The Supreme Court of India said on March 24 that no person practicing a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism can be considered a Scheduled Caste (SC).
Upholding the Andhra Pradesh High Court order, Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and NV Anjaria said that a person belonging to the Scheduled Caste community loses his status immediately and completely after converting to another religion, news agency PTI reported.
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“No statutory benefit, protection or reservation or entitlement under the Constitution or an enactment of Parliament or a State Legislature shall be claimed or extended to any person who is not deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste under sub-section (3).
“This bar is absolute and admits of no exception. A person cannot simultaneously profess and practice a religion other than that mentioned in paragraph 3 and claim membership of a Scheduled Caste,” the bench said.
On 30 April 2025, the Andhra Pradesh High Court ruled that once an individual converts to Christianity and actively professes and practices the faith, he cannot be considered a member of the Scheduled Caste community.
The Supreme Court ruled that the caste system is foreign to Christianity and therefore the provisions of the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act are prohibited.
Dismissed charges filed by complainant
It quashed the charges filed by the complainant who converted to Christianity and invoked the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in the criminal case.
Upset with the order, the man, a pastor, filed a case in the Supreme Court against the High Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court noted that the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Ordinance, 1950 made it clear that conversion to any religion not mentioned in Article 3 of the 1950 Ordinance resulted in immediate loss of Schedule Caste status, irrespective of birth, and the bar was “absolute”.
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“In the present case, it is not the case of the petitioner that he converted from Christianity to his original religion or was accepted back into the Madiga community.
“On the contrary, the evidence shows that the applicant has continued to profess Christianity and has been a pastor for more than ten years and conducts regular Sunday prayers in the houses of the village,” the court said.
The bench noted that he was leading a prayer meeting at the house at the time of the alleged incident.
“These concurrent facts leave no room for doubt that he continued to remain a Christian at the date of the event,” the senator said of the facts of the case.
Pastor Chinthada Anand filed a criminal case against one Akkala Rami Reddy in 2021, invoking various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the SC/ST Act, alleging that a person assaulted him while performing pastoral duties and conducting Sunday prayers in a village in Andhra Pradesh.
He claimed that he was subjected to several attacks by Rami Reddy and that he and his family received death threats and torture in the name of their caste.
