never procedural compliance alone, but the visibility of Muslim success in a public institution. The celebration that followed the revocation made this unmistakably clear. It was not about improving medical education; it was about reversing an outcome that unsettled a majoritarian imagination.

Correcting a Dangerous Falsehood

Central to this mobilisation was the claim that the Vaishno Devi Medical College represents a form of religious entitlement — that resources associated with a Hindu shrine must, by implication, benefit Hindus alone. This claim is misleading and constitutionally untenable.

The medical college is not a denominational institution established to advance religious instruction. It is a publicly funded educational institution, supported by the government and bound by constitutional norms of equality and non-discrimination. To portray it as sectarian property is to deliberately misrepresent its character and to advance the idea that public institutions can be claimed by majorities as cultural or religious possessions.

Such reasoning, if normalised, would dismantle the very foundation of public education in India.

A Pattern, Not an Exception

This episode cannot be read in isolation. It fits a broader and increasingly visible pattern in which Muslim access to education is repeatedly problematised. From persistent attempts to dilute or deny the minority character of Aligarh Muslim University to sustained political campaigns targeting institutions where Muslim students succeed through merit, the message is consistent: Muslim presence in public education must be curtailed, questioned, or rendered conditional.

What is unfolding is not simply bias, but a politics of division that seeks to redraw the boundaries of belonging — not through law alone, but through pressure, spectacle, and institutional intimidation.

Institutional Power and Constitutional Drift

Regulatory oversight by the NMC is both necessary and legitimate. Educational institutions must meet standards, and regulators must enforce them. But when regulatory action aligns conspicuously with ideological agitation, neutrality becomes suspect.

Institutions do not operate in a vacuum. When political pressure defines the terms of legitimacy, administrative decisions risk becoming instruments of exclusion rather than guardians of quality. Such drift violates not only constitutional values but constitutional guarantees — particularly the promises of equality before law (Article 14), non-discrimination (Article 15), and the right to education with dignity under Article 21.

The danger lies not merely in one decision, but in the precedent it sets: that institutional authority can be mobilised to validate majoritarian grievance.

Who Really Pays the Price

What makes this episode especially disturbing is not merely the regulatory outcome, but the enthusiasm with which it was celebrated. This celebration had little to do with academic standards or patient safety. It was triggered by the visible presence of meritorious Muslim students in a public institution — a presence framed as illegitimate rather than earned.

The consequences were immediate and material. Hundreds of teaching and non-teaching staff — doctors, nurses, technicians, administrative and support workers — now face uncertainty. Their livelihoods, and those of their families, are tied to an institution turned into a political spectacle. Local economies suffer. Public health infrastructure weakens.

It is often argued that current students will be accommodated in other institutions, and that is likely true. But this narrow reassurance obscures the wider damage. Future students lose access to a public medical college. An entire region is deprived of educational and healthcare infrastructure. Years of public investment are rendered ineffective.

This harm is not incidental; it is the logical outcome of a politics that treats meritorious Muslim presence in public institutions as a provocation, and institutional collapse as an acceptable price for ideological purity. Careers that might have been built, professionals who might have served society, and avenues of social mobility are quietly erased.

The Moral Cost of Celebration

One need not contest the legality of a decision to question the morality of its celebration. Democracies are tested not only by what they permit, but by what they applaud. When joy is drawn from exclusion, when institutional damage is welcomed because it aligns with identity-based politics, the moral fabric of governance begins to fray.

Education is not a concession granted by majorities. It is a constitutional right and a public good. To convert it into a site of ideological victory is to abandon both educational purpose and democratic restraint.

What This Moment Demands

India’s constitutional promise was never that outcomes would be uniform, but that opportunity would be equal. Public institutions were designed to serve citizens, not communities ranked by acceptability. When that promise is undermined — not quietly, but with celebration — it signals a dangerous shift.

This is not nationalism. It is majoritarian domination dressed in the language of governance. And its cost is borne not only by minorities, but by institutions, workers, students, and the idea of India itself. 

Alrihan Ullah Khan is an undergraduate student of political science at Aligarh Muslim University.