Why SC stand on Scheduled Caste conversion signals a structural reset in India |
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Why SC stand on Scheduled Caste conversion signals a structural reset in India
British Colonial censuses did not merely record caste, they froze it, standardised it, and permanently tied it to governance. Independent India inherited this mechanism.
In a significant judgment, the Supreme Court recently clarified that if a Scheduled Caste person converts to a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism, he or she immediately loses Scheduled Caste status.
The Apex court relied on the provisions laid down in the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, which clarifies that any person who does not profess one of the religions specified under Clause 3 of the 1950 order ceases to be a member of a Scheduled Caste, regardless of birth.
Predictably, this stance has triggered outrage, especially among the “conversion mafia”, which sees the judgment as regressive. But read more carefully, the court’s approach marks a quiet but significant step in decolonising India’s caste policy architecture.
At the heart of the issue lies a simple but uncomfortable truth: India’s contemporary caste framework is not purely indigenous. It is deeply shaped by the classificatory logic of the recent colonial past, which transformed fluid, context-bound social identities into rigid, state-administered categories.
British Colonial censuses did not merely record caste, they froze it, standardised it, and permanently tied it to governance. Independent India inherited this mechanism and utilised it by a section of the Church with an ulterior motive.
Historical evaluation of society
Caste-based discrimination is probably practiced in a much greater degree by a large section of the Church, which vociferously propagates the idea of “Dalit Christians” as against a negligible minority of the clergy who feel marginalised for their saner views. Both Christianity and Islam lured a large section of the Dalit population with a promise that these two religions are egalitarian and do not recognise caste discrimination.
But ironically, the National Council of Churches in........