Status beyond faith – Extending SC status to all those who have historically suffered discrimination and untouchability | 10th October 2022 | UPSC Daily Editorial Analysis

What is the article about?

• The Centre has appointed a three-member Commission, headed by former Chief Justice of India, K. G. Balakrishnan, to examine the sensitive issue of extending Scheduled Caste (SC) status to all those who have historically suffered discrimination and untouchability, regardless of the religion they now profess.

Relevance: GS2: Reservation, Welfare schemes; prelims

Analysis:

• It is a task fraught with difficulty for the panel as it will have to grapple with both social realities and ideological objections while addressing the core question.
• The government itself has described it as a seminal and historically complex sociological and constitutional question.

Past Commissions & reports:

• In 1985, the Supreme Court agreed that historical discrimination may continue even after members of the SCs convert to other religions, but did not decide in favour of such converts being given SC status as it felt there was not enough material outlining their condition after conversion.
• The National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, headed by retired Chief Justice Ranganath Mishra, also examined this issue.
  • In its 2007 report, the panel made a categorical recommendation in favour of giving SC status to Dalits belonging to all religions.
  • It found the caste system to be “an all-pervading social phenomenon in India shared by almost all Indian communities”.
• It stressed the constitutional need to eliminate the religion-based discrimination underlying the present policy of limiting SC status to those professing Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism.  While the tenets of a religion may not allow discrimination, the ground reality was different, it said.

Main counter-views:

• Discrimination and deprivation being the consequences of the caste-based Hindu social order, SC status should not be extended to those who have converted to Christianity and Islam;
• and the benefits involved may be seen as an incentive to mass conversion.
• Another objection is that the share of the reservation pie available to Dalits among Hindus may shrink if new sections are included.

Way Forward:

• There is no ‘creamy layer’ concept for SC reservation, and expanding its scope may be to the disadvantage of the current beneficiaries. The Commission will have to come up with a definitive study of these complex issues.