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On March 24, 2026, the Supreme Court of India confirmed what the law has said since 1950, but what Indian society has quietly refused to examine: that the state’s recognition of caste-based suffering is conditional on the religion of the sufferer. 

The Court, invoking Clause 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, described the religious restriction as “absolute and unequivocal,” ruling that a Dalit person who converts to Christianity loses SC identity and protections immediately and completely. The 1950 Order restricts SC status to persons professing Hinduism, Sikhism, or Buddhism. The case – that of Pastor Chinthada Anand, who had filed an FIR under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act after suffering caste-based abuse – did not fail on the facts. It failed on his religion. The abuse was real. The caste was real. The state simply chose not to see it.

This ruling, and the legal architecture it rests on, deserves scrutiny not merely as a matter of constitutional law, but as a window into how the Indian state has theorised caste, suffering, and the right to spiritual self-determination.

The feeling of discrimination has a religion, apparently

The central fiction undergirding the 1950 Order – and reaffirmed each time courts uphold it – is that caste discrimination is a phenomenon internal to certain religions. The state, in effect, has decided that the experience of being discriminated against on the basis of caste has a religious gradient, that it attaches to Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh identity, and dissolves upon contact with Islam or Christianity. This is an empirical claim, and it is false.

There has been a persistent tendency in courts to confine the concept of caste strictly within the Hindu religious framework, despite significant sociological evidence demonstrating the presence of caste-based hierarchies across religious communities in India. The consequence is both philosophical and material. By reinforcing the “absolute bar,” the Supreme Court has frozen the legal definition of a “Dalit” as an exclusively religious category rather than a socioeconomic reality. This creates a glaring legal paradox: a citizen can be considered “socially and educationally backward” enough to qualify for OBC status regardless of their religion, but they can only be considered “untouchable” enough for SC status if they belong........

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