I’m happy that the Supreme Court has reinstated its previous stance that if anyone from the SC community converts, he/she cannot file a case under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. But sad that it again left one question unaddressed: how come a person who has converted into a foreign religion is still able to get his certificate made from the official authorities?
I’m talking about ‘Chinthada Anand vs State of Andhra Pradesh’ (2026 INSC 283). The facts of this case are very simple. Chinthada Anand was born into the Madiga community. Somewhere along the way he converted into Christianity, became a Pastor, and spent nearly ten years conducting Sunday prayer meetings as a pastor at different homes across his village. Anand was also the treasurer of the Pastors Fellowship in Pittalavanipalem, Andhra Pradesh.
Here things get interesting. In January 2021, Anand alleged that some person belonging to the Reddy community abused him with caste slurs and so he filed a complaint against that fellow and an FIR was registered for the offence punishable under the SC/ST Act. If it happened with Anand, it was obviously bad, but Anand tell me why your name is still Anand? Why not John William, Robert Dsouza or Mark Thomas or some other Christian name?
Is it so that you could get a caste certificate in times of need? Your case says so. During the investigation, Tehsildar conducted verification regarding your caste status and issued a certificate showing you as a person belonging to Hindu-Madiga community, a Scheduled Caste. Isn’t this amazing, folks? Even after getting converted, one is able to reap the benefits that are constitutionally only available for the SCs. That’s the pinnacle of diversity, what else to ask for? Won’t talk much; I’ll get emotional.
Jokes aside. Luckily, the person accused went to the Andhra Pradesh High Court and got the proceedings quashed on the ground that Anand couldn’t claim protection under the SC/ST Act as he had been openly professing Christianity and working as a pastor for about a decade. The HC ruled in his favour. It held that the caste system is not recognised in Christianity and that a person who has converted and continues to actively work as a Pastor and professes Christianity cannot claim protection under the SC/ST Act. Fair, no?
But Anand didn’t agree to this decision and reached out to the SC saying that the HC gravely erred in holding that he was disentitled from invoking the provisions of the SC/ST Act, ‘merely’ because he converted into Christianity. Of course, Anand, you should be getting all the benefits that a SC/ST person gets, even after getting converted into a religion that says that it doesn’t have any caste system and its missionaries lure people from vulnerable communities to convert into their religion. As a result, we have 87-88% of Nagaland converted into Christianity, 87% of Mizoram converted and 74-75% of Meghalya converted into Christianity. I’m ‘with’ you, Anand, it’s just that all three words are silent.
I guess the SC was aware of all this and so it rejected Anand’s arguments and was of the same opinion as the Andhra Pradesh HC. The reason for disentitling Anand from filing a case under the SC/ST Act was simple and has been the law since 1950. Clause 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, issued by the President of India in exercise of power given under Article 341 of the Constitution, states in plain language that a person who professes a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism will not be considered a member of a Scheduled Caste.
If I elaborate on this a bit. Then, this order was first issued in 1950, and it was only Hinduism that was included in it. Six years later, in 1956, Sikhism and forty years later, in 1990, Buddhism were simultaneously added by the government. But Christianity was never included.
The reason is that Christianity, in its theological foundation, does not recognise or incorporate the institution of caste. The foundational Christian scripture, The New Testament, states: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus [Galatians 3:28 (NIV) Galatians 3:28 NIV]. The Bible says one thing and you want beings to do the other? Very bad, Anand.
Then, the apex court also cited the judgement of CM Arumugam vs S Rajagopal ((1976) 1 SCC 863), where a three-judge bench had put it more categorically that once a person ceases to be a Hindu and becomes a Christian, the social and economic disabilities arising from Hindu society cease, and therefore it is no longer necessary to give him that protection.
Because the protection was never attached to the person alone. It was attached to the person within a specific social and civilizational context. If a person exits a fold, the protection granted to them for the disability attached to that fold ceases to exist.
That the word ‘profess’ is of vast attribute, but in the context of Clause 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, it means a public declaration and practice of a religion and does not include having a private belief. Something that the Supreme Court has confirmed, too, in this case of what it means to ‘profess’ a religion relying on the precedent in Punjabrao vs DP Meshram (1964 SCC Online SC 76). It noted: profession of religion does not mean having a private belief. It is about publicly declaring and practising a religion.
Anand was not a private believer, but he was someone who used to profess Christianity in public. But what about those who hide behind curtains and keep on taking the benefits to which only people from the SC/ST community are entitled to?
Like in Andhra Pradesh only, an RTI by Legal Rights Protection Forum (LRPF) revealed that a large percentage of Christians who were baptised and had undergone Pastor Training courses were still holding a Hindu Caste Certificate. Data showed 70% of the 29,841 Christian pastors who received a one-time government honorarium of Rs 5,000 through the Disaster Relief Fund held SC/OBC caste certificates, as reported by Organiser in September 2020.
If I’m asked to conclude in a para, then, the judgment shows us the boundary but does not build the wall. There is no mechanism for addressing fraudulent caste certificates held by converts. It does not address how a person in the same village is supposed to establish that his neighbor is illegally occupying a reserved seat in a college, a government job, or a constituency. It does not speak of the systematic, widespread practice of conversion with certificate retention that has been going on for decades.
That is not all. If the picture for Scheduled Castes is troubling, the case of Scheduled Tribes is worse. For Scheduled Castes at least, the legal framework is clear and unambiguous. Clause 3 of the 1950 Order draws a hard line. The problem is enforcement, not law. But for Scheduled Tribes, the court and law in itself acknowledged in its framework that the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 contains no religion-based exclusion whatsoever.
A tribal person who converts to Christianity cannot be automatically stripped of Scheduled Tribes status the way a Scheduled Caste convert can. Instead, the question turns on whether the person continues to follow and possess the essential attributes of tribal identity, like customs, practices, community life and acceptance by the tribal community.
Take this as the law governing and principles established says that discrimination is fine if it is between SC and ST because where the same status SCs are told to leave, the STs are allowed to take benefits or at least the law is silent when it happens. Ask me? I feel if a tribal person converts into a religion other than the Indic religion, they should be barred from getting benefits given to a tribe.
Because this conversion thing has a significant impact on tribes who have not converted. We must not forget that the Scheduled Tribes in India carry rights that go far beyond welfare benefits. They have rights over land, forests, and resources under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution, protection under the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, and customary governance rights that flow directly from their identity as members of a living tribal community. They have protection specifically designed for people who live within the tribe and are answerable to a tribal community and its way of life.
When a person converts, severs all connection with tribal customs and community life, but retains ST status on paper. They do not merely continue drawing a welfare benefit, continue exercising territorial and resource rights that were designed for people who live within, and are accountable to, a tribal community and its way of life. The very people who are given the recognition of protecting tribal customs are the same hands that murder it.
The tribal belt of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Northeast, has seen the most intensive and institutionally organized conversion activity in India. These are precisely the regions where this legal vacuum does the most damage. The effect of conversion can be seen by the slow disappearance of languages, customs and rituals that have no written form and survive only as long as the community that practices them survives intact.
A research paper titled ‘Customary marriage in Khasi Tribe: Deconstruction’ published in NUJS Journal of Regulatory Studies records the situation well: ‘The traditional marriage system slowly eroded with the marriages often solemnized in the Churches. The Christian marriage laws governed the erstwhile Khasi customary laws. Special marriage laws governed between Khasis marrying non-Khasis and vice versa’.
The Supreme Court on 24 March 2026 drew the right line. But the framework given by the court is insufficient to address the issue holistically and it requires governments to address the loopholes. Because as long as it doesn’t, the protection built for India’s most vulnerable communities will quietly continue to be claimed by people who are no longer retaining customs of the land, while the ones who are true preservers have to share, which has been created for them through the constitution.
BG 3.35: श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुण: परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात् |
स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेय: परधर्मो भयावह: || 35||
It is far better to perform one’s natural prescribed duty, though tinged with faults, than to perform another’s prescribed duty, though perfectly. In fact, it is preferable to die in the discharge of one’s duty, than to follow the path of another, which is fraught with danger.
