In 1974, Pakistan’s parliament, led by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, passed a law decreeing that Ahmedis were to be known as a separate religious community with no link with Islam. Till then, under Pakistani law (and till now under Indian law), Ahmedis were seen as Muslim, given that that’s how they saw themselves. In the years since, Pakistan’s treatment of its Ahmedi minority has been a terrible record of discrimination.
Even though its clear that the state deciding people’s faith for them is a bad idea, this is what the Madras High Court did earlier this month. The court rejected the petitioner A Mutharasan’s contention that he belonged to Hindu Adi-Dravidar (Parayar) community because he was not able to produce any certificate of his parents or any of his relatives to show that he and his family members and his ancestors belonged to this community.
The court also rejected the petitioner's claim that he followed the Hindu faith, taking into account the fact that Mutharsan's "parents, sister and wife belong to Christianity and Bible and Bible versions were found in the house" and that he was:
"actively involved in all the activities and functions of the Church and also signed as a witness in a marriage celebrated in the Church. He was also in the Welcome Committee during the Anniversary Celebration of St. Paul Lutheran Church."
Reservations based on faith
Behind this peculiar instance of a court telling a person what his faith really is lies India’s system of affirmative action, which is based partly on religion. The case had come up before the High Court because the petitioner had been removed from his position as village headman by a local government body for allegedly converting to Christianity.
The religious stricture on reservations goes back to 1950, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's government passed an order restricting the definition of “scheduled caste” only to people who profess the Hindu faith. In 1956, Nehru’s government included Sikhs in the definition, allowing them to also avail of quotas for seats in educational institutions and in government jobs. In 1990, the Union government bought Buddhists into the fold too. Conspicuously, there has been no sign of any political group – Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party – wanting to bring in lower-caste Christians or Muslims into the “scheduled caste” reservation scheme.
Discriminating by religion
The logic for using a religious criteria to decide on India’s largest programme of affirmative action is strained. If the 1950 order, limiting reservation to Hindus, could be defended on the grounds that Hinduism is the only religion that has scriptural backing for a system of caste, that logic was blown out of the water by extending the Scheduled Caste umbrella to Sikhism and Buddhism – which, like Islam and Christianity, are egalitarian religions.
Moreover, the purpose of scheduled caste reservations is to help Dalits overcome millennia of caste oppression by savarnas or upper castes. How could a simple conversion to Islam or Christianity wipe out thousands of years of backwardness? How could a Dalit, no matter what his religion, compete with castes who have had no history of being oppressed?
The Indian state, it seems, has wildly overestimated the egalitarian powers of the two Abrahamic faiths. In fact, numerous ground studies have shown that even the worst features of the caste system survive across religious boundaries – including untouchability. For the Indian state to take crucial policy decisions on the basis of theology – rather than data – is a troubling sign.
Hindutva as state policy
Even more worrisome is the fact that the system of Dalit reservation as it now exists coincides almost perfectly with Vinayak Savarkar’s theocratic understanding of Indian society, which he mapped as per indigenous and non-indigenous faiths. Savarkar, one of the main political philosophers to define what Hindutva means, was clear that Muslims and Christians were to be given fewer rights given the foreign origin of these faiths.
Since India’s largest system of affirmative action is decided by religion – and excludes Muslims and Christians – the state’s move to now define people’s religious faith for them is an even more alarming development. The Ahmedis in Pakistan are proof of the slippery slope this sort of thinking could put the Indian Union on. Some governments in India, in fact, have already travelled some way down that slope. Five Indian states now all but ban religion conversions. Two of those – Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh – actually order anyone wanting to convert to first take permission from the state government. That Narendra Modi (then chief minister of Gujarat) or Madhya Pradesh’s Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan passed laws that allow bureaucrats to decide on someone’s personal faith is a sign that secularism as a concept is shakier in India than many would care to acknowledge.
