The Upper Caste rants against reservations just hit the crescendo with the recent Jat riots in Haryana, which caused massive destruction of public property. These rants are well justified and grounded in the libertarian thoughts which many of the Right Wingers have directly copied from the west. Sadly like all other borrowed ideology, the imitation is perfect and the libertarian cheerleaders have forgotten to tweak and adapt them according to local conditions. There is a huge momentum built around reservations based on economic inequality and doing away with caste-based reservations. Given how it is adopted blindly by many of the right wing Hindu intellectuals, it is utmost important to describe the one constitutional provision which has helped in consolidating Hindus more than anything else. While most constitutional provisions like temple control, RTE etc. are stacked against Hindus, only reservations is one tool which is favourable against the onslaught of Abrahamic religions. By the end of this article, we should be able to convince you why all Hindus should bury the hatchet against caste-based reservations for the next few decades and use it as an active policy tool to counter missionary activity through Ghar Wapsi.
Let’s go back to February 2015 to understand the importance of caste-based reservations, which Hindu organizations have ignored till now. The bench of Justices Dipak Misra and V. Gopala Gowda held that a person shall not be deprived of reservation benefits if he decides to “reconvert” to Hinduism and adopts the caste of his forefathers. The case was brought to court by an individual whose grandparents had converted to Christianity while he reconverted back to Hinduism and availed reservation benefits. This is what the Supreme Court had to say:
If a person born to Christian parents, who had converted to Christianity from the Scheduled Caste Hindu, can avail the benefits of the caste certificate after embracing Hinduism, there cannot be any soundness of logic that he cannot avail similar benefits because his grandparents were converted and he was born to parents who were Christians.
This decision has now removed the inter-generational gap between conversion and reconversion within the fold of Hinduism to avail reservation benefits, thus opening the way for Hindus to win the demographic battle stacked against them. With this single decision, the Supreme Court has given the Brahmastra to fight both the menace of aggressive Evangelization efforts in India as well as high Muslim fertility. Extending the right of reservation to those who converted generations ago will give the massive carrot which can be dangled in front of Muslims as well as Christians to get them back into the Hindu fold.
As expected, this decision caused massive heartburn among the sickulars of the country. Sad thing is most of the people on the Hindu Right have overlooked the benefits of this one policy in countering the Abrahamic religions. The cry for substituting the current reservation policy from caste to economic status is getting louder each day. Also, there has been an active policy push by Christian organizations to extend quota benefits to Dalit Christians and Muslims. While Hindus have more or less ignored this issue, this constitutional disparity has been an important topic for atrocity literature published in the west:
The loss of constitutional privileges upon conversion, however, serves as a serious impediment to their freedom to choose their religion. Additionally, most Dalits are ultimately unable to escape their treatment as “untouchables” regardless of the religion they profess. The introduction of anti-conversion legislation in several states has further made religious conversion extremely difficult if not impossible. Finally, Dalits may become targets of forced “reconversions” to Hinduism by sangh parivar groups.
Since the Church feeds on poverty and deprivation, the reservation policy has been one policy tool which has blunted their advances in many parts of the country. Just to connect the dots, one can look at the history of activism by Arvind Kejriwal, who started his career by protesting against reservations under the banner of Youth for Equality. The massive funding he gets from foreign organizations is enough to explain the reasons behind his earlier stand and whether he was executing the agenda on behalf of foreign masters.
While people protesting against reservations cannot be faulted completely, they are actually helping the agenda of the missionaries. The recent Jat and Patel agitations had the undercurrent of either extending reservations to their communities or completely removing them. Seen under the light of missionary propaganda, it is not a mystery why these protests are mainstreaming the idea of removal of caste-based reservation.
What is the way forward?
- For the benefit of India and to maintain Hindu demographic superiority, it is essential that Hindus do not fall for the current attempts to remove the caste-based reservations in favour of reservations based on income. Keeping the Hindu dominance under reservation is only possible under caste-based reservation as changing it to income will completely change the rules of the game.
- No matter how much the Muslims or Christians cry over discrimination, they cannot avail caste-based reservations on a massive scale due to theological equality provided under Islam and Christianity. Since the Constitution already acknowledges it, it has made the task simple for Hindus.
- Hindu organizations should use it as an active policy tool to get jobs for reconverted Hindus and blunt the monetary advantage of Abrahamics.
- The quota level can be increased from the current ad-hoc 50% level set by the SC to higher levels so that there is healthy competition within the quota and an increased pool of better candidates. What most people forget is that increasing the quota is also another way to dilute quota benefits. Tamil Nadu model can be extended to the rest of India to actively squeeze the benefits available to people from other religions, while improving the quality of quota-based candidates.
- This policy should be maintained till India achieves middle-income country status, when it would completely blunt the conversion business of evangelists. No surprise, the Church has made so many attempts to keep Indians poor and marginalised. If used well for the next 2–3 decades, this single policy can completely recover the losses made by Dharmic religions in India.
- Rather than asking for implementing no-conversion as a state policy, Hindus need to actively use reservations as the carrot to dangle in front of Muslims or Christians and increase their numbers before it is too late. No-conversion will effectively block any reconversion back to Hinduism. Given the massive state benefit through reservations for reconversion, Hindus should not advocate for a no-conversion policy.