Backwardness 'must be proven', not prayed into existence: Rejection of faith-based quotas

By Gajanan Khergamker 

The Supreme Court has redrawn a firm constitutional line, ruling that affirmative action cannot be used to mask religious preference without undermining secularism. Its March 2026 verdict reiterates a foundational principle: backwardness must be proven, not presumed through faith. Reservations, the Court reminds us, are a remedy for historic injustice—not a tool of religious entitlement.

Within the fluid yet doctrine-bound terrain of India’s constitutional jurisprudence, the Court’s March 23, 2026 order reaffirms a principle that has endured despite political pressures and social mobilisation: affirmative action, however broadly interpreted, cannot be reconfigured into a vehicle for religious preference without unsettling the Constitution’s secular foundation.

The bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N.V. Anjaria, while upholding the Andhra Pradesh High Court’s decision to quash proceedings under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act initiated by a Christian pastor, did more than rule on statutory eligibility. It reiterated with clarity that conversion to Christianity severs Scheduled Caste status under the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950. The Court’s insistence that such exclusion is “absolute,” particularly where the adopted faith is actively professed, leaves little room for interpretive ambiguity. It signals that the architecture of reservation is neither porous to opportunistic claims nor flexible to theological elasticity.

This articulation is not an isolated judicial moment but part of a consistent line of reasoning that has grown firmer in recent years. The November 2024 ruling in the C. Selvarani case, delivered by Justices Pankaj Mithal and R. Mahadevan, had already set the tone by describing conversion undertaken solely to access reservation benefits as a “fraud on the Constitution.” That judgment elevated the issue from eligibility to constitutional morality, exposing the contradiction in claims that seek to retain caste-based benefits while disclaiming the social structure that produces caste.

Equally instructive is the Court’s engagement with the West Bengal OBC controversy. Its December 2024 observations, followed by interim developments in 2025, underscored the impermissibility of religion as the sole or dominant basis for classification. When Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan observed that reservation cannot rest on religious grounds alone, they reaffirmed a constitutional orthodoxy rooted in Articles 15 and 16. The July 2025 stay on a revised OBC list reflected a calibrated approach: the Court recognises executive authority to identify backward classes, but remains vigilant against methods that reduce empirical assessment to religious enumeration.

What emerges is not a denial of backwardness within religious communities such as Muslims or Christians, but a categorical rejection of religion itself as a proxy for such backwardness. The Court has acknowledged that disadvantaged groups exist across faiths, yet insists their identification must follow rigorous, data-driven standards laid down in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India. This includes quantifiable evidence, exclusion of the creamy layer, and adherence to the 50 per cent ceiling—safeguards designed to prevent affirmative action from devolving into a tool of political appeasement.

For Dalit Christians, the Court’s position remains consistent, though contentious. By reiterating that conversion severs the juridical link to the Hindu caste system, absent legislative change, the Court has effectively shifted the burden to Parliament to revisit the 1950 Presidential Order. Petitions seeking parity continue, but judicial signals remain clear.

At a deeper level, these rulings reflect a constitutional anxiety about the re-entry of communal categories into state policy. The framers, mindful of the divisive legacy of communal electorates, anchored affirmative action in social and educational backwardness rather than religious identity. The Court has guarded that choice closely. Each time a state blurs this distinction—through expansive OBC lists mirroring religious demographics or policies that implicitly privilege faith—the judiciary intervenes, not as an adversary of social justice but as its constitutional custodian.

The message is neither exclusionary nor doctrinaire. It is a reminder that the legitimacy of reservation lies in its fidelity to secular, evidence-based redress. By rejecting religion as a standalone basis for quotas while leaving space for genuinely backward groups within any community to be identified through objective criteria, the Court preserves both the integrity and purpose of affirmative action.

In an era marked by identity-driven politics, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence serves as a constitutional compass. The rulings of March 2026 do more than settle individual disputes; they articulate a larger ethic—that the Republic’s commitment to equality must be mediated through reason, not faith, and through demonstrable deprivation, not declaratory identity. In that insistence lies both the discipline and the promise of India’s constitutional order.

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A version of this article was first published in The Draft