Last week, the Supreme Court, in Chinthada Anand vs State of Andhra Pradesh, reiterated what has been its default position for decades: the status of the Scheduled Caste is limited to the followers of Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Their conversion to Christianity and Islam eclipses their Scheduled Caste identity; that is, they cease to be Scheduled Castes, but the eclipse miraculously disappears on their reconversion to the original faiths they or their ancestors belonged to. They become Scheduled Castes all over again.

The Supreme Court’s default position, willy-nilly, disincentivises Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist Scheduled Castes from converting to Christianity and Islam. Their embracing of the two Semitic faiths deprives them of their caste identity, and they, therefore, cannot avail the statutory state entitlements granted to the Scheduled Castes, such as reservation in government jobs and seats in educational institutions.

The disincentive to convert springs from the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950, which the President of India issued to identify castes for their categorisation as Scheduled Castes. Clause 3 of the 1950 order, however, said, “No person who professes a religion different from Hinduism shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.” The order was, in 1956, amended to add Sikhism and then, in 1990, Buddhism to the list of religions whose Dalit members were eligible for the Scheduled Caste status. Only they can avail statutory entitlements linked to the Scheduled Caste identity.

The argument behind excluding Christian and Muslim Dalits from the ambit of the 1950 order was that Christianity and Islam do not theologically recognise caste. But neither do Buddhism and Sikhism. Their inclusion testifies to both the hypocrisy and injustice of denying the Scheduled Caste status to the Dalits among Christians and Muslims. Umpteen studies have shown that castes, in varying degrees, exist in all religions in India. The 1950 order is palpably a disincentive for Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist Dalits to forsake their faiths—they simply stand to lose a lot in doing so.

In contrast to disincentivising conversion from these three faiths, the Supreme Court’s reading of the 1950 order provides incentives to Christian and Muslim Dalits to return to the three faiths in which they or their ancestors were born. Their reconversion leads to them recovering their previous Scheduled Caste status and reclaiming the statutory entitlements linked to that identity. The Supreme Court’s reading can be said to encourage reconversion as Christian and Muslim Dalits have a lot to materially gain in doing so.

Have judgments incentivised reconversion?

My contention is based on academic Padmanabh Samarendra’s magisterial study of the Supreme Court’s judgments on cases emanating from the 1950 order. Although the purpose of his study, Religion, Caste and Conversion, published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2016, was to track the Supreme Court’s changing attitude to the linkage between caste and religion, it incontrovertibly establishes that its judgments have incentivised reconversion.

The first case Samarendra takes up is S. Rajagopal vs C.M. Arumugam. Both Rajagopal and Arumugam were candidates in the Kolar Gold Field, a Scheduled Caste reserved constituency, in the 1967 election to the then Mysore Legislative Assembly. Rajagopal won. His victory was challenged on the grounds that he, an Adi Dravida, a Scheduled Caste community, had converted to Christianity in 1949. With the conversion, the Scheduled Caste status of Rajagopal, because of the 1950 order, was lost to him. He could not therefore contest from Kolar. The Mysore High Court upheld Arumugam’s argument.

Rajagopal went in appeal to the Supreme Court, contending that he had indeed converted to Christianity, but by 1967, he had reconverted to Hinduism and consequently recovered his Adi Dravida status. Samarendra writes, “This situation gave rise to two questions: could reconversion to Hinduism automatically lead to a recovery of the membership of one’s caste; if not, then, on what grounds would a recovery be possible?” The Supreme Court said such a recovery was possible for Rajagopal only if the Adi Dravida Hindu caste consented to his claim of being its member. Since he had not provided evidence that he had been accepted into the Adi Dravida fold, his appeal was rejected.

Rajagopal and Arumugam returned to contest from Kolar in the 1972 Assembly election. Rajagopal’s nomination papers were rejected on the grounds that his Adi Dravida status, lost because of his conversion to Christianity, had not been recovered on his reconversion to Hinduism. The Mysore High Court set aside the election, saying Rajagopal had been wrongly disqualified as he had indeed recovered the Adi Dravida Hindu status.

Arumugam went in appeal to the Supreme Court, which now said, “If a person who has embraced another religion can be reconverted to Hinduism, there is no rational principle why he should not be able to come back to his caste.” Since Rajagopal had given evidence of being readmitted into the Adi Dravida Hindu fold, the Supreme Court rejected Arumugam’s petition. This judgment, in effect, said the Scheduled Caste status of persons merely gets eclipsed on their conversion to Christianity or Islam. The eclipse disappears on their reconversion, qualifying them for benefits to which the Scheduled Castes are statutorily entitled.

Rajagopal was, at least, born into the Adi Dravida Hindu caste, converted to Christianity, and then returned to Hinduism to recover his Scheduled Castes status. But the presumed precondition of being born into a Scheduled Caste to reclaim this status was gradually dispensed with by the Supreme Court.

Through a series of cases—for instance, Guntur Medical College vs Y. Mohan Rao, S. Anbalangan vs B. Devarajan, Kailash Sonkar vs Maya Devi—the Supreme Court said it wasn’t necessary for a person to be born in a Scheduled Caste to reclaim this status on reconversion. Thus, children of Schedule Caste members who embraced Christianity or Islam could claim the original caste status of their parents on converting to, say, Hinduism.

The timescale for reclaiming the Scheduled Caste status was astonishingly expanded in 2015, with the Supreme Court ruling, in K.P. Manu vs Chairman, Scrutiny Committee, that a person born to Christian parents could claim through reconversion the Scheduled Caste status of his grandfather—and even of his great-grandfather and beyond. He only has to prove that his forefathers had once belonged to a Scheduled Caste community, which has agreed to admit their descendant into its fold.

Even more scandalous was the Supreme Court, in 2016, allowing Mohammad Sadique to claim Scheduled Caste status for himself. Sadique had won from a reserved Assembly constituency of Punjab, from where, his rival argued, he should not have contested as he was Muslim. Sadique’s argument was that though he had been born into a Scheduled Caste community, he had embraced Sikhism, and consequently recovered his caste identity. Given that Muslims are deemed not to have caste and Sadique’s ancestors could never have been categorised as the Scheduled Caste, how could the Supreme Court allow Sadique to reclaim an identity he did not lose in the first place?

The Supreme Court’s rulings on K.P. Manu and Mohammad Sadique decidedly incentivise Christian and Muslim Dalits to reconvert to the three faiths born in India. This should please the Hindutvawadi progenitors of the “Ghar Wapsi” project, which seeks to bring back into Hinduism descendants of those who converted to Christianity and Islam centuries ago. The politics of conversion and reconversion apart, it is unjust of the state to deny statutory entitlements meant for the Scheduled Castes to Muslim and Christian Dalits, for they lag behind their counterparts among Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists on most social and economic indicators.

Ajaz Ashraf is a senior journalist from Delhi and the author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste.

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