Do Dalits who are Christians and Muslims deserve reservation?

Constitutional Act reserves 15% and 7.5% of seat in Governement sector for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST). The Act, however, loses its power when a Scheduled Caste person changes her religion to Christianity or Islam. Christians and Muslims have been campaigning for several years now that the Act be amended so that it would allow even a Christian or Muslim who is from a Scheduled Caste background to avail the reservation. As of now the Scheduled Caste person loses the economic privilege once she converts.

I believe the present reservation policy is flawed. Since the reservation policy was introduced with the intention of bridging the 'social and economic' gap it is high time that the government reserves seat based on economic status, and not on caste and tribe. If the present policy continues those members of the society that truly deserve reservation will be left underprivileged. Today there are so many SCs and STs who are millionaires and who do not really need reservation. But it is the children of these people who get into best private schools and thus get into the best government positions through reservation policy. The truly underprivileged class are not able to send their children even to decent schools and therefore going up the social and economic ladder just remains a distant dream. Thus, Christians and Muslims who are from poor Dalit/SC background should not be denied reservation. Let even those who are from Brahmin background get reservation, provided they are really poor.

But under the present policy should reservation be extended to Christians and Muslims who are from Dalit background? I don't find the arguments against the extension of the privilege convincing enough. In fact, the opposition for such extension should be coming from those who are covered by the reservation policy because they would then have more people to compete among themselves. But that's not the case! One argument is that if Dalits who convert come under reservation then there will be mass exodus to Christianity or Islam. But the question that emerges is is it that the religion they now follow is so weak and poor that given a chance to maintain the same government sanctioned economic status they are willing to abandon their religion? If yes, then one may surmise that Christianity and Islam offer something to people which other Indian religions do not offer. Is it social status that these two offer?

Christians and Muslims are not supposed to practice caste system. Whether Hinduism sanctions caste sytem or not has been debated. Individual like B.R.Ambedkar, the architech of Indian Constitution, left Hinduism after having pursued the subject matter as part of his doctoral thesis. Having come from a Dalit background he suffered humiliation for several years, and after more than two decades of trying to change from within he embraced Buddhism because he believed that caste system in ingrained in Hindu religious belief. But there are others, from 'high caste' background, who argue that caste system is not intrinsic to Hindu teaching. But this subject whether caste system in intrinsically woven into Hindu metaphysics or not can be pursued some other time. My point, however, is that if the Dalits thought that they are going to be socially better of if Government relaxes its laws why can't the Govt do that? The Government cannot tell people to change the metaphysical belief of a religious community, supposing it's there in the metaphysical teaching of the Hindus, but it can change its laws so that it can facilitate certain group of people to be better of. When the Dalit community gets better of, does not it augment common good?

Isn't there also the argument that Christianity and Islam are foreign religion, and therefore... ? Well, are they really foreign religion? Next time...