The Supreme Court’s recent verdict on conversion and reservation will have far-reaching consequences. According to the judgement in Chinthada Anand, on conversion to another religion except Buddhism and Sikhism, a Scheduled Caste member would stand to lose her entitlements in that capacity. The court also clarified that for Scheduled Tribes members, there is no automatic loss of status on conversion.
Caste is a constant that’s always decided by birth. The discrimination meted out to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India is a historical reality that the Constitution tried to tackle. In such a society, any rhetoric on equality could turn futile in the absence of positive efforts to compensate for the agonies of long-term injustice. This is the rationale behind beneficial measures like reservation.
The facts of Chinthada Anand are curious. The appellant, a pastor for about 15 years, alleged that prior to his conversion he belonged to the Madiga community, a Scheduled Caste in Andhra Pradesh. He admittedly professed and propagated Christianity ever since his conversion. The main question in the case was whether the offences allegedly committed on him would attract provisions of the 1989 statute for prevention of atrocities against SC/ST individuals.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court rightly answered it in the negative and quashed the case. The Supreme Court confirmed the high court judgement. The offences alleged under the Indian Penal Code were also found untenable. Thus, the accused were exonerated.
The apex court was correct in holding that a converted person cannot prosecute a case on the premise that despite the conversion, he can invoke the penal statute meant to deal with crimes against people belonging to SC or ST communities. Such a prosecution would be clearly illegitimate, and the liberty of others cannot depend upon such a fiction. Individual liberty always requires an interpretation that favours it.
But in Chinthada Anand, the court clearly exceeded the brief and travelled much beyond what it was called upon to decide. It said, “The loss of [Scheduled caste] status carries with it the automatic and immediate termination of all eligibility for statutory benefits, protections, reservations, preferences and entitlements that are predicated upon or flow from such membership regardless of birth.”
In a case pertaining to the quashing of criminal proceedings, the parties are not supposed to deal with the issues relating to reservation or other benefits for Scheduled Caste members. Such benefits also were not in issue in the case. The considerations for quashing a criminal case and deciding on compensatory discrimination are different and distinct. The former pertains to the nature of allegations in each case, while the latter needs a constitutional scrutiny of the aspects placed before the court in a more comprehensive way. When no issues of reservation or other similar entitlements arose in the case, the court ought not to have decided the question of reservation in abstractum. But it did so, wrongly.
The basis of the court’s pronouncement over the entitlements is the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950. Clause 3 of the order, as amended twice, says, “No person who possesses a religion different from the Hindu, the Sikh or the Buddhist religion shall be deemed a Scheduled Caste."
Though this clause might appear categorical, as held by the court, constitutional adjudication, unlike in a criminal appeal, would call for a deeper examination of the impact of conversion on Scheduled Caste members. The interpretive process in constitutional adjudication happens on a wider canvas that can go beyond the plain meaning of the words in the 1950 order. American Judge Learned Hand famously said, “There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.”
Researchers Pallavi Radhakrishnan and Sandra Sajeev recently published a paper, ‘Beyond Caste: A Review on the Psychological and Social Dimensions of Dalit Conversions to other Religions and the Formation of New Social Identities in Modern India’ (2025). They analysed studies conducted during 2000-2025 and noted the “psychological reconstruction” and “increased literacy rate and employment prospects” brought by conversion. Yet, they found “continued disadvantages tied to a history of caste, even after conversion”. They concluded that “conversion alone cannot demolish the deeply rooted structures of caste-based discrimination”.
Quite a few studies expose the folly of the idea that conversion instantly erases the birth marks of an individual. But the court in Chinthada Anand followed the abrupt declaration in C M Arumugam (1975) that “once… a person ceases to be a Hindu and becomes a Christian, the social and economic disabilities arising because of Hindu religion cease, and hence it is no longer necessary to give him protection and for this reason he is deemed not to belong to a Scheduled Caste”.
But the issue is not that simple. The question of impact of conversion was not even a point of deliberation in Chinthada Anand’s appeal. That the text of the 1950 Constitution Order was under challenge before the Supreme Court in the Centre for Public Interest Litigation case was not taken note of. Also, the court failed to note that because of the continuing underdevelopment of the Scheduled Castes despite conversion, the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission in 2007 recommended withdrawal of Clause 3 of the Constitution Order, thereby proposing extension of reservation to such deserving candidates who embrace Christianity or Islam. In India, the non-Indic religions are not free from caste bias and prejudices, as noted in several reports. The Justice K G Balakrishnan Commission appointed in 2022 is supposed to table its findings on the impact of conversion on Dalits without further delay.
All these significant aspects escaped the court’s scrutiny since it was essentially dealing with a criminal appeal. By ignoring them, the court became unmindful of the social realities and deprived of the constitutional tools to scan them. Again, the focus of adjudication was the bare text of the Constitution Order and the act of conversion. A religious view of the matter cannot be a substitute for an adjudication based on constitutional morality.
The court, thus, reached a hasty conclusion that was not expected in the case. The result is embarrassing. Therefore, the matter of entitlements of those who convert requires reconsideration by a Constitution Bench, along with the case that challenges the concerned Constitution Order.
Kaleeswaram Raj | Lawyer, Supreme Court of India
(Views are personal)
(kaleeswaramraj@gmail.com)