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The Law and Reality: Are Dalits Not Dalits if They Convert to Christianity or Islam?

The recent judgment in Chinthada Anand v. State of Andhra Pradesh (March 24, 2026), meticulously follows the letter of the law.

The court has ruled that only Dalit Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists will be able to avail of protections accorded by the Constitution to Scheduled Castes, or SCs. Effectively, when you convert to Christianity or Islam, you are meant to have lost the baggage that being born Dalit gives you.

But could this judgement have demonstrated once again how secular legalism can end up enforcing a profoundly majoritarian social order?

The appellant, Chinthada Anand, was born into the Madiga community – a Scheduled Caste that forms the base of the agrarian labour pyramid in Andhra Pradesh – in Kothapalem village in Guntur district.

For a decade, he had been practicing as a Christian pastor. In January 2021, he alleged that he was wrongfully restrained, assaulted and abused with casteist slurs by a group of individuals belonging to the dominant (Reddy) community. He sought the protection of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, alongside the Indian Penal Code.

The Supreme Court, upholding the decision of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, has quashed the criminal proceedings. The reasoning is rooted in Clause 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, which explicitly states that no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.

Since Anand is a practicing Christian pastor, the court concluded, his caste status “stood eclipsed in the eyes of law”. Consequently, he cannot be the victim of a caste atrocity under the statute.

The law assumes – and the Supreme Court dutifully reiterates, quoting older judgments like C.M. Arumugam – that when a Dalit converts to Christianity, the “social and economic disabilities arising because of Hindu religion cease”.

To bolster this, the court even briefly transforms itself into a theological seminary, citing the Epistle to the Galatians from the New Testament (“There is neither Jew nor Gentile… for you are all one in Christ Jesus”) to assert that Christianity does not recognise caste.

This reflects a fundamentally elite, Brahminical worldview that reifies caste as a mere religious or theological construct, conveniently erasing its material foundations. Caste in India is not merely a crisis of theological belief; it is a brutally material structure of (re)production, an agrarian hierarchy and a mechanism of social control.

While it may be a theological truism that global Christianity and Islam do not possess a caste system, the inescapable sociological reality is that subcontinental Christianity and Islam are deeply structured by it.

The judiciary’s assumption that a change in faith mathematically equates to the obliteration of historical, social and economic backwardness is a legal fiction completely divorced from the empirical reality of the Indian village. The stigma of untouchability is deeply embedded in the division of labour and the ownership of resources; it does not evaporate upon contact with baptismal water.

This judicial erasure of Dalit agency finds its crude, societal parallel in the venomous rhetoric of the Hindutva right, which routinely stigmatises Dalit Christians as “rice-bag converts“. This slur is not merely a communal insult; it is a profound ideological weapon that denies the oppressed any capacity for intellectual, political or spiritual aspiration.

By reducing a historical mass exodus from the indignities of the Brahminical order to a cheap, transactional barter for grain, the dominant castes conveniently absolve themselves of the structural violence that necessitated such conversions in the first place.

The court and the communal mob, therefore, could be said to have arrived at the same destination from different paths. Both refuse to acknowledge that the Dalit converts not to sell their soul for material gain, but reclaim a human dignity that Hindu society structurally denies them.

One might ask their Lordships: Does a dominant-caste Reddy or Kamma landlord in Guntur read the Epistle to the Galatians before deciding whether or not to hurl a caste slur at a Madiga?

When a Dalit embraces a different faith, seeking a spiritual dignity denied to them by the Brahminical order, do the material realities of the village suddenly reconfigure themselves? Does the Dalit hamlet (the cheri or palle) physically relocate to the center of the village? Does the historical burden of landlessness vanish?

Of course not. A Madiga who reads the Bible remains, in the eyes of the village power structure, a Madiga who must be kept in his place. The violence inflicted upon him is not despite his religion, but precisely because his social location remains stubbornly fixed at the bottom of the caste hierarchy.

By insisting that conversion erases caste, the state effectively punishes the Dalit twice. First, the individual suffers the historical indignity of caste oppression. Second, when they seek emancipation through religious conversion, the State strips them of the only legal shield—the SC/ST (PoA) Act—designed to protect them from that oppression.

The law ends up demanding that to be protected from Hindu caste violence, one must remain a captive within the Hindu fold. This reinforces the hegemony of the very system that generates the atrocity.

The Supreme Court has dismissed the 1977 Government Order of the Andhra Pradesh state, which extended non-statutory concessions to Dalit Christians, correctly noting that a state order cannot override a Presidential mandate regarding central statutory benefits. However, what the court misses is the meaning of that 1977 order.

The Andra Pradesh government issued it precisely because it recognised the inescapable sociological truth that the Presidential Order of 1950 ignores: that a change in faith does not annihilate the social disability of caste.

The state government acknowledged the reality; but the Supreme Court prefers recourse to theology. This is a recurring paradox in our democracy. While the elected branches of government, pressured by the exigencies of mass politics and popular movements, are occasionally forced to recognise and accommodate the raw, uncomfortable truths of social inequality, the judiciary – insulated from democratic pressures – can sometimes end up being the ultimate bulwark of the status quo.

‘Logic’ and ‘statutory interpretation’ can often neutralise the hard-won gains of the marginalised.

But the court does not stop at stripping Anand of his protection under the PoA Act. It proceeds to quash the standard penal charges under the BNS (wrongful restraint, criminal intimidation and causing hurt) using its powers under Section 528 of the BNSS. The justification provided is a classic example of what one might call the “urban eye” failing to take into account the mechanics of rural terror.

The court notes that the allegations “rest solely on the statement of the appellant”, with “no independent witness attributing any specific overt act” to the dominant caste accused. Other witnesses supposedly stated that the situation was pacified and Anand was escorted away, with no mention of a mob of thirty people.

To use the lack of “independent corroboration” at the charge-sheet stage to quash an FIR in a case involving caste-based conflict is to fundamentally misunderstand how power operates in an Indian village. It exposes the fatal flaw in applying the abstract principle of ‘equality before the law’ to a society structured upon deep, inherent inequalities. To treat the powerful oppressor and the powerless victim as equals under the standard rules of evidence is to guarantee the victory of the oppressor.

Who are these “independent witnesses”? They are villagers who must continue to live, work and survive in an agrarian economy dominated by the very dominant land-owning castes accused of the assault. To expect a landless labourer or a marginalised villager to offer consistent, ocular testimony against a mob of dominant caste men in a police station is to demand a suicidal level of heroism.

The silence or the “pacified” versions of the witnesses are not necessarily proof that the crime did not happen; more often than not, they are the architectural proof of the impunity enjoyed by the dominant castes.

By treating this predictable silence as a fatal flaw in the prosecution’s case, rather than a symptom of the structural intimidation that necessitated the PoA Act in the first place, the High Court and the Supreme Court end up converting the powerlessness of the victim into a legal justification for letting the perpetrators walk free without a trial.

Chinthada Anand v. State of Andhra Pradesh may go down as a masterclass in how impeccable formal logic can end up denying substantive justice. The law here ends up functioning not as an instrument of social transformation, but as a mechanism that re-legitimises historical oppression under the guise of secular neutrality.

This judgement is in continuation of the higher judiciary’s historical trajectory.

Our constitutional courts have often displayed a structural inability – or perhaps, as some allege, a deep-seated ideological reluctance – to comprehend social justice. The parameters of what is social justice appear to be only those defined by the dominant classes.

The language of constitutional purity has often ended up denying substantive relief to the marginalised. In doing so, the judiciary frequently acts not as an agent of social transformation, but as the ultimate bulwark of the social status quo.

[Pavan Korada is an Indian journalist and independent researcher who frequently writes for The Wire, focusing on political economy, labour issues, and the impact of neoliberal policies. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]

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Explainer: What the Law Says on ‘Scheduled Caste’ Status of Christians and Muslims

For more than seven decades, the Indian legal system has operated on a specific constitutional premise: conversion to a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism, automatically eradicates the historical and material disabilities associated with “untouchability.”

This legal framework was reaffirmed on March 24, 2026, when the Supreme Court quashed criminal proceedings in the case of Chinthada Anand v. State of Andhra Pradesh, ruling that a person belonging to a Dalit Christian community cannot invoke the protections of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Union government is currently awaiting the findings of a dedicated commission on the subject. In the interim, here is a guide to the legal, historical, and sociological dimensions of the Scheduled Caste status and religious conversion.

Complicating this legal battle is the historical reluctance of Indian Christian and Muslim leadership to acknowledge the prevalence of caste within their own communities. This hesitation has frequently weakened the argument for statutory inclusion. Nevertheless, numerous sociological studies and grassroots observations highlight the transferability and persistence of caste despite conversion to Islam and Christianity, evidenced most starkly by the existence of separate churches for Dalit Christians.

What is the foundational law that excluded Dalit Christians and Muslims from Scheduled Caste (SC) status?

The exclusion originates from a Presidential Order issued in 1950. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, issued by the President of India in 1950 under Article 341 of the Constitution, via Clause 3 introduced a religious dimension, stating: “No person who professes a religion different from the Hindu religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.”

This meant that converting to Christianity or Islam severs individuals from statutory protections, legally tying affirmative action exclusively to the Hindu religious identity.

What did the Supreme Court rule in its most recent judgment on March 24, 2026?

In Chinthada Anand v. State of Andhra Pradesh (Criminal Appeal No. 1580 of 2026), the appellant, born into the Madiga community, alleged he was wrongfully restrained and assaulted with casteist slurs by members of the dominant Reddy community. The appellant, who had been practising as a Christian pastor for a decade, sought protection under the SC/ST Act.

The Supreme Court quashed the criminal proceedings, outlining four key things:

‘Absolute’

Clause 3 of the 1950 Order is “categorical and absolute.” Conversion to Christianity results in the immediate and complete loss of SC status.

‘Professing’

Operating as a pastor constitutes an “open and public declaration” of the Christian faith. Therefore, the victim legally “professes” Christianity and is ineligible for SC/ST Act protections.

No state protections

The court dismissed reliance on a 1977 Andhra Pradesh Government Order, noting that a state’s “non-statutory concessions” cannot override the Presidential mandate regarding central statutory benefits.

‘Reconversion’

Reclaiming SC status requires “credible and unimpeachable evidence” of reconversion, complete renunciation of Christianity, and proven assimilation back into the original caste.

Have official government bodies ever acknowledged that caste discrimination exists within Christianity and Islam?

Yes. In 1955, the First Backward Classes Commission (Kaka Kalelkar Commission) officially observed that the rigidities of the caste system and the stigma of untouchability deeply infected Indian Christian and Muslim communities. Despite these sociological findings, the Centre did not alter the religious restrictions for these communities.

In 1980, the Second Backward Classes Commission (Mandal Commission) reinforced this, noting that Hindu caste stratification and resulting inequalities had thoroughly permeated these minority religions. While this led to Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservations across religions, the Centre did not alter the SC criteria, leaving the most oppressed Dalit converts without SC protections.

If the 1950 Order initially restricted SC status to Hindus, why are Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhists included?

The “Hindu-only” rule was amended twice, strictly for religions considered indigenous to India. After socio-political mobilisation by Mazhabi and Ramdasia Sikhs who continued to face severe caste discrimination, Parliament passed the First Amendment in 1956 to explicitly include Dalit Sikhs, thereby recognising that caste realities persist outside the Hindu fold.

In 1990, driven by the legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the political imperatives of the V.P. Singh government, a second amendment extended SC status to Dalit Buddhists. Like the 1956 amendment, this concession was granted to a religion originating in India, while continuing to legally ignore the material realities of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims.

How has the Supreme Court historically interpreted a Dalit person’s conversion to Christianity?

The judiciary has historically placed an immense evidentiary burden on converts. In C.M. Arumugam v. S. Rajgopal [(1976) 1 SCC 863], the Supreme Court introduced a nuanced, but highly restrictive, legal test. It acknowledged that “a caste is more a social combination than a religious group,” conceding that while conversion to a supposedly egalitarian religion like Christianity theoretically removes a person from the Hindu caste structure, a convert could retain SC status only if they proved they continued to suffer severe social and economic disability and that their original Hindu community still accepted them. This placed an overwhelming evidentiary burden on the marginalised individual.

In 1985 (Soosai v. Union of India), the court dismissed a petition by a Dalit Catholic shoemaker who argued that his exclusion violated constitutional equality under Articles 14, 15, and 25. The court ruled that the petitioner failed to provide exhaustive empirical data proving his community suffered the exact same degree of social and economic oppression as Hindu Dalits. The court cemented the view that caste is fundamentally a Hindu phenomenon, placing the burden of financing and producing comprehensive sociological proof on the oppressed communities themselves.

Have state governments attempted to bypass the Union government’s law to protect Dalit Christians?

Yes. Being closer to the ground realities of agrarian and social relations, state governments occasionally attempted to bridge this gap.

On August 30, 1977, the Andhra Pradesh government issued G.O. Ms. No. 341, extending “non-statutory concessions” and state-level benefits to SC converts to Christianity and Buddhism. The state government recognised the inescapable empirical truth that a change in theological belief did not alter the material and social discrimination faced by the Madiga and Mala communities. However, this state order could not override central statutory mandates.

Has any official commission recommended granting SC status to Dalit Christians and Muslims?

The National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities (the Ranganath Misra Commission) made the most definitive recommendation 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 violated the Constitution. The Commission formally recommended the complete deletion of Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Order, asserting that caste is a deeply entrenched sociological reality in India that transcends all religious boundaries. Successive Union governments have refused to implement this specific recommendation.

Can a Dalit Christian or Muslim legally regain their SC status?

Yes, through reconversion. In 2015 (K.P. Manu v. Chairman, Scrutiny Committee for Verification of Community Certificate), the Supreme Court ruled that a Dalit Christian who undergoes reconversion (often termed ghar wapsi) to Hinduism can reclaim their SC status, provided they can prove their original Hindu caste community has accepted them back. This judgment legally affirmed the resilience of caste but paradoxically reinforced the structural bias of the 1950 Order, offering the protective shield of the State only upon a return to the majoritarian religious fold.

What is the current Union government’s official stance on the issue?

Multiple writ petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the 1950 Order have been pending before the Supreme Court for two decades. The Union government opposes granting SC status to Dalit Christians and Muslims. On August 3, 2021, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment issued a press release stating: “The benefits of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) meant for the welfare and development of Scheduled Castes can not be extended to Converted Christians from Scheduled Castes.”

In late 2022, the Union government filed an official affidavit in the Supreme Court arguing that the socio-economic disadvantages, historical background, and the nature of untouchability faced by these converts cannot be equated with the experiences of Hindu Dalits, and that the 1950 Order does not suffer from unconstitutional bias.

Is there any ongoing official study that might alter this legal framework?

In October 2022, facing continued pressure from the Supreme Court to provide contemporary empirical data to justify the exclusion, the Centre appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan. The commission is tasked with undertaking a comprehensive, nationwide study of the historical and current socio-economic conditions of Dalit individuals who have converted to religions other than Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. The Supreme Court is currently waiting for Balakrishnan’s findings, keeping the legal fate and statutory protections of Dalit Christians and Muslims tethered to these ongoing empirical assessments.

Set up first in October 2022, its term has been extended twice, last in October 2025 for six months. Activists have alleged that continued extensions implies that the Modi government was “not serious” about the issue.

[Pavan Korada is an Indian journalist and independent researcher who frequently writes for The Wire, focusing on political economy, labour issues, and the impact of neoliberal policies. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]