Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has reiterated that Dalit people who converted to Christianity or Islam will not be allowed to contest elections, shattering the hopes of this socially poor group once again.
Church leaders say the adamant stance of the government run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will only add to the social and economic backwardness of Dalit people, the former untouchables.
“It is unfortunate that the government has reiterated this position,” Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak, chairman of the Indian bishops’ Office for Scheduled Caste and Backward Classes, told.
Of the 543 seats in India’s parliament, 84 are reserved for 200 million Dalit people, officially known as scheduled castes, and 47 are reserved for 104 million scheduled tribes.
Election rules allow only Dalit or tribal people to contest seats reserved for them. A 1950 constitutional order denied social and political benefits meant for Dalit people to non-Hindus.
The order was later amended twice to include Buddhists and Sikhs in the benefits, but Christians and Muslims are denied these benefits on grounds that their religions do not follow the caste system.
Dalit Christian leaders were expecting a positive response from the government to their complaint pending in the Supreme Court since 2004. Federal Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told parliament on Feb. 11 that Dalit converts to Islam and Christianity cannot claim reservation benefits to contest parliamentary or state elections in seats reserved for scheduled castes.
Bishop Nayak told on Feb. 16 that Christian leaders have been fighting the 1950 order since it was enacted but successive governments ignored the demand because Christians are politically insignificant as they form only 2.3 percent of the nation’s 1.3 billion people.
Dalit Christian leaders claim 80 percent of about 30 million Indian Christians are of Dalit origin, but official government estimates say 33 percent of Indian Christians are socially poor Dalits, with disadvantaged tribal Christians forming another 33 percent.