“Islam and Christianity are alien” to India, NDAs Presi-dential candidate Ram Nath Kovind said seven years ago when he was just appointed a BJP spokesperson. Kovind, then a little known BJP leader, addressed a press conference at the BJP headquarters here on March 26, 2010, sought that the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission, which had recommended inclusion of Muslim and Christian converts among the Scheduled Castes, be “scra-pped” and called the move “unconstitutional.”
Asked then by an IANS correspondent as to how Sikh Dalits could enjoy the quota privilege in the same category, he responded: “Islam and Christianity are alien to the nation.” A Supreme Court ruling on March 25 that year had upheld the Andhra Pradesh government’s decision to allow four per cent job quota for backward Muslims.
The proposed reservation for backward Muslims was a burning issue then as the National Commission on Religious and Linguistic Minorities, headed by Justice Misra, former Chief Justice of India, had in a report recommended that backward Muslim and Christian converts should be accorded Scheduled Castes status and given a quota. Kovind, an RSS loyalist who worked for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, said the Misra Committee recommendations were not possible to implement. “Including Muslims and Christians in the Scheduled Castes category will be unconstitutinal,” the lawyer-turned-politician said.Indian society,” he said.
