Last year, the Union Government constituted a commission, headed by the former Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, to study the possibility of granting Scheduled Caste (SC) status to Dalit Christians. Recently, a resolution was adopted by the Tamil Nadu Assembly to amend the 1950 Presidential (SC) order in this regard. The Justice Ranganath Misra Commission (2007) recommended ‘permitting Dalits who converted to Christianity to avail of reservation benefits under the SC quota’. The findings arrived at by Deshpande and Bapna (2008) appointed by the National Commission for Minorities, stated that ‘there is no compelling evidence to justify denying them of SC status’.
It was B.R. Ambedkar who said, “To the ‘Untouchables’, Hinduism is a veritable chamber of horror (Writings and Speeches, Volume 9, p.296)”. It was to escape this horror of discrimination that millions of Hindu Dalits converted to more egalitarian religions including Christianity, in the hope of escaping the clutches of casteism and experiencing the equality promised by such religions. The basic argument of this article is that the fundamental hope of equality — the reason why Hindu Dalits converted to Christianity — has not been realised to a large extent. This has resulted in contradictions and ambiguities with regard to their identity, and has not led to their expected upward social mobility. This is also because of the unwillingness of their co-religionists, non-Dalit converts to Christianity, to shed their age-old practice of untouchability in society and bring this into the church.
Intersectional burdens
The ‘Theory of Intersectionality’ shows the bigger picture of the Dalit Christian conundrum as it allows an understanding of caste with religion and a composite understanding of Dalit Christians as ‘Dalits’ and as a ‘religious minority group’. It also extrapolates an understanding of the inadequacy of the ’single-axis framework’ of the laws of the state of India that provides legal protection to isolated categories and discriminates against groups where categories overlap, such as Dalit Christians.
It shows that various oppressing systems such as race, gender, sexuality and ability cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Such systems of power intersect with one another to result in distinctive individual social experiences. The consequence of such intersectional discrimination is the specificity of discrimination that has been introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who is the pioneer of the Theory of Intersectionality.
In her seminal article, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”, she writes, ‘because of their intersectional identity as both women, women of colour are marginalised within both’. This description helps form the basis of understanding of intersectionality as a framework to study Dalits and Christians as ‘Dalit Christians’ who are subjected to structural intersectional discrimination, thereby experiencing exclusion by society, the church and the state.
Intersectionality and identity
‘Identity’ is an individual’s claim of membership with particular social categories and social identities relating to various social categories that exist societally, that are in effect ‘inputs’ into self-identities.
It must be stated that like in the case of ‘black women’, the term ‘Dalit Christian’ cannot be understood as a mere addition of two words but rather as a distinctive category, as this intersection is a unique hybrid creation of multiple social identities. The term ‘Dalit Christians’ in popular discourse, is construed as an oxymoron, an effect of an erroneous logic that Christianity does not recognise casteism, and hence a Hindu Dalit on conversion to Christianity, ceases to be a Dalit. This is the exact view that the state of India holds on Dalit Christians, even while the disabilities of Dalit Christians continue after conversion and the state views them as just ‘Christians’, eventually pushing them into an ‘intersectional invisibility’. Amartya Sen explains this as a ‘collectivities’ of identities to which a person can belong to, providing a particular identity that becomes variously relevant in different contexts. He points out that ‘the priorities over these identities must be relative to the issue at hand’, adding that a person can choose a dominant one from such a plurality of identities to avail of a benefit.
A ‘single-axis’ framework
In the Soosai Etc vs Union Of India And Others case (1985), Soosai, a Dalit Catholic shoemaker, moved the Supreme Court of India for an extension in setting up a kiosk on a platform in Madras, provided by the State government, so that he was on a par with Hindu shoemakers. The Court dismissed the case, stating that ‘It is necessary to establish further that the disabilities and handicaps suffered from such caste membership in the social order of its origin Hinduism — continue in their oppressive severity in the new environment of a different religions community’. This means that the ‘Dalitness’ of Soosai was completely ignored on the use of ‘single-axis frame work’ approach.
Ashish Nandy argues that the Constitution of India subscribes to the idea that caste-based discrimination exists in Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism and extends benefits to its Dalits, but excludes Dalit Christians on the basis of an assumption that Christianity is of ‘foreign import’, making their very democratic citizenship questionable.
Editorial | Status beyond faith: On SC status post conversion
Thus, the ‘single-axis’ communal framework of the law has resulted in the failure of Dalit Christians being included in the SC list, because of the unwillingness of the state, in spite of much evidence in their favour. A way forward lies in the amendment of the 1950 Presidential (SC) order to include Dalit Christians in the SC list.
Clement Arockiasamy, a British Chevening Scholar, is in the Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom
