Influence of Foreign Religions on Dalit Social Status in India

When Dalits have sought escape from caste oppression throughout India’s history, they have often looked toward religion as a path to dignity and equality. Christianity arrived with colonial missionaries. Islam came through Arab traders and Central Asian conquerors. And Vedic Brahmanism – though rooted on Indian soil – is itself regarded by many scholars and Dalit thinkers as an ideology of foreign imposition, shaped by the Indo-Aryan migration and institutionalised by a priestly elite. The striking paradox is this: every religion that Dalits have turned to – whether “foreign” or indigenous in its origins – has replicated the very hierarchy they were fleeing. Understanding why requires looking carefully at how each of these religious traditions has interacted with caste in India.

Vedic Brahmanism: a system built on exclusion 🔗

To understand Dalit experiences with “foreign” religions, we must first understand what they were running from. Brahmanism developed from the Vedic religion during the Late Vedic Period (c. 1100-500 BCE), following the Indo-Aryan migration into the Indian subcontinent around 2000-1500 BCE. From the start, it was a tradition whose religious authority was controlled by Brahmins – the priestly class who could read Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, while the lower classes could not. This monopoly on sacred knowledge reinforced their social dominance.

The varna system, rooted in Vedic traditions, divides society into four groups – Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders and merchants), and Shudras (laborers). Dalits fall entirely outside this framework, considered ritually impure, assigned the most degraded occupations, and denied the most basic social dignities. The authority of the varna system is derived from its codification in the Vedic-Brahmin Manusmriti (Laws of Manu), one of Hinduism’s most sacred texts. Crucially, this made the caste order appear cosmically ordained and therefore unchallengeable.

Many Dalit scholars and anti-caste thinkers – most influentially B.R. Ambedkar – treated Brahmanism not merely as a religious problem but as a political one. Ambedkar argued that Hinduism’s support of caste was fundamentally incompatible with principles of equality and human dignity, and ultimately rejected Hinduism altogether. It is this structural reality – the combination of ritual justification and material enforcement – that drove millions of Dalits to seek alternatives in other faith traditions.

Conversion as resistance 🔗

Dalit conversions to other religions should not be misread as mere spiritual choices. The history of conversion movements clearly shows that Dalits have not been converting to other religions simply because they prefer a different belief system – they convert because they actively reject Hinduism. This rejection is a political and moral act. It is a refusal to accept the cosmological order that places them at the bottom of society, declared impure by birth.

Over centuries, India’s Dalits have left Hinduism for Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, and Buddhism, believing that they will better their lives by doing so, persuaded that Hinduism, with its varna ashramas (caste distinctions), has been solely responsible for all their ills. Mass conversions have taken place at key moments of social crisis and mobilisation – to Buddhism in 1956 under Ambedkar’s leadership, to Islam in 1981 in southern India, and to Christianity through missionary activity beginning in the colonial period. The question that history forces us to confront is whether these conversions actually delivered liberation.

Christianity in India: promise and disappointment 🔗

Christian missionaries who arrived in colonial India explicitly framed their mission as one of social reform. They fought against the idea of a caste system within the church. Yet the institutional practice of Christianity in India diverged sharply from its theological ideals. Despite their conversion to Christianity, Dalit Christians often continue to face societal discrimination both within and outside their religious community due to the pervasive influence of the caste system.

The forms this discrimination takes are well-documented. Within churches, Dalit Christians experienced discrimination such as being forced to sit at the back during services or being relegated to separate areas in cemeteries. Non-acceptance of Dalit priests, separate entrances for Dalits in churches, and the blocking of Dalits from leadership roles within church hierarchies have all been recorded. In South India, caste distinctions among Christians remain visible, with communities identifying as Nadars, Mudaliars, Yadavas, Reddys, Kammas, and Brahmins – and Dalit Christians often continue to occupy the lowest position within this hierarchy.

The literary record bears this out. Dalit Christian writer Bama documented in her book Karukku how Dalits were denied leadership roles and active participation in church activities despite forming a large section of the community. Even official church bodies have taken note: the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court issued notices over representation of Dalits in church administration, and Pope John Paul II had called for reform of practices reinforcing caste divisions.

The legal double bind 🔗

The burden on Dalit Christians goes beyond social discrimination within the church. It extends to a cruel legal paradox enforced by the Indian state. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 states that no person professing a religion other than Hinduism shall be deemed a member of a Scheduled Caste. When a Dalit converts to Christianity (or Islam), they lose their Scheduled Caste status – and with it, access to constitutional protections, reservations in education and employment, and safeguards under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.

This creates what legal scholars describe as a quiet but profound injustice – a Dalit who seeks to escape caste through conversion must pay a price for that choice. The law operates on the assumption that conversion erases caste, but this assumption is not supported by evidence. A 2021 IndiaSpend study found no significant difference in poverty or landlessness between Dalit Hindus and Dalit Christians. Similarly, the Sachar Committee (2006) concluded that conversion had not improved socio-economic conditions for Dalit converts to either Christianity or Islam.

The Ranganath Misra Commission (2007) formally recommended the complete deletion of the religious restriction from the 1950 Order, asserting that caste is a deeply entrenched sociological reality in India that transcends all religious boundaries. This recommendation – which would have restored SC protections to Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam – has never been implemented by any successive government.

Islam in India: equality in doctrine, hierarchy in practice 🔗

Islam’s entry into the Indian subcontinent – through Arab traders arriving on the southern coast and later through Central Asian conquerors in the north – brought with it an unambiguous theological message: all believers are equal before God. The Quran makes no distinction of birth or caste. This was precisely why many Dalits converted to Islam, drawn by a vision of brotherhood that Brahmanical Hinduism denied them entirely.

The sociological reality that developed, however, told a different story. From the earliest days of Islam’s arrival in South Asia, Arab, Persian and Afghan Muslims were recognised as an upper caste – the Ashrafs. Below them are the Ajlafs, largely comprising converts from mid-ranking Hindu castes, and at the very bottom are the Arzals – Dalit converts whose pre-conversion position in the Hindu social order followed them into Islam. Though the philosophy of caste hierarchy is quite contradictory to the basic beliefs of Islam, which explicitly emphasises equality and universal brotherhood, caste hierarchy exists among Muslims in India, divided into three broad categories: the Ashraf (upper class), the Ajlaf (clean occupational caste), and the Arzal (unclean occupational caste or untouchable).

The discrimination within Muslim society mirrors what Dalits face in Hindu society. The Arzal category includes unclean or ritually polluting castes such as Bhangi, Mehtar, and Lalbegi – sweepers and scavengers – and like the Hindu caste system, all categories are traditionally endogamous. Separate drinking water vessels for lower-caste Muslims, separate rows in mosques, and exclusion from upper-caste burial grounds have all been documented. High-caste Muslims do not marry Dalit Muslims – the promise of Islamic brotherhood dissolves at the boundary of jati identity.

Ambedkar – one of the most trenchant critics of the caste system in all its forms – was sharply critical of this reality. He observed that Muslim society in India was afflicted by the same social evils as Hindu society, and that the Muslim caste system was in many respects even more entrenched than commonly admitted. The Pasmanda Muslims – the combined category of Ajlaf and Arzal communities comprising roughly 85% of India’s Muslim population – remain politically underrepresented and economically marginalised, dominated by the Ashraf elite who constitute only about 15% of the Muslim population.

Why caste survives religious conversion 🔗

The persistence of caste across religious boundaries in India is not accidental. It reflects something fundamental about how caste operates. As Dalit rights activist Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd explains, those religions do not accept caste discrimination as part of their divine structure – but the impact of Hinduism over centuries has created caste systems within these religions.

Caste is not merely a theological idea that can be dissolved by adopting new theological ideas. It is a material structure of social control – governing who marries whom, who owns land, who performs which labour, who holds positions of religious authority, and who is permitted dignity in death. When individuals convert, they carry their caste identity with them in the eyes of the community around them. Segregated burial grounds, separate seating in places of worship, endogamous marriage practices, and social exclusion are not uncommon – and these are not isolated incidents but patterns documented by sociologists, activists, and government-appointed commissions.

A state commission on Dalits captured this with painful clarity: Dalits are “twice discriminated against” – in society and within the church. The same formulation applies to Dalit Muslims. Upon conversion, they are assured of entering a religious fold free from untouchability. But the reality is altogether different. And when they attempt to exit through conversion, the Indian legal system strips them of the only constitutional protections designed to shield them from that oppression – effectively penalising them for seeking dignity.

The selective inclusion of Indic converts 🔗

It is worth noting that Dalit converts to Sikhism and Buddhism have been treated differently by Indian law. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order was amended in 1956 to include Dalits who had converted to Sikhism, and again in 1990 to include Dalits who had converted to Buddhism. This extension of SC status was not extended to Christians or Muslims. The distinction reflects an ideological position: Buddhism and Sikhism, born on Indian soil, are treated as extensions of the Hindu family, while Christianity and Islam – characterised as the religions of foreign conquerors – are not.

This framing is philosophically contested. In the landmark case of Indira Sawhney vs. Union of India, it was noted that caste is a birth-based phenomenon that transcends religious boundaries and is not limited to Hindu society. The Oxford Human Rights Hub has argued that the exclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslims from Scheduled Caste reservations contravenes India’s obligations under international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

What religious liberation has and has not achieved 🔗

The picture is not entirely without nuance. An India Spend analysis of 2011 Census data found that converted Buddhist Dalits enjoy better literacy rates and better work participation than Scheduled Caste Hindus. Ambedkar’s mass conversion to Buddhism in 1956 – in which nearly half a million people followed him – was not only a spiritual act but a carefully considered political strategy. He believed Buddhism was uniquely suited to Dalit liberation because it rejected varna entirely, taught the equality of all human beings as a foundational principle, and was rooted in Indian history rather than perceived as an alien import.

Yet even within Buddhism, the social pressures of caste have not entirely disappeared. The anti-caste principle of Buddhism has often come into tension with the surrounding social world in which its converts live. Buddhist monasteries have not been able to prevent their converts from continuing their earlier casteist practices. The transformation of individual religious identity does not automatically transform a community’s social norms, especially when material conditions – landownership, occupation, inter-marriage – remain structured by caste.

For Dalits engaging with Christianity, Islam, or any other tradition, the fundamental issue is this: a religion’s doctrinal commitment to equality does not ensure that its Indian practitioners will honour that commitment. Each of these traditions arrived in India and, to varying degrees, adapted to the social environment they found – including caste. The result is that the spiritual promise of liberation and the sociological reality of hierarchy have coexisted uneasily within all of them.

What do you think? If caste persists across religious boundaries regardless of a faith’s teachings on equality, does this suggest the problem is fundamentally social and economic rather than theological – and does that change what kind of solutions we should pursue? And what does it mean for a constitutional democracy when it legally treats religious conversion as erasing social oppression, despite all evidence to the contrary?

References

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4. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/6/14/dalit-conversions-an-act-of-rebellion-against-caste-supremacy
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6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit_Christian
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