CHENNAI, India (UCAN) -- Church leaders in Tamil Nadu have welcomed the southern Indian state's move to reserve some government jobs and seats in educational institutes for Christians and Muslims.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi announced the decision in the state legislative assembly on April 5 and said his government would introduce a law to implement it.

Archbishop Peter Fernando of Madurai, head of the Catholic Church in the state, welcomed the move. "We thank the government for initiating the process of reservation for Christians," he told UCA News on April 14.

Four days earlier, Archbishop Fernando led a delegation of Christian leaders to visit the chief minister. "We have expressed our happiness to the chief minister and urged him to take necessary steps to implement the announcement," said the prelate, who chairs the Tamil Nadu Bishops' Council.

The government has kept a promise the ruling party made for the last assembly election, observed Father Joe Anthony. The Jesuit priest edits The New Leader, a Church biweekly published in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital, 2,095 kilometers south of New Delhi. He told UCA News the government acted after repeated pleas from minority groups, but he foresees "legal hurdles" in implementing the decision.

In neighboring Andhra Pradesh state, the High Court cited technical flaws and suspended an earlier move by the government there to give similar quotas to Muslims.

For the past few years, Christian and Muslim organizations have urged the state governments to allot separate quotas for their communities. In September 2004, some of these organizations met in Madurai, a major city in Tamil Nadu, and jointly demanded "special reservations" for religious minorities.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam (DMK, Dravidian progressive party), the regional party that now rules Tamil Nadu, conceded to the demand of the two communities, who together form nearly 12 percent of the state's 62 million people.

The Indian Constitution was amended in 1951 to provide special concessions called "reservations" for tribal people and for Hindu dalit, at the bottom of caste hierarchy that has dominated Indian society. These benefits later were extended to Jains and Sikhs, and then to Buddhists. However, Christian and Muslim dalit were refused the concessions on the ground that their religions do not recognize caste.

Later, the governments of Tamil Nadu and several other states also extended such concessions to Backward Caste (BC) groups, ranked just above dalit.

In 1988, when DMK also was in power, the party raised the reservation to 69 percent, highest in any Indian state. Of this, 50 percent was reserved to BC groups. A recent Tamil Nadu government survey found that almost 80 percent of Christians and 95 percent of Muslims in the state belong to BC groups and are entitled to the reservation.

However, Father Xavier Arulraj and other Church leaders say that despite being on the BC list, Christians and Muslims do not have adequate representation in government jobs and educational institutions.

A recent survey by a federal agency supports Father Arulraj's claim. The 2004-2005 survey revealed that unemployment is highest among Christians. According to the survey data, more than 8 percent of Christians in urban areas are unemployed, compared to 4.4 percent of Hindus and 4.1 percent of Muslims.

"We are only demanding a small percentage of reservation within the existing BC reservation to get better representation," Father Arulraj told UCA News. The priest, who chairs Tamil Nadu Minority Economic Development Corporation, said they expect the government to allot 6 to 8 percent reservation for religious minorities within the BC list. The government so far has not announced the figure.

Father Arulraj says the state's religious minorities are not asking for any new reservations, and have demanded only those privileges they enjoyed before India became a republic in 1950.

In 1921, British colonial rulers introduced "special reservation" for Christians and Muslims. The "Communal Government Order of 1921" allotted 16 percent of government jobs to Christians and 16 percent to Muslims. However, those `communal reservations' were withdrawn in 1950.

The Tamil Nadu government's latest decision was not welcomed by all. The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian people's party) warned the move could divide the country along religious lines and encourage religious conversion.

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