Why a Hindu Quota at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Medical College is Fair, not Communal

WASEEM GUL
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27 Nov 2025

In the quiet foothills of Trikuta, where millions of Hindu pilgrims leave their offerings at the shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi every year, a storm has erupted over fifty medical seats. The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME) was built entirely with roughly INR 500 crore of devotee donations channelled through the Shrine Board. This year it admitted its first MBBS batch for 2025-26. Of the 50 seats, 42 have gone to Muslim students, almost all from the Valley, purely on NEET merit. The result has angered Hindu organisations in Jammu, who are now demanding a reserved quota for Hindus – something similar to what exists at Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia. As a Kashmiri Muslim lawyer, I support that demand. Not because I want division, but because I want consistency, reciprocity, and genuine fairness. Predictably, the demand has been labelled “communal”. On 23 November, Iltija Mufti posted on X: “In Naya Kashmir discrimination towards Muslims now also extends to education. The irony being that this anti-Muslim apartheid is being legitimised & carried out in India’s only Muslim majority state with its only Muslim Chief Minister. Shameful”. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah cautioned that religion-based admission could lead to religion-based treatment. With respect, these are exaggerated fears. No mainstream Hindu group is asking for 100 % Hindu seats. The Sangharsh Samiti has spoken of 80 % at most; many moderates say 50 % on the AMU-Jamia pattern would suffice. The remaining seats would still be filled from the same all-India NEET merit list. High-scoring Muslim students who got in this year would get in next year too. The only difference is that Hindu students from Jammu, displaced Pandit families, or remote corners of Doda and Kishtwar would finally stand a realistic chance in a college their community built with coins and faith. Let us also admit: some reactions from the Hindu side have been harsh. One widely circulated post asked why Jamia, which receives nearly ₹900 crore of central funds every year, can keep half its seats for Muslims while Vaishno Devi, which took not a single rupee of tax money, is expected to remain 100 % open. The tone is angry, sometimes crude. I do not share the tone, but I do share the grievance. I have friends and relatives who studied at AMU and Jamia. No one in the Valley ever called their 50 % internal quota “anti-Hindu poison”. We defended it as legitimate protection of minority identity. The least we can do is extend the same understanding when a Hindu shrine wishes to protect its own. A practical, constitutional path already exists: declare SMVDIME a minority educational institution (Hindus are barely 30 % of J&K’s population), amend the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University Act if required, and allow up to 50 % internal seats on the AMU-Jamia model. The other half remain open, filled strictly by NEET rank. Nobody loses. Muslim students who genuinely outscore others will keep getting seats. Hindu students from the donor community will no longer feel their mothers’ offerings were taken for granted. This is not communalism. This is symmetry. Every brick of SMVDIME was paid for by Hindu pilgrims who dropped coins into the donation box believing they were serving Mata Rani. That money is as much an article of faith as waqf property or church endowments. Compare this with AMU and Jamia, which together receive well over INR 2,000 crore of public money every year yet retain minority status and reserve up to half their seats for Muslim students. No one calls that “anti-Hindu” or a threat to national unity. If public money can legitimately finance Muslim-minority quotas, why can private Hindu devotion not finance a modest Hindu preference? Refusing the second while defending the first is not secularism; it is selective secularism. Critics evoke memories of the 2008 Amarnath agitation and paint the demand as the thin end of a communal wedge. But reciprocity is not revenge. Hindu students already study at AMU and Jamia – often 15-20 % of the batch – without anyone accusing those universities of bigotry against Hindus. Why is the mirror image suddenly poisonous? As a Kashmiri Muslim, I see no threat to my community in letting Hindu devotees feel some ownership of the institution they funded. On the contrary, denying them that feeling breeds the very resentment we claim we want to avoid. The model is ready-made. Hindus are a minority in J&K. Christian Medical College Vellore, St Stephen’s Delhi, and countless Sikh and Jain institutions enjoy minority status and internal preferences. All that is required is an amendment to the University Act and recognition by the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. Internal seats can go to children of shrine employees, J&K Hindu domiciles, or feeder schools – exactly the way Jamia and AMU do it. NEET cut-offs will remain high; merit will not collapse. The real danger is not a 50 % quota. The real danger is ignoring a genuine sense of hurt among lakhs of devotees who now feel their hard-earned offerings have been used to side-line their own children. Protests modelled on 2008 are already on the streets. Dismissing them as “communal” without addressing the core asymmetry will only deepen the divide. Islam taught me justice is giving each what is due. If India’s constitutional framework allows Muslim institutions to safeguard their identity – even while receiving public funds – surely Hindu devotees who funded an entire medical college from their own pocket deserve a fraction of that consideration. This is not about being anti-Muslim. This is about being pro-fairness. Let the policymakers act: recognise SMVDIME’s unique character, amend the Act, and create a balanced, transparent quota. Only then will the foothills of Trikuta echo not with anger, but with the harmony that Mata Vaishno Devi has always stood for. (The author is a practising advocate at the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, and President of the Kashmir Advocates Association. He can be reached at waseemgll@gmail.com)