The Act for 27% OBC quotas will unleash a “social catastrophe,” divide the country on caste basis, cause “anarchy,” “seriously affect social and communal harmony.” And its products will be “intellectual pygmies as compared to normal intellectual sound students presently passing out.”

This is what the petitioners challenging the OBC quotas have argued, said the Supreme Court’s interim order today. The court’s response, in contrast, has the potential to inject some much-needed nuance into this shrill, often crude, debate if one reads a section tucked away deep in the order.

Here, Justice Dr Arijit Pasayat urges a serious look at how other diverse constitutional democracies like the United States and South Africa, in which certain groups were subjected to discrimination in the past, have addressed the fundamental challenge of equality.

The court singled out the Grutter v. Bollinger case in 2003 — the first ruling in 25 years by the US Supreme Court on affirmative action in higher education admissions.

The US court ruled that race can be used in university admission decisions, but the narrowly divided court also seemed to put limits on how much of a factor race can play in giving minority students an advantage in the admissions process.

On June 23, 2003, the US Supreme Court justices decided on two separate but parallel cases. In the pivotal case, Grutter v Bollinger, Barbara Grutter, a white student applied for admission to the University of Michigan Law School, one of the nation’s top law schools.

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