On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of India issued a notice to the Union Government, asking for their response in a plea that said those Dalit Hindus who had converted to Christianity or Islam should be given the same reservation benefits as extended to the Scheduled Caste (SC) category. The Supreme Court has given the central government a window of three weeks to respond. After that, the petitioners would get one week to respond to the government’s response.

Notably, last year, the then Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in the Rajya Sabha that Dalits who had shunned their faith and converted to Islam and Christianity will not be permitted to contest parliamentary or assembly elections from constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), and will not be allowed to claim other reservation benefits.

Speaking on eligibility to contest from reserved constituencies, Prasad said, “Para 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order outlines that… no person who professes a religion different from Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.”

The root of the issue lies in a 1950 Presidential Order. In Para 3 of that order, it was clarified that only those who profess Indic faiths – Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists – would constitute Scheduled Castes. Those who convert to Islam or Christianity, leaving Hinduism, would not be eligible for the same benefits.

The 1950 order was further ratified by several other cases where the High Court and the Supreme Court of India reiterated the exact same position.

In the C.M Arumugam v S. Rajgopal and others, the court held that “It is no doubt true, and there we agree with the Madras High Court in G. Michael case that the general rule is that conversion operates as an expulsion from the caste, or, in other words, the convert ceases to have any caste, because caste is predominantly a feature of Hindu society and ordinarily a person who ceases to be a Hindu would not be regarded by the other members of the caste as belonging to their fold.”

The case in which this principle was ruled out was Michael v S. Venkateshwaran. This principle was further reiterated in the cases of Coopoosami Chetty v Duraisami Chetty and Muthusami v Masilamani. The basic premise of these judgements was that once someone converts to Islam or Christianity, out of Hinduism, their caste ceases to exist altogether, which is to say that they stop belonging to any caste, therefore, they should not be eligible for any benefits under Scheduled Caste category.

When the 1950 Presidential Order and the various judgements of the Courts have laid this principle out clearly, one has to wonder where the current case comes from. Of course, the Christian and Muslim communities would have counters to these orders, which we can discuss threadbare in a separate article, but politically, what is forming the basis of the court considering this demand seriously?

The petitioners led by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) had filed the plea for extension of quota benefits to Dalit Christians in 2004 and the case was last heard in February 2015. In between the court was informed that the government had set up the Ranganath Misra commission to examine the issue. Prashant Bhushan referred extensively to the Commission report that the government had set up after CPIL had filed the petition.

For the purpose of this article, we will focus on the genesis of the report and its political ramifications given the time it was commissioned.

It was in October 2004 that a resolution was passed by the Government of India to investigate steps to be taken to benefit the “socially and economically backward sections among religious and linguistic minorities”.

The aim of the “National Commission for religious and linguistic minorities” was to 1) figure out how to identify the backward communities under religious and linguistic minorities”, 2) recommend measures for their welfare and 3) recommend constitutional, administrative and legal modalities for the implementation of recommendations made. The BJP at the time had vociferously rejected the implementation of the report and also opposed reservations for Dalit Christians, accusing Congress of playing vote bank politics.

What is pertinent to note here is that the Commission was set up in October 2004. Only a few months after UPA, led by Sonia Gandhi, defeated Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA alliance in the General Elections. Post the victory of the UPA, Sonia Gandhi and her band of cohorts had taken several decisions to appease the minorities that had overwhelmingly made the UPA win possible. Here, I say Sonia Gandhi because there are official NAC records that say, in no uncertain terms, that the Manmohan Singh government was remotely controlled by Sonia Gandhi, making her the de-facto leader of the nation.

The decisions taken by Super PM Sonia Gandhi were always dressed up as welfare schemes, however, the undertones are extremely hard to miss after winning the elections in 2004.

It was, for example, in January 2006, the Congress government split the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to create the Minority Affairs Ministry. The first minister in 2006 was Abdul Rahman Antulay, a Muslim and then, in 2009, it was Salman Khurshid, again a Muslim. Interestingly, AR Antulay’s name came up in the confidential memo by the U.S. Ambassador to India, David Mulford, released by WikiLeaks. In the Wikileaks cable, it was clearly mentioned that Antulay had raised doubts about 26/11, saying that “Hindutva forces” could have been involved in the 26/11 terror attack.

“The Congress party, after first distancing itself from the comments (of Antulay, the then Minority Affairs Minister), two days later issued a contradictory statement which implicitly endorsed the conspiracy. During this time, Antulay’s completely unsubstantiated claims gained support in … Indian—Muslim community,” Mulford wrote in his secret cable to the State Department on December 23, 2008. “Hoping to foster that support for upcoming national elections, the Congress Party cynically pulled back from its original dismissal and lent credence to the conspiracy,” Mulford wrote.

It is rather evident that while the Ministry was supposed to take care of all minorities, including Buddhists, the Sonia Government was focused mainly on appeasing the Muslims as their primary minority group that needed to be rewarded for voting them back to power. The actual expenditure on Minority Scheme had been from 143.53 crores in 2006-07 to Rs. 1593.23 in 2012-13.

In the campaign of appeasement, it wasn’t just the endless list of schemes that were introduced for minorities and specifically for Muslims, it was also a period where dangerous attempts were made to introduce dangerous legislations like the Communal Violence Bill. In 2005, UPA1 introduced a communal violence bill. In 2011, under the guidance of the NAC, UPA2 introduced a revised draft of the same. 

In the 2005 version of the bill, any “group” that has become a victim of communal attacks could seek redressal. However, in 2011, a new definition of the “group” which is protected, was introduced. “Group means a religious or linguistic minority, in any State in the Union of India, or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within the meaning of clauses (24) and (25) of Article 366 of the Constitution of India”

Thus only minorities and SCs/STs could be “victims” and the perpetrators of communal violence would always be the majority, which is Hindus. The definition of “offences” itself was so wide — any sort of crime could be brought under the ambit of this Act.

“Continuous unlawful activity of a widespread or systematic nature knowingly directed against a group or part thereof’ means the course of conduct involving the multiple or mass commission of acts referred to in this section, whether spontaneously or planned, whether over a short or prolonged period or in one place or a number of places simultaneously or otherwise, against any group or part thereof”.

About 35 offences under the IPC were brought under dual ambit — by making it also relevant to this Communal Violence Bill. The only additional criterion being it has to be committed multiple (read — more than once) times against a minority. The Act turned many judicial concepts upside down. It mandates that every accused be first assumed guilty — with the onus of proving otherwise on the accused.

“Whenever an offence of organized communal and targeted violence is committed and it is shown that a hostile environment against a group exists or the offence of hate propaganda under section 8 was committed against a group, it shall be presumed, unless the contrary is proved, that the said offence was knowingly directed against persons belonging to the group by virtue of their membership of the group”.

There were several other provisions that specifically painted a target on the backs of Hindus in order to protect Muslims, presumably, as a mark of thanks for electing them back to power.

From Communal Violence Bill to MASUKA, the creation of a Minority Ministry, excessive doles and schemes to benefit Muslims specifically and commissions such as the Misra commission to extend SC benefits to those Dalits who convert to Christianity – Congress attempted in every possible way to appease “minorities”, which certainly did not include Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis and Jains.

Extending reservation to Dalit Christians, a misnomer, to begin with, was a political campaign that was set in motion by the Congress government in 2004, by setting up a specific commission to include Christian converts into Scheduled Castes. In Telangana, as recently as 2021, Congress had promised that if it is voted to power, it would include Dalit Christians in Scheduled Castes. In 2014 as well, Congress had promised quotas for “backward Muslims” and inclusion of Dalit Christians in Scheduled Castes.

It is evident that the cycle Congress had followed after coming back to power in 2004, is being repeated as the last ditch effort to come back to power in 2024. With the Supreme Court now asking the Modi government to file a response to the plea, it would do well to stay away from the cycle that only furthers the Congress’ appeasement agenda, almost incentivising Hindus to convert to Christianity and Islam.

Aside from political concerns, legal and civilisational concerns are also aplenty, that the government would do well to consider. The entire reason Dalits convert from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam – inducement is that Hinduism is discriminatory and that these religions would provide equality, respect and security. If that is the case, the moment a Dalit changes his religion, there is an assumption that he is shedding the supposed historic oppression to become a part of an egalitarian society. In that case, if they are getting equality, why should they be entitled to reservations owing to their former Hindu identity? This could as well be a way to whitewash casteism in Islamic and Christian societies. There are enough examples of lower castes within these two religions being discriminated against. They essentially want state protection while their own discriminate against them, but use their Hindi identity to do so – preserving the propaganda of Christianity and Islam.  

Reservations were accorded to Scheduled Castes (Dalits) essentially because of the historical oppression that the community faced. The oppression then led to economic and social backwardness. As far as social backwardness is concerned, that ideally should be taken care of the moment the individual converts to Christianity or Islam. The economic backwardness is now taken care of by Economic Weaker Section (EWS) and therefore, additional reservation on the basis of an identity they gave up, is essentially going to work as an incentive for Hindus to convert to Christianity. It is pertinent to note that according to reports, 70% of Indian Christians are Dalit converts – if that is true – this essentially means that the majority of Christians would be taking benefits as minorities and as “Dalits”. The asininity of this proposal must be summarily rejected by the Modi government.