By Joseph Maliakan
You scratch an Indian, the caste comes out , irrespective of whether the person is a Hindu, Muslim , Christian , Sikh , Budhist ,Jain , Agnostic or even an Atheist. Community life in India is primarily based on caste not religion.
The majority of Christian and Muslim Converts in India have come from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes populations . Though most of them or their predecessors converted to escape the caste stigma, the Indian society has hitherto refused to treat them differently. On the ground the converts continue to experience the discrimination they faced before conversion.This has been proved time and again though numerous sociological studies and statements of numerous converts.
In Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh and even in Kerala the Christian converts from scheduled caste and other backward class populations are treated as lesser human beings. In Andhra you even have separate churches for Christian converts .
The exclusion of scheduled caste converts to Christianity and Islam from the satutory provisions for the welfare and progress of the scheduled caste populations in the Constitution of India originated from the 1950 8Constitution ( Scheduled Castes ) Order , issued by the President of India under Article 341 of the Constitution , via Clause 3 which introduced a religious dimention stating , No person who professes a religion different from the Hindu religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.
This has been upheld by the Supreme Court of India on 24 March 2026 in spite of the fact a number of writ petitions challenging constitutional validity of the 1950 Presidential order itself is under challenge in the Supreme Court , ( these petitions have been pending in the Supreme Court for the last more than three decades ) and several Commissions appointed by the Union government has categorically held that caste discrimination exists within Christianity and Islam in India and the exclusion of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims from SC status is unconstitutional.
In 1955 the First Backward Classes Commission ( Kaka Kalelkar Commission ) observed that the rigid caste system and the practice of untouchability were widely prevalent among the Indian Christian and Muslim communities.
In 1980 the Second Backward Classes Commission ( Mandal Commission ) observed that the Hindu caste stratification and the resultant discrimination and ineqalities were common among Indian Christians and Muslims. On the recommendations of the Mandal Commission reservations were extended to OBCs across religions including Christian and Muslim converts. However, the Union government did not do any thing to change the SC criteria for Christian and Muslim Converts leaving the most oppressed Dalit converts without the statutory proection of SC.
Further the Hindu only rule under the 1950 Presidential.order was amened twice to include Dalit converts to strictly indigenous religions . In 1956 the first amendment was made by Parliament to include Dalit Sikhs following socio political
Mobilisation by Mazhabi and Ramdasia Sikhs who continued to face severe caste discrimination. This amendment recognised that caste discrimination continued outside the Hindu fold.
In 1990 during the V.P.Singh government , a second amendment to the 1950 Presidential.order extended SC status to Dalit Budhists while continuing to overlook the demands of the Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims . The granting of the SC status to Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Budhists was done on a rather strange logic that both Sikh and Budhist religions were indigenous while Christianity and Islam are FOREIGN. Mercifully , nobody argued that the Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims are also foreigners . In the toxic atmosphere under which we live today one should not be surprised if every Muslim and Christian is called a foreigner.
In this context it is pertinent to recall the finding of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities ( the Ranganath Misra Commission ) in 2007. The Commission categorically stated that the non – inclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslims in the SC list was a discrimination based on religion and therefore unconstitutional.The Commission recomened the total deletion of the Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Presidential order . Caste , the Commission further pointed out is a deeply rooted sociological reality in India that trancends all religious boundaries. Successive Union governments , Congress and the BJP have refused to implement this important recommendation which would have rectified the faltline in the 1950 Presidential Order.
For some inexplicable reason the the Union government is opposed to granting Dalit status to Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians. On 3rd August 2021 the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment issued a statement , The benefits of Centrally Sponsored Schemes ( CSS ) meant for the welfare and development of Scheduled Castes cannot be extended to converted Christians from scheduled castes.
In 2022 the Union government filed another affidavit in the Supreme Court arguing that the socioeconomic disadvantages and the nature of untouchability faced by these converts cannot be equated with the experience of Dalit Hindus and the 1950 Presidential Order is not unconstitutional.
In October 2022 the Union government appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan to gather contemporary empirical data on the question of exclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslim converts from the SC status. The SC order of 24 March 2026 has come even as the Supreme Court is awaiting the Justice Balakrishnan Commission report . The term of the Commission has been extended twice , the last in October 2025 for six months .
