India legally denies Scheduled Caste status to Dalits who convert to Islam or Christianity

Evidence

Rupa Viswanath (2012) writes, “Where ‘Dalit’ refers to all those Indians, past and present, traditionally regarded as outcastes and untouchable, ‘SC’ is a modern governmental category that explicitly excludes Christian and Muslim Dalits. For the current version of the President’s Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, which tells us who will count as SC for the purposes of constitutional and legal protections, is entirely unambiguous: ‘No person who professes a religion different from the Hindu, the Sikh or the Buddhist religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.’ ” She goes on to say, “It was only under Congress rule, in 1950, that the President’s Order explicitly defined SC on the basis of religious criteria, although Christian Dalits were excluded from SC for electoral purposes by the Government of India Act 1935. From that point onwards, Dalits who had converted out of Hinduism lost not only reservations, but also, after 1989, protection under the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Later, SC was expanded to include Sikh and Buddhist Dalits, but official discrimination against Muslim and Christian Dalits remains.” If Christians as well as Muslims who face the stigma of caste were to be included in the number of those who can be counted as Dalit, their share in the Indian population would far exceed the official 2011 Census figure of 17 per cent. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 450

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the legal distinction between ‘Dalit’ (social identity) and ‘SC’ (governmental category keyed to religion).
• XREF: Connects to debates on caste-based reservations and religious conversion — relevant to the reader’s larger interest in how caste categories get legally constructed and policed.