NEW DELHI, Oct 7: The Union Government has set up a three-member Commission to look into the demands for giving Scheduled Castes status to Dalits who have converted to any religion other than Sikhism or Buddhism.
The Commission will be headed by former Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and will have as its members UGC member Prof. Sushma Yadav, and retired IAS officer Ravinder Kumar Jain. The government has set a time of two years for the Commission to submit its report.
A gazette notification issued by the Social Justice and Empowerment ministry said the Commission will also examine the changes Scheduled Caste persons go through on converting to other religions in terms of their customs, traditions, social and other status discrimination and deprivation, and the implication of the same on the question of giving them Scheduled Caste status.
In addition, the Commission has also been tasked with examining the implications of granting Scheduled Castes status to Dalit converts on existing Scheduled Castes communities in the country. Recently, the Supreme Court sought the most recent position of the Union government on a batch of petitions challenging the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950, which allows only members of Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist religions to be recognised as SCs.
The petitions arguing for inclusion have cited several independent Commission reports that have documented the existence of caste and caste inequalities among Indian Christians and Indian Muslims, noting that even after conversion, members who were originally from SCs continued to experience the same social disabilities.
The closest a government has got to including Dalit Christians as SCs came in March, 1996, when based on a recommendation of the then Ministry of Welfare, the P. V. Narsimha Rao government first brought a Bill to amend the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order accordingly. However, the Bill could not be passed.
(Manas Dasgupta)