Blocking justice for Dalit Christians and Muslims

The ruling tightens the government’s narrative of SC identity as tied to ‘Indic’ religions.

The recent Supreme Court ruling that Dalits who convert to religions other than Hinduism, Sikhism, or Buddhism lose their Scheduled Caste (SC) status should have sent shockwaves across India’s socio-political landscape. However, its significance seems to have been lost in the cacophony of the United States-Israel war on Iran.

Delivered on March 24 by a two-judge bench, the order comes at a curious juncture: the issue of SC status for converts has been pending before a larger three-judge bench since 2011. Either the judges were unaware of this procedural overlap, or the government failed to bring it to their attention. In either case, the ruling has immediate and far-reaching consequences.

The judgment carries binding authority. For Dalit Christians and Muslims, it creates fresh apprehensions and fear. States such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, which have historically extended certain welfare benefits to these Dalit groups, now face a legal quandary. Such benefits, if classified under SC quotas, are vulnerable to challenge and likely to be struck down. Some welfare measures in these states are already structured under the OBC and Backward Classes categories. However, the provisions of the SC/ST (Atrocities Prevention) Act cannot be extended to them.

The judges seem to have chosen a simplistic interpretation of the law, because Dalits continue to face social and economic discrimination both within their religious community as well as in the larger society they live in. Upper-caste neighbours, for example, do not change their attitudes just because their Dalit neighbour has converted to Islam or Christianity.

The government has suggested in the court that there was an ‘intelligible differentia’ between Sikhism and Buddhism as ‘Indic religions’, and Christianity and Islam, which were ‘foreign religions’ which do not recognise caste. But Sikhism and Buddhism also do not recognise the ‘varna system’ though they are caste-riven. The historical stigma of caste being Dalit continues to adhere to individuals, irrespective of their attempts to escape from it by religious conversion.

Indeed, recognising this, the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 had to be modified first in 1956 to include Sikhism, and then in 1990 to include Buddhism to accommodate Ambedkarite Dalits who had converted.

It might have been wiser for the Supreme Court to wait for the report of the K G Balakrishnan Commission of Inquiry on the issue. The report of the commission headed by the former Chief Justice of India is due to be submitted on April 10. The Narendra Modi government had set up the commission in October 2022 because it claimed that empirical data was needed to decide whether SC status could be extended to Dalit Christian and Muslims.

The Balakrishnan Commission was set up specifically to generate data after studying customs, traditions, and social discrimination to determine whether conversion in fact ‘ameliorates’ an individual’s social status as the government has contended in the current case. Perhaps some in the government hope to upturn the findings of the Ranganath Mishra Commission of 2004 which in its report (submitted in 2007) supported reservations for Dalit Christians and Muslims. In effect, recognising the social reality of India, the Mishra Commission had recommended that SC-status be made religion-neutral.

Thus, the Mishra Commission had recommended that Paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, be modified which restricts SC-status to only Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists. Its basic finding was that the Dalits continue to suffer discrimination even after conversion. Therefore, it suggested extending SC reservation benefits to the Dalits who convert to Islam and Christianity. Further, it recommended the creation of minority quotas — proposing a 15% reservation in government jobs for minorities, with 10% specifically marked for Muslims. It also recommended that Dalit Christians and Muslims be treated as SCs for all purposes, including specialised protection granted under the SC/ST (Protection of Atrocities) Act.

None of these recommendations suited the ideological predilections of the political dispensation in power. The Modi government found the report unacceptable as it claimed the methodology of the commission had several ‘flaws’. It primarily cited lack of field studies or empirical research with the solicitor general claiming in the Supreme Court, “It was written within the four walls of a room. There was no field study done… The Commission (Misra) took a myopic view of the social milieu in India. The findings of the Ranganath Misra Commission have not been accepted by the government.”

The Centre also alluded to the ‘foreign origins’ of Christianity and Islam, and claimed that Dalit converts to these religions who had hoped to overcome caste oppression could not now return to claim benefits enjoyed by those who stayed back. There was also the fear that accepting its recommendations may add millions of converts to the SC population, reducing the share in reservation of those who remained within the fold of Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism.

The Supreme Court had, however, observed earlier that the data provided by the Mishra Commission may not have been entirely ‘perfunctory’, and could be used alongside the new findings of the Balakrishnan Commission. Up to 2023, the Modi government did not want the court to decide on the issue of reservations for Dalit Christians and Muslims till the Balakrishnan Commission report was submitted. But it seems to have been in a tearing hurry to get a definitive judgment on the issue now.

While it would be improper to second-guess the findings of the commission even before they are made public, the Modi government does not want a report recommending SC status to Dalit Christians and Muslims. The government used the opportunity offered by a case originating in the Andhra Pradesh High Court, based on atrocities against a Dalit pastor, to precipitate a binding judgment. It seems to be a deliberate procedural choice.

By omitting to inform the court that the issue was sub judice before a larger Supreme Court bench or that the Balakrishnan Commission report would be submitted in about two weeks’ time, the government has allowed the Supreme Court to deliver a judgment that pre-emptively neutralises the commission’s report.

With Assembly polls approaching in five States, perhaps the government did not want to risk a controversy that could alienate Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist Dalits as the reservation shares would shrink if Christian and Muslim Dalits were also made beneficiaries. The judgment also helps the government tighten its grip on the narrative that SC-status is linked to ‘Indic’ religions, and to discourage conversions to ‘foreign’ religions.

Bharat Bhushan is a New Delhi-based journalist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)