Free India elected to protect and uphold the right to religious conscience. These incorporated the freedoms to choose, practice and propagate one’s religious faith. This, after searching and sometimes bitter debates in India’s constituent assembly in the shadow of cataclysmic religious riots during India’s partition in 1947.

The citizens’ freedom of religion, however, was curtailed almost immediately when reservations in government jobs, educational institutions and elected office to Scheduled Castes of the Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh faiths. (This was through Clause 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950).

What this meant in practice was that if Dalit Hindus chose to migrate to the more egalitarian faiths of Christianity or Islam, they would no longer be entitled to reservations. This same principle has been often reiterated, most recently by India’s Supreme Court in March 2026. The court was categorical that the moment Dalits convert to faiths other than Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, their Scheduled Caste status would cease forthwith.

The court however clarified that this cessation was not irrevocable. Their status could be restored, but only if the persons returned to their original faith, subject to their acceptance by their original caste community. (I found this judicial clarification was entirely gratuitous, as it seems to ratify...

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