Shahabuddin's Letter to The Pioneer, 16 Nov., 99

Apropos Rajeev Deshpande's dispatch "Rao, PV for Dalit Muslim Quota?" (The Pioneer, 12 Nov., 1999), may I say that the AIBMM has been making this demand for nearly a decade and had earlier claimed to have converted H.D. Deve Gowda and several of his colleagues Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav to their point of view. I have had long discussions with its leadership. No one has answered my query about the % of the Muslim population covered by the 5 'Dalit Muslim' castes. In my view they constitute less than 0.5%. So even if they are included in the list of SC's, it would not make an iota of difference to the status of the community. The real motivation, I found, is the reservation for SC's in legislature. But how can a Muslim Dalit win against a Hindu Dalit, with almost negligible population in a given constituency, when national parties find it difficult to field Muslim candidate even in Muslim concentration constituencies? Thirdly, no SC leader has publicly supported inclusion of 'Dalit Muslim' in this category.

There is a lot of confusion. The question of Dalit Christian has emerged out of change of religion by some of them from Hinduism to Christianity. If Article 25 is 2 sacrosanct, reservation for SC's in public employment or legislature should not be used to coerce a person to remain a Hindu against his conscience. Moreover, his social status does not change overnight with the change of religion. So at least the Dalit Hindu who becomes a Christian or for that matter adopts any religion of his choice, should continue to enjoy the benefits accruing to him as a SC for him and his immediate family. This implies that such a person and his progeny should continue to figure on the SC list and the Constitutional Order of 1950 should be amended accordingly. It may be added that the Order is not per se unconstitutional, because the very class of SC was created by the Act of 1935 of which categorised the Hindu sub-communities who were regarded as untouchables were put in a Schedule. Thus SC's are by definition Hindus, ab initio. The criteria was not only the work they did but whether they suffered from this social disability, Christians and Muslims doing the same work did not and do not.