On 26 February 2015, a bench of the Supreme Court

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1 Religion, Caste and Conversion Membership of a Scheduled Caste and Judicial Deliberations Padmanabh Samarendra The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 and the two amendments of 1956 and 1990 posit a direct correlation between religion and caste. Only a Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist, according to these acts, can be a member of a Scheduled Caste; caste thus is assumed to exist and survive only within the specified religious communities. This assumption has been a source of litigations often involving those Christian converts and their descendants whose membership of a Scheduled Caste was disputed on account of a change in their religion. The Supreme Court had upheld the assumption that the presence of caste was contingent on religion. However, its understanding of the relationship of caste with religion in the subsequent decades witnessed major shifts. The influence of this new understanding was reflected in its recent judgments when it adjudicated on the pleas of those descendants who were trying to recover the membership of castes which their ancestors had seemingly lost following their conversion to Christianity. I am grateful to Sangeeta Dasgupta and Tanika Sarkar for their comments on the manuscript. I am also thankful to the ICSSR, New Delhi, for the award of a postdoctoral fellowship, which gave me the time to work on this article. Padmanabh Samarendra (psamarendra@hotmail.com) is with the Dr K R Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. 38 There were some citations, quotations, proper nouns and subheadings which were changed/deleted by mistake during the editing of the article Religion, Caste and Conversion: Membership of a Scheduled Caste and Judicial Deliberations, by Padmanabh Samarendra, published on 23 January Corrections to the quotations, proper nouns and sub-headings have been made on the website. A full list of citations can be had from the author. The errors are regretted. On 26 February 2015, a bench of the Supreme Court delivered judgment in a lawsuit in which one K P Manu had pleaded that following his conversion to Hinduism, he had become a member of the Pulaya caste. Manu s grandfather was a Pulaya before he became a Christian through conversion; his parents were also Christians. The Pulaya community is classified in Kerala as a Scheduled Caste. The bench accepted Manu s plea about being a Pulaya and allowed him to receive the benefits of reservation meant for the members of the Scheduled Castes. The Supreme Court s judgment comes at a time when many organisations professing the ideology of Hindutva are actively engaged in a campaign for what is called ghar wapsi (homecoming). Ghar wapsi stands for a drive to reconvert those Muslims or Christians, who or whose forefathers, in the opinion of these organisations, were erstwhile Hindus. In the given milieu, some votaries of Hindutva have gone to the extent of interpreting the ruling as a seal of approval from the highest court of the land in favour of their campaign. 1 Those opposed to the Hindutva ideology fear that it could be used as an incentive to allure specific groups to convert to Hinduism. My objective in this article, however, is not to explore the impact of the verdict on the campaign for ghar wapsi. Rather, the article discusses the context in which the verdict was delivered and the implications that it carries. The apex court gave its judgment in a dispute that arose out of a specific provision in the acts the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 and the two amendments to this order introduced in 1956 and 1990 relating to the subject of reservation for the Scheduled Castes. I illustrate below how the judgment actually contradicts the premise implicit in that specific provision. The contradiction, I argue, makes a review of the acts necessary. Colonial Roots The Government of India (GoI) has reserved a certain proportion of jobs in the state-controlled organisations and seats in public bodies for members of the Scheduled Castes. 2 The Constitution does not define the term scheduled castes; 3 however, Article 341 (1) entrusts the President with the responsibility of specifying the Scheduled Castes. Accordingly, on 10 August 1950, the President issued the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, where he identified certain castes from across the country as Scheduled Castes. The most critical part of this order, from the point of view of the present article, appears in paragraph 3 which mentions: no person who professes a religion different from

2 Hinduism shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste. 4 In order to understand why, when the President issued the order, in 1950, the membership was restricted to the Hindus, we have to move back into the colonial past and trace the roots of the category called Scheduled Caste. The presidential order of 1950 was based on the Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order, which in turn, had resulted from a follow-up of the Government of India Act, In the 1935 Act, the classes of persons formerly known as the depressed classes were designated as the Scheduled Castes. 6 The term depressed classes was used in the colonial records not to denote poor communities, though many of these were indeed poor. Its use in the late 19th century was linked to a debate within the project of the census operations over the identity of the Hindus. The term was used to classify those castes, which, despite being called Hindu, were regarded by other Hindus as impure. In the course of the Census of India, in 1911, Edward Gait, the Census Commissioner, had issued a 10-point circular to identify those Hindu classes which were subject to certain disabilities, such as not being served by Brahmins, being denied access to temples, and being regarded as polluting (Gait 1913: 117). In the course of the next two decades, the approach of the colonial state towards the depressed classes underwent a process of gradual secularisation. For instance, instead of investigating these castes merely to know their status within the Hindu community, the government, in 1931, proposed to collect information about these to address problems connected with their present and future welfare (Hutton 1933: 471). Similarly, in place of employing primarily religious markers associated with the Hindu community, John Hutton, the Census Commissioner of India, in 1931, issued a nine-point questionnaire, where he inserted, in addition, indicators connected with the denial of civic facilities, that is denial of access to wells or schools (Hutton 1933: 472), in order to identify the depressed classes. From the point of view of the State, he added, the important test is the right to use public conveniences roads, wells and schools, and if this be taken as the primary test, religious difficulties and the social disabilities indirectly involved by them may be regarded as contributory only (Hutton 1933: 472). Despite the secularisation of the approach, the connection initially made between the depressed classes and the Hindu community such castes being found only among the Hindus was not altered. Thus, with regard to the Census of 1931, Hutton stated, It was decided that Muslims and Christians should be excluded from the term depressed class (Hutton 1933: 471). Two decades later, in the first annual report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the period ending December 1951, L M Shrikant (1952: 10 11), while referring to Hutton s emphasis on the right to use public conveniences as the test, commented that the criterion appears to hold good for the purposes of specifying the Scheduled Castes. But, even when the officers of the state were acknowledging the right to use public conveniences, in other words, access to secular resources, as the indicator, the President s order of 1950, chose to identify the Scheduled Castes only within a religion-based community SPECIAL ARTICLE of the Hindus. 7 In fact, even after the two amendments to this order in and 1990, 9 making the Sikhs and later the Buddhists also eligible to be considered members of a Scheduled Caste, the assumption about the association of caste with specific religions remained undisturbed. Legal Premise: Religion the Entry Point Shaped by historical legacies, the acts dealing with the subject of reservation for the Scheduled Castes take into account the religious and caste identity of the person. However, between the two, religion functions as the entry point; without being a Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist, one cannot be a member of a Scheduled Caste. According to the acts, then, the presence of caste is contingent on religion; the Scheduled Castes are assumed to exist and survive only within and not outside the specified religious communities. The circumstances prevailing in society call into question the assumption about the contingency of caste on religion. For instance, while the doctrines of Christianity and Islam do not recognise caste, the presence of such communities among Christians and Muslims is attested both in academic researches (Robinson 2014; Ahmad 1973) and the surveys conducted by the state (Misra 2007). In this article, however, I discuss the challenge posed to this assumption by the judicial verdicts delivered in the lawsuits involving those Christian converts and their descendants whose membership of a Scheduled Caste was disputed on account of a change in their religion. These verdicts were delivered by the Supreme Court while dealing with the following questions: what happens if a member of a community recognised as a Scheduled Caste converts to Christianity? Does she/he cease to be a member of that caste with the consequent loss of the benefits of reservation? And what happens if the same person converts again to Hinduism? Can the person recover her/his membership of that caste? And what happens in cases where a Christian, after converting to Hinduism, claims a caste identity that she/he was not even born with but which was a part of her/his ancestor s profile two generations ago? At the root of these questions lies the relationship of caste with religion which the Supreme Court, while deliberating over these for four decades and more, was drawn into elucidating. In this elucidation, I identify three stages characterised by three overlapping yet separable notions of the relationship of caste with religion. In the first stage, the Court conformed to the assumption about the presence of caste being contingent on religion. In the next stage, caste was perceived to be connected with and yet separable from religion. Finally, in its recent judgments, the apex court has held caste to be autonomous of religion; an opinion that actually contradicts the assumption implicit in the acts relating to the subject of reservation for the Scheduled Castes. The Court s conception of the relationship of caste with religion shaped its response to the questions about the impact of conversion on one s membership of a caste. I illustrate with the help of a few lawsuits, dating between the late 1960s and the present, the three stages in the Supreme Court s understanding of this relationship. However, before I move further, I must draw readers attention to a limitation of this article: while I propose Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 23, 2016 vol li no 4 39

3 to discuss the question of the membership of a Scheduled Caste in the wider ambit of judicial deliberations, I have drawn only upon the judgments delivered by the Supreme Court. Conversion and the Loss of Caste Let us begin with the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in 1968 in the case of S Rajagopal v C M Armugam and Others. The background of the case is as follows. In 1967, Rajgopal and Armugam were rival candidates from the Kolar Gold Fields constituency in the election for the Mysore Legislative Assembly. Rajgopal came out victorious. The result was challenged by Armugam before the Mysore High Court on the ground that while the constituency was reserved for the members of the Scheduled Castes, Rajgopal was not one of them. Rajgopal, Armugam contended, had converted in 1949 to Christianity and had hence ceased to be an Adi Dravida, the community in which he was born and which indeed was listed as a Scheduled Caste. Accepting the arguments of Armugam, the high court set aside the result of the election. Challenging the verdict, Rajgopal filed a petition before the Supreme Court. In the petition he stated that in 1967, at the time of election, he was professing (S Rajagopal v C M Armugam 1968: 4) Hinduism; therefore, he contended, he should be recognised once again as an Adi Dravida. There were two episodes in the life of Rajgopal the implication of which the Court had to consider: his initial conversion to Christianity and his avowal again of Hinduism. Regarding the first, the two-judge bench of Justices Vishishtha Bhargava and J C Shah, in its judgment, observed: The Christian religion does not recognise any caste classifications. Hence, Rajgopal, after embracing Christianity, had lost the membership of the Adi Dravida Hindu caste and had ceased to belong to the Adi Dravida caste. Apropos the second episode, the bench accepted that at the time of the election, Rajgopal was professing Hinduism. The situation gave rise to two questions: could reconversion to Hinduism automatically lead to a recovery of the membership of one s caste; if not, then, on what grounds would a recovery be possible? On the first, the judges were undecided: 40 Ordinarily, the membership of a caste under the Hindu religion is acquired by birth. Whether the membership of a caste can be acquired by conversion to Hinduism or after reconversion to Hinduism is a question on which we have refrained from expressing our opinion (S Rajagopal v C M Armugam 1968: 14). Nevertheless, they were convinced that mere conversion to Hinduism [did not] enable a person to revert to his previous caste. They added that even if it be assumed that such a possibility existed the recovery of the membership of a caste would ultimately depend on the consent of the community concerned. Referring to several cases decided by various high courts, where a similar question was raised in different contexts, they wrote: if the members of the caste accept the reconversion of a person as a member, it should be held that he does become a member of that caste, even though he may have lost membership of that caste on conversion to another religion. A caste, they declared, was the supreme judge in matters concerning its membership. The opinion of a caste, however, had to be demonstrated with the help of evidence. In the case of Rajgopal, the judges noted, that he had not given evidence to establish that he did become a member of Adi Dravida Hindu caste by the time of general elections in Hence they concluded that he could not be treated as an Adi Dravida; the petition filed by him was rejected. The recognition of a caste as the supreme judge in matters relating to its membership had a far-reaching impact on judicial understanding about the nature of caste and its relationship with religion. The authority now attributed to caste came to contest the authority of religion on the issue. Irrespective of what a religion ordained, a person s interaction with her/his community would henceforth be taken into account by the judiciary before adjudicating on the issue of membership. In other words, the implication of an act of conversion to Christianity or Islam for one s caste could no longer be foretold; it had to be assessed. Conversion and the Recovery of Caste Going by its citations as precedence in legal deliberations, the lawsuit that I discuss below would rank among the most important ones on the question of the recovery of caste after reconversion. It represents perhaps the first instance, in the context of the debate over the membership of a Scheduled Caste, when the Supreme Court accepted the claim of a person of having regained the membership of his caste after converting back to Hinduism. It heralds a change in judicial thinking on the relationship of caste with religion. And by a strange coincidence, the lawsuit involved the same two gentlemen, the old rivals, whom we have met before: S Rajgopal and C M Arumugam (only the spelling of the names, as given in this case, differs slightly). Let us begin with a brief outline of the case. In the elections to the Mysore Legislative Assembly in 1972, Rajgopal and Arumugam returned again to the Kolar Gold Field reserved constituency, as rival candidates. However, taking note of the objection filed by Arumugam, the returning officer rejected the nomination papers of Rajgopal on the ground that after conversion to Christianity he had ceased to be an Adi Dravida and his reconversion to Hinduism did not entitle him to claim the benefits meant only for the members of the Scheduled Castes. In the election, which Rajgopal could not contest, Arumugam came out victorious. Rajgopal challenged the outcome of the election before the Mysore High Court stating that he was an Adi Dravida and that his nomination papers were improperly rejected. The high court in its decision of July 1973 set aside the outcome of the election observing that at the time of election Rajgopal was indeed an Adi Dravida, and that his nomination papers had been wrongly rejected. Contesting the decision of the high court, Arumugam filed a petition before the Supreme Court; Rajgopal appeared as the first respondent in the case. 10 Before commenting specifically on the issue of Rajgopal s membership of the Adi Dravida caste, the bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices P N Bhagwati, Y V Chandrachud and Ranjit Singh Sarkaria disposed of two big questions. These questions were, first, whether it was possible to recover, after reconversion to Hinduism, the membership of one s caste; second,

4 on what grounds that recovery would be possible. Shedding off the hesitation shown by the judges in the previous case, the bench, now, answered the first question firmly in the affirmative. It observed that the high courts in various instances had held that on reconversion to Hinduism, a person can once again become a member of the caste in which he was born and to which he belonged before conversion to another religion (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 15). Explaining the rationale behind this view, it elaborated: If a person who has embraced another religion can be reconverted to Hinduism, there is no rational principle why he should not be able to come back to his caste (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 15). A person, in the judicial reckoning, thus could recover the membership of a caste; the question however remained who had the authority to grant that membership, whose opinion would count on the issue. Confirming the views expressed in the previous case, the bench led by Justice Bhagwati declared that the issue of membership fell within the jurisdiction of the caste concerned: a person would be deemed a member only if the other members of the caste are prepared to readmit him. The Court s response to the two questions underlines a fundamental shift in its approach to the subject of caste. In the previous case discussed above, Justice Bhargava and Justice Shah had opined that a person on conversion to Christianity would lose her or his caste as this religion did not recognise that institution. They had viewed caste from the standpoint of the scriptures of Christianity; the presence of caste therefore was deemed to be contingent on religion. Their opinion thus was in conformity with the conception of the depressed classes or the Scheduled Castes in the state policies in colonial and postcolonial India. And yet now the apex court decided to leave the question of membership exclusively in the hands of the caste concerned. How did the judiciary justify its choice of going by the collective opinion of a caste in place of religious injunctions? It did so by declaring that caste was a social institution and thus not subject to scriptural sanctions. Justice Bhagwati, heading the bench, observed that a caste was a social combination of persons governed by its rules and regulations (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 14). It had the prerogative to admit a new member or expel an existing one as per its rules. These rules, he added, might not be formalised and might consist only of practices and usages. The focus of the judiciary thus started moving away from religious texts to caste practices. The shift becomes clearer if we look into what the bench wrote about caste. When we speak of a caste, the bench observed distancing itself from a textual notion of this institution, we do not mean to refer to the four primary castes (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra, first mentioned in early Sanskrit texts). Rather, the word was used to denote those multiple castes and sub-castes which are found in society. These castes and sub-castes, the bench elaborated, were formed on various grounds: religion was not the only factor; occupation, migration, etc, also played an important role in its formation. In fact, a caste was more a social combination than a religious group. Religion, though, the judges clarified, was not absent from the SPECIAL ARTICLE life of a caste. A caste s sense of ethics and morality was derived from religion. In this manner, religion was inevitably mixed up with social conduct ; and that is why caste has become an integral feature of Hindu society. Caste, as interpreted by the bench, thus, was primarily a social combination; Hinduism became linked with caste as the source of ethical values. Conceived in this manner, caste became an entity separable from religion; the new conception brought significant change in the apex court s understanding of the consequence of conversion. For one thing, it was now convinced that a change of religion could not invariably lead to a loss of caste. Caste Separable from Religion The general rule, the bench acknowledged, was that conversion operates as an expulsion from the caste or, in other words, the convert ceases to have any caste because caste is predominantly a feature of Hindu society (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 10). Yet, the bench interjected, the issue could not be decided on the basis of scriptural provisions. For, ultimately it must depend on the structure of the caste and its rules and regulations whether a person would cease to belong to the caste on his abjuring Hinduism (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 10). In such cases where the structure of the caste is such that its members must necessarily belong to Hindu religion, a member who ceases to be a Hindu, would go out of the caste (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 10). But, then, there were also castes, the bench pointed out, particularly in South India, which comprise both Hindus and Christians. And conversion of a Hindu to Christianity, when it takes place within such a community, would not entail any loss of membership. In addition, the bench referred to such instances where the cohesion of caste as a social group is so strong that conversion into another religion does not operate to snap the bond between the convert and the social group. These instances, where even after conversion to Christianity, a person is regarded [by other members] as continuing to belong to the caste, were taken note of by different courts of law and were indeed not an infrequent phenomenon in South India (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 11). These instances testified, the bench declared, that conversion leading to a loss of caste could not be an invariable rule: It cannot, therefore, be laid down as an absolute rule uniformly applicable in all cases that whenever a member of a caste is converted from Hinduism to Christianity, he loses his membership of the caste. Rather, the prospect of losing or retaining the membership of one s caste following conversion, it concluded, would depend on the opinion of the other members of that community. Having declared that the decision about membership rested with the caste concerned, the bench, in the final part of the judgment, moved to assess whether the Adi Dravidas treated Rajgopal as one of their own or not. Rajgopal, whose reconversion to Hinduism had already been acknowledged by the apex court in the earlier case, had submitted a number of evidences to corroborate his claim of membership of the Adi Dravida caste. From these, the bench selected 12 evidences to examine and accepted the following seven as authentic indicators Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 23, 2016 vol li no 4 41

5 supporting Rajgopal s claim: (1) Rajgopal was invited to lay down the foundation stone for the construction of a wall of an Adi Dravida temple. (2) He was asked to take part in the celebrations connected with an Adi Dravida temple. (3) He was requested to preside at a festival connected with an Adi Dravida temple. (4) He was a member of the executive committee of the Scheduled Caste cell within the Congress Party. (5) His children were registered in the school as Adi Dravidas. (6) He was treated as a member of the Adi Dravida and was never disowned by the members of the caste. (7) A Scheduled Caste conference was held where a purificatory ceremony was performed with a view to clearing the doubt about his membership of the Adi Dravida caste. 11 On the basis of these evidences, the bench concluded that Rajgopal, after his reconversion to Hinduism, was indeed recognised and accepted as a member of the Adi Dravida caste by the other members of that community. The appeal filed by Arumugam against the decision of the Mysore High Court was thus dismissed. The recognition of caste in judicial deliberations as primarily a social institution allowed it to be separated from religion and thereby shielded from any inevitable impact of conversion. As a social institution, which was connected but not subjected to religious canons, it came to enjoy a degree of autonomy attributed to it never before. It was recognised as the supreme judge having the ultimate authority to decide questions regarding its membership. The assumption regarding the autonomy of caste however brought new questions before the judiciary. If a caste was free to admit or expel any person, then, what would be the role of birth in deciding its membership? Could a caste give membership to someone who was not even born within its fold? The answer to the questions would have a bearing on the understanding of caste and its relationship with religion in judicial deliberations. Let us move to the next lawsuit to find out how the apex court responded to these questions. The question whether a person could get the membership of a caste when she/he was not even born within its fold came up in the context of a lawsuit brought before the Supreme Court in This was a petition by the principal of Guntur Medical College, against Y Mohan Rao. Mohan Rao was born after his parents had converted to Christianity. Before conversion, they belonged to the Madiga community, a Scheduled Caste in Andhra Pradesh. Could Mohan Rao, after converting to Hinduism, which he had done in 1973, become a Madiga and avail the benefit of reservation meant for the members of the Scheduled Castes? Justice P N Bhagwati, who had led the bench in the case of G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal (1975), was once again heading the five-judge bench dealing with the present lawsuit; hence, the imprint of the earlier judgment was amply visible on the deliberations taking place now. Reiterating the view expressed in the previous case, the bench, on the question of the recovery of membership of a caste, observed that the consistent view taken in this country since 1886 was that on reconversion to Hinduism, a person can once again become a member of the caste in which he was born and to which he belonged before conversion to another religion, if the members of the caste accept him as a member (Principal, Guntur Medical College, Guntur v Y Mohan Rao 1976: 6). 42 The case of Mohan Rao, however, was a little different. Mohan Rao was born a Christian. Hence, despite the fact that his parents were Madigas before conversion, it could be argued that he was neither born in nor did he belong to the Madiga community. 12 This leads us to a crucial question: can one regain what one has never lost, or recover what was never one s own? Mohan Rao had not lost the Madiga identity; it was never his. Could he then reclaim it? These implications of the case never figured in the deliberations of the bench. Why did the bench fail to take note of these complexities? Or, is it that to the judges, these complexities did not appear to be relevant? I suspect the latter to be the case. As evident from the deliberations that took place in the case of G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal (1975) discussed above, the emphasis placed on the autonomy of caste had diluted, in judicial perception, the significance of birth in deciding the membership of such a community. The bench in that case had approvingly quoted several legal luminaries observing that it could not be said that the membership of a caste was determined only by birth and not by anything else (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 14); that, it was within the power of a caste to admit into its fold men not born in it as it is within the power of a club to admit anyone it likes as its member; and that, not recognising this power of caste would tantamount to striking at the very root of caste autonomy (G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal 1975: 14 15). The principle of the autonomy of caste was applied, perhaps even more strongly, in the case of Mohan Rao. The reasoning that had guided the judges in G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal (1975), the bench contended, was equally applicable in a case where the parents of a person are converted from Hinduism to Christianity and he is born after their conversion (Principal, Guntur Medical College, Guntur v Y Mohan Rao 1976: 6). Mohan Rao, though not born a Madiga, could still become one, the bench concluded, if the members of the caste to which the parents belonged prior to their conversion accept him as a member within the fold. The stance adopted by the bench led to an awkward problem. Despite all the pronouncements that a caste was like a club and that it had its own rules, regulations and autonomy, the apex court would not like to be seen to be postulating that any person could become, provided the concerned community consented, an Adi Dravida or a Madiga. Conferring membership could not be an act of free will by the caste concerned. An explanation was needed to justify how a person could still recover the membership of a caste that was lost by the parents due to their conversion to Christianity. In the two lawsuits that I discuss below, we find the judges bringing back the issue of birth to explain the autonomy of a caste. While this explanation acted as a check on autonomy, it simultaneously made caste more autonomous vis-à-vis religion. Conversion and the Continuity of Caste In December 1983, two separate benches of the Supreme Court delivered judgments in two similar cases called S Anbalagan v B Devarajan and Ors and Kailash Sonkar v Maya Devi. In both cases, the appellants challenged the eligibility of Devarajan

6 and Maya Devi to contest election from constituencies that were reserved for the members of the Scheduled Castes. The appellants in their respective pleas had claimed that the parents of these candidates were Christians; that the candidates themselves were Christians and hence they could not be members of the Scheduled Castes. The judges, while dismissing the appeals of Anbalagan and Kailash Sonkar, observed that the candidates, even if they were Christians in the early part of their lives, had since become Hindus and were accepted as members by the castes to which their parents had once belonged. Hence, Devarajan and Maya Devi, they concluded, should indeed be recognised as members of the Scheduled Castes. Rather than the final outcome, we are concerned here with the observations made in the judgments on the status of caste amidst acts of conversion and reconversion. In this article, we have so far encountered two situations in which claims over membership of a caste were made. In the first, represented by the case of Rajgopal, we find the same person, who had seemingly lost the membership of his caste earlier due to conversion to Christianity, now trying to recover it following his reconversion to Hinduism. In the second situation, illustrated by the lawsuits involving Mohan Rao, Devarajan and Maya Devi, the children, the descendants from the next generation were trying after becoming Hindus to recover the membership of castes which their parents had seemingly lost following their conversion to Christianity. However, in the two verdicts, delivered in December 1983 no distinction was sought to be made between the two situations. Thus, the bench headed by Justice Chinnappa O Reddy did not see the necessity of applying any different principle (S Anbalagan v B Devarajan 1983: 7) in the lawsuit it was dealing with than the one applied in the case of G M Arumugam v S Rajgopal (1975). Yet, the status of Rajgopal was not the same as that of Mohan Rao, Devarajan or Maya Devi. Rajgopal was initially an Adi Dravida, who apparently lost the membership of his caste following conversion, and was trying to reclaim after reconversion what was once his. Mohan Rao or Maya Devi had never lost their memberships of any caste; they were never a Madiga or a Katiya, having been born Christians. Therefore, how could they recover the membership of a caste when they had never lost one in the first place? This would be fine only if it could be assumed that the parents of Mohan Rao and Maya Devi had continued to be Madigas and Katiyas after becoming Christians, that caste was not lost despite conversion, and that it could therefore be bequeathed to the next generation. This precisely was the explanation that the apex court now offered to justify its verdict in favour of those who claimed the membership of a caste they were not born in. Commenting on the question of recovery of the membership of a caste by a person following his reconversion to Hinduism, Justice Chinnappa Reddy wrote that it may not be correct to say that he [after reconversion to Hinduism] regains his caste; it may be more accurate to say that he never lost his caste in the first instance when he embraced another religion. The practice of caste...is so deep-rooted...that its mark does not seem to disappear. The mark of caste does not seem to really disappear even after some generations after conversion (S Anbalagan v B Devarajan 1983: 6). In Andhra Pradesh and in Tamil Nadu, he elaborated, there are Christian Reddies, Christian Kammas, Christian Nadars, Christian Adi Andhras, Christian Adi Dravidas and so on. The practice of their caste is so rigorous that there are intermarriages with Hindus of the same caste but not with Christians of another caste (S Anbalagan vs B Devarajan 1983: 6 7). Doctrine of Eclipse The belief that the membership of a caste continues unremitted by an act of conversion was reiterated again in the judgment delivered in the case of Kailash Sonkar v Maya Devi (1983). Thus, Justice Syed Murtaza Fazal Ali, heading the bench, observed: In our opinion, when a person is converted to Christianity or some other religion the original caste remains under eclipse and as soon as during his/her lifetime the person is reconverted to the original religion the eclipse disappears. Thus, amidst acts of conversion from Hinduism to Christianity the caste of the converts in the opinion of the judges as expressed in the preceding two cases was not lost; at the most, it was eclipsed. The change of religion thus seemed to have no impact on caste; it continued independent of its immediate religious environment. This, then, justified in the eyes of the apex court the claim made over Christian converts castes by their children. Yet, the Court was now faced with a new question: for how many generations could caste continue to survive in a non-hindu environment? The dilemma is evident in the thoughts of Justice Ali when he was writing about the doctrine of eclipse. We might pause here to add a rider, he wrote; if the ancestor, whose caste identity a descendant might be claiming, had been converted to Christianity since several generations, it may be difficult to apply the doctrine of eclipse to the revival of caste (Kailash Sonkar v Smt Maya Devi 1983: 14). The apex court had accepted that the children of the Christian converts could lay a claim to their parents castes. However, instead of the children, could even the second or the third generation of descendants make this claim? Could the descendants of the converts from any generation make this claim? The answer would specify how long caste could survive unaffected by religious changes brought by conversion; in other words, it would explain how autonomous of religion the caste had become in judicial perception. In order to know the answer, we move to the analysis of the case with which this article started, the one on which the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on 26 February In February 1984, one K P John, hailing from Kerala, converted to Hinduism; he secured a certificate in which he was called K P Manu, belonging to the Hindu Pulayan caste (K P Manu v Chairman, Scrutiny Committee 2015: 35). Many years earlier, Manu s grandfather, belonging to the local Pulaya community, had embraced Christianity. Manu s parents were Christians, as Manu himself was for the first 24 years of his life, till he chose to become a Hindu. The caste certificate of Manu was challenged before the scrutiny committee constituted under the Kerala (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Regulation of Issue of Community Certificates Act After an inquiry, Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 23, 2016 vol li no 4 43

7 in February 2006 the committee decided to cancel Manu s certificate. Following this decision the state government removed Manu from service in the Malabar Cement Company. Manu had secured the job in the company under the benefit of reservation; he had claimed to be a Pulaya, which is a Scheduled Caste in Kerala. The order of removal from service and the findings of the scrutiny committee were challenged by Manu before the Kerala High Court. In March 2006, the Kerala High Court upheld the findings of the scrutiny committee; by implication, the order of removal of Manu from service was also allowed. Challenging the verdict of the Kerala High Court, Manu filed an appeal before the Supreme Court in It was taken up by the bench of Justices Dipak Misra and V Gopala Gowda. The question was whether Manu s claim to be a Pulaya was valid or not. Certain precedents relevant to the case had already emerged through judgments in similar lawsuits earlier. For instance, it was already accepted in the lawsuits involving Mohan Rao (1976), Devarajan (1983) and Maya Devi (1983) that the children, after fulfilling other conditions, that is, after becoming a Hindu and securing the consent of the community concerned, could lay a claim to the caste identity that belonged to their parents before their conversion to Christianity. Manu s situation, however, was different in one critical respect. His parents as the Kerala High Court stated in its verdict did not enjoy the caste status of Pulayan (K P Manu v Chairman, Scrutiny Committee 2015: 37), born Christians as they were. The point was made with greater clarity by the scrutiny committee in its report: Ordinarily one gets his/her caste on the basis of his/her parents. In other words, one shall be, on birth deemed to be belonging to the caste of his/her parents. In the facts and circumstances of the claimant s case, the claimant and his parents were devoid of any caste identity right from their birth. Manu, thus, could not inherit his parents caste. However, could he stake a claim to the Pulaya identity that belonged to his grandfather before his conversion to Christianity? The implicit question was whether the Pulaya caste identity had continued to survive through roughly two generations (grandfather s after conversion and father s) in a non-hindu environment which alone could allow its reclamation by the grandson. Caste across Generations The bench began deliberating the question by submitting that if a son could inherit the caste which his parents belonged to before their conversion to Christianity, then, there cannot be a soundness of logic in not allowing him to inherit the caste of his grandparents. The fact that Manu was born to the parents who were Christians should not come in the way simply because, the bench claimed, they too must have belonged to that caste. The judges were aware that while making these observations, they were accepting the premise that caste could survive through generations even in a non-hindu environment. They cited both the outcomes in the earlier lawsuits as well as academic researches on the subject to support their interpretation. They wrote that in the case of Principal, Guntur Medical College, Guntur v Y Mohan Rao (1976), the bench, when allowing the 44 recovery of caste by the son, did not lay down that the example would apply only to parents and exclude grandparents. Similarly, in the case of S Anbalagan v B Devarajan (1983), the bench had argued that even after conversion, the caste of the convert did not disappear; rather, it continued generation by generation. Justices Misra and Gowda said that in addition, the evidences from society collected in a number of scholarly researches indicated a similar continuity. After asserting that as in the case of the son, the grandson or for that matter descendant coming from any generation could not be debarred from claiming the caste identity of the ancestor who might have converted and moved out of Hinduism, the bench laid down three conditions for the acceptance of such a claim. Of these, the apex court had already discussed, in previous cases, the following two: first, the conversion of the claimant to Hinduism; second, the consent of the caste concerned. Justices Misra and Gowda added a third condition keeping in mind that there could be a gap of many years if a descendant from any generation was allowed to make such a plea. They specified that an applicant must provide evidences to establish beyond a shadow of doubt that his forefathers belonged to the caste that was being claimed. Manu, in the opinion of the court, fulfilled all the three conditions: he had become a Hindu, he had submitted a caste certificate as the evidence of consent of the community concerned, 13 and, his claim that his grandfather belonged to the Pulaya community before conversion was not disputed. Hence, the bench accepted, in February 2015, the plea of Manu to be a Pulaya. There are a few aspects of the judgment that can be taken up for scrutiny. First, the bench assumed that Manu s parents must have belonged to the Pulaya caste. But how could they do so when they had never converted to Hinduism and thus, at least judicially, had never fulfilled one of the conditions for claiming their ancestor s caste? Second, in the text of the judgment, Manu s adoption of Hinduism is often directly and also indirectly referred to as an act of reconversion. Manu, however, was born a Christian and had never changed his religion before becoming a Hindu. His movement from Christianity to Hinduism, therefore, was logically an act of conversion, not reconversion. The purpose of the scrutiny here is not to question the validity of the verdict; rather, it is to understand how the verdict was reached. The stance of the judges on both the issues, I believe, was shaped by their acceptance of the idea that caste survived across generations even in a non-hindu environment. Hence, when they wrote about the caste of Manu s parents, they assu med that it existed irrespective of their religious status. The same explanation applies to the use of the word reconversion. The term reconversion carries within it a link to the past; implicit in it is a reference to the event of conversion that might have taken place at some point of time. Reconversion, like renaissance in history, can provide the rationale for reclaiming the past. The use of the word reconversion for Manu s one-time act of changing his religion thus reconfirms the emergence, in judicial deliberations, of the view that the movement of a person out of Hinduism because of conversion does not lead to any loss of caste; that,

8 caste survives across generations independent of changes in religion; and that, it can therefore be reclaimed. Caste, Conversion and Judicial Inconsistency The final case that I take up for analysis in this article is Soosai v Union of India which was brought before the Supreme Court in The case is controversial for having a negative bearing on the demand of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims to be recognised as Scheduled Castes. In the pages below, though, I examine it to illustrate an inconsistency in the stance of the apex court on the issue of conversion and its implication for caste. In 1982, the Tamil Nadu government initiated a scheme to allot bunks free of cost to cobblers, who are members of communities classified as Scheduled Castes. The order however debarred those cobblers from free allotment who had converted to Christianity. Challenging the order of the Tamil Nadu government, one Soosai, a cobbler, filed a petition which went before a bench headed by Justice R S Pathak. Soosai was born an Adi Dravida; his community was listed as Scheduled Caste in Tamil Nadu. Later in his life, he became a Christian through conversion. In the petition Soosai asserted that despite conversion he continued to be a member of his caste and hence he could not be denied the benefits extended to other Scheduled Caste persons. The bench, in its judgment, delivered in 1985, did not agree with Soosai. It held that as a Christian, Soosai was barred (Soosai v Union of India 1985: 5) by paragraph 3 of The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 from being regarded as a member of a Scheduled Caste. Whether Soosai s caste identity had continued or not after conversion to Christianity was a point that the bench did not deem relevant for the case. For, it argued that in order to claim the benefits of reservation, it was not sufficient to show that the same caste continues after conversion. What must be shown further was that the disabilities and the handicaps continue in their oppressive seve rity in the new environment of a different religious community. Elaborating the point, the bench wrote that paragraph 3 of the President s order was not inserted arbitrarily; that, the Hindu and the Sikh Scheduled Castes (the Sikhs had been made eligible by now through the amendment of 1956) suffered from exceptional disabilities. However, the bench noted, no authoritative and detailed study dealing with the present conditions of Christian society have been place on the record by the petitioner to show that the Christians suffered from similar disabilities. His petition was therefore rejected. The main question that Soosai had raised in his lawsuit and which the judges themselves had noted was whether or not a Hindu belonging to the Adi-Dravida caste could, following conversion to Christianity, continue to be a member of that caste. However, instead of providing an answer, the judges tried to sidestep the issue. First, they thought it unnecessary to enter upon that question; and even when they agreed to assume, for the purposes of this case, that the caste is retai ned on conversion, they immediately added that the real que stion was not the continuation of caste but the extent of disabilities suffered by the Christians vis-à-vis the Hindu and the Sikh Scheduled Castes. SPECIAL ARTICLE The approach was inconsistent with the prevailing judicial understanding on the subject. The discrepancy can be illustrated if we compare the present verdict with that given by the Supreme Court two years earlier in 1983 in the case of S Anbalagan v B Devarajan & Ors (also that of Kailash Sonkar v Maya Devi). Devarajan was born a Christian; his parents were Adi Dravidas before they embraced Christianity (S Anbalagan v B Devarajan & Ors 1983: 2). Subsequently, following his conversion to Hinduism, Devarajan declared himself to be an Adi Dravida, staking a claim on the caste identity of his parents before they became Christians. The apex court accepted his claim to be an Adi Dravida and confirmed his election from a constituency reserved for the members of Scheduled Castes to be valid on the ground that a person s caste, despite her/his conversion to a non-hindu religion, was not lost and thus could be reclaimed. In contrast, in the case of Soosai who unlike Devarajan was born an Adi Dravida, the judges, at the most, were only willing to assume that his caste identity had continued to survive after his conversion to Christianity. Devarajan could become an Adi Dravida; Soosai only assumedly continued to be so. What accounts for this inconsistency in judicial pronouncements? I believe the explanation is to be found in paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, An unqualified acknowledgement of the continuation, after conversion, of Soosai s caste identity would have created a legally anomalous situation. As an Adi Dravida he would be eligible for what as a Christian he could not get. Hence, the judges, while not completely disregarding the judicial precedence existing on the subject, assumed the continuation of the Adi Dravida identity of Soosai; at the same time, however, they rendered the criterion of caste itself irrelevant by linking, in the case of the Christians, the benefits earmarked for the Scheduled Castes with the quantum of deprivation. The Acts and the Verdicts The acts relating to the subject of reservation for the Scheduled Castes, The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 and the two amendments brought in this order in 1956 and 1990 posit a direct correlation between religion and caste. Only a Hindu, Sikh or a Buddhist, according to these acts, can be a member of a Scheduled Caste; caste thus is assumed to exist and survive only within the specified religious communities. The assumption has been a source of litigations often involving those Christian converts and their descendants whose membership of a Scheduled Caste was disputed on account of a change in their religion. When adjudicating on such a dispute, in the late 1960s, the Supreme Court had upheld the assumption that the presence of caste was contingent on religion. Viewing the institution from the standpoint of scriptures, it concluded that caste did not exist within Christianity. Hence, in the case of S Rajagopal v C M Armugam (1968), it declared that conversion to Christianity would lead to a loss of membership of caste for the convert. The Supreme Court s understanding of the relationship of caste with religion, in the subsequent decades, witnessed major shifts. The shifts started when the apex court was Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 23, 2016 vol li no 4 45