Babasaheb Ambedkar and the prime minister of the day, Jawaharlal Nehru, had in the newly independent country’s constitution sought to make amends to a historic ethnic wrong done over three millennia to this group of citizens. Article 341 therefore gave them a special place, and social rights which invaded political representation, and reservations of up to 15 percent in educational institutions and government employment. Ambedkar would later leave the cabinet, and in 1956 leave the Hindu religion to join, with half a million others, the Buddhist faith. His followers would be called Ambedkarite in time, and today they are an important part of national politics and civil society.
So, what forced the very secular Nehru and the chair of the constitution-writing committee to renege on their own written promise?
Article 341 was not diluted but emasculated by the Presidential Order of 1950 under the irresistible pressure of the most powerful segments of not just the opposition parties but also of the ruling Congress, especially its members from what is now Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. This said that the constitutional guarantees of affirmative action would be limited only to those who remained Hindu. In effect, people would not be entitled to reservations and the umbrella of the untouchability-ending laws if they left the Hindu fold.
This, in effect, is the world’s most extensive, most powerful and most viciously bigoted anti-conversion law. It is a law that enforces a particular religion. It robs the Hindu Dalit of the freedom of choosing his or her religion at pain of being denied education, employment and other aspirational and political benefits that come with remaining in the fold. And it robs possibly 10 million or more Christians — most of them outside the Northeast and Kerala — of what is rightfully theirs for sharing a painful past, a violent racial memory and continuing social discrimination and vulnerability.
It also, in effect, communalizes the protective cover of the law of the land, leaving a large number of people out of its shield, victims though they are of social derision and economic neglect compounded by political exclusion.
This is not how newspaper articles narrate the persistent tragedy of the DCs and the DMs. But legalese cannot take away the bitterness of the truth.

John Dayal