Educationalists castigate increase of Christian quota in St Stephen's

The increase in Christian quota by India's most prestigious St Stephen's College, last month, has raged the faculty members and the educationalists in the country, urging the college to roll back its decision.

The members of the permanent faculty in the college apparently boycotted the special Assembly on the first day of the academic session on Tuesday.

Last month, the college announced 50 per cent quota for Christian students, which drew the ire of Hindus, specially the nationalist groups.

According to Sunil Mathew, St Stephen’s spokesman, “Christians were not getting sufficient representation in the college and so the quota had to be increased.”

A premier news channel in the country, yesterday, brought together a panel of experts comprising alumnus of St Stephen's, spokesperson for the Delhi Catholic Arcdiocese, Father Dominic and several other educationalists, who debated if minority institutions have taken their identity too far.

Is India's premier centre of excellence turning into a Christian institution from being an Indian institution? CNN–IBN’s ‘Face The Nation’ asked.

At the debate, Father Dominic questioned why St Stephen’s College was being singled out as a public–funded institute.

“There are thousands of institutions in India which are funded by public funds but which are for specific minorities and that is how it has been decided by the Constitution and it is a privilege given to these institutions by the constitution,” said Father Dominic.

He added, “What is this debate about the academic excellence being sacrificed? What is the big deal about academic excellence? St Columbus, also known to be a highly excellent institute academically, has long time ago given up the idea of excellence and many other Christian institutions run by the Jesuits have given up the idea of academic excellence. It is because at some time it felt that it had gone away from the basic call of Jesus Christ, which is an option for the poor and the oppressed. If academic excellence is there, well and good, and if it is not, our first priority anyways is the downtrodden and the poor.”

The controversial quota issue became more intense, after the college’s existing faculty noted that apart from the increase of Christian quota, the college also shows discrimination in the selection of teachers, due its preference for Christians to fill the chairs. Presently, there are over 10% of Christian teachers in the college.

Today the college's supreme council meets to take a final decision on the issue of Christian quota for the teachers.