Bengaluru, Oct 16 (PTI) The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Sunday said that Scheduled Castes (SCs) are people who have historically been deprived on the basis of their castes, while the Abrahamic religions claim to have no caste distinction amongst them, and therefore reservation cannot be extended to them.
The VHP said it shall actively participate in the consultation process before the Centre-appointed Commission to assist it in arriving at the appropriate findings.
The Commission, headed by former CJI K G Balakrishnan, was set up to examine the matter of giving SC status to new people who claim to historically have belonged to the SCs, but have converted to a religion other than those mentioned in the Presidential orders.
The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 (amended from time to time) says that no person professing a religion other than Hinduism or Sikhism, or Buddhism can be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.
“In 1950, the Constitution Order was issued making it clear that only Hindu Scheduled Castes would get reservation facilities. Despite this, Christian missionaries and Islamic organisations have been making constant efforts for their irrational demands to extend this facility to converted SCs. We wouldn’t allow snatching the constitutional rights of SCs,” said the central working president of VHP Alok Kumar.
The converted STs should also not be allowed to continue the rights of reservation guaranteed under the law to STs, he added.
Noting that Dr Ambedkar and many Prime Ministers, including Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, had not acceded to the demand to extend benefits to converted SCs, Kumar said former Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi, Deve Gowda and Manmohan Singh tried to accept this demand, but they had to back down due to the nationwide protests.
The Sachar Committee in 2005 and the Ranganath Committee in 2009 had made some recommendations in this regard, but due to their self-contradictions and wrong methodologies, their recommendations could not be implemented, he pointed out.
Christian missionaries and Muslim leadership while claiming social equality in their religions and in the same breath raising this demand with great vigour is evidently self-contradictory, he added.
Highlighting that the judiciary has also rejected their demand every time as illogical and unconstitutional, while citing several instances, Kumar said due to the potential conversion surge, the peril of demographic alteration in many areas of Bharat would take dire form.
The consequences of demographic change hostile and ill-disposed to national interest are already obvious in many districts of Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Bengal, Northeast, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, among others, he said, adding that “In those pockets, not only has religious intolerance increased, but also India’s identity and worldview and paradigm of ‘Sarv-Panth Samaadar Bhaav’ (‘mutual respect and harmony among all schools of religion’) has been diluted.” Further maintaining that the rights of SC communities can’t be allowed to be snatched away by the converts, the VHP leader said backed by their money power, political influence and international support, they would lodge themselves in all areas of reservation and all those members of the SC communities for whom the provisions of reservations were made would be deprived of the facilities.
VHP would undertake a public awareness campaign across the country to expose the conspiracies of providing reservations to the SC converts and the same available to the ST converts must be stopped forthwith and completely, he added. PTI KSU NVG NVG
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