Supreme Court: converting to Islam does not carry over backward class quota status

The ruling

The Supreme Court on Thursday, October 15, dismissed an appeal by the Tamil Nadu government and upheld a Madras High Court order that barred converts to Islam from claiming reservation under the Backward Class (Muslim) category on the basis of their conversion, according to a PTI report carried by Nagaland Post. The bench was Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Shree Chandrashekhar, as reported by ThePrint. The court had reserved its decision on August 7.

What the court held

According to ThePrint, the court held that:

• A person who moves from the Hindu social order to a non-Hindu one cannot claim affirmative action under Article 16(4) on the strength of backwardness suffered before conversion. In the court's words as reported, "A backwardness suffered in the antecedent social order cannot by itself be carried forward."
• A person who professes a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism cannot be treated as a member of a Scheduled Caste, so conversion ends Scheduled Caste status and cannot ground a backward class claim.
• A convert's earlier caste cannot be moved by conversion alone into membership of a notified backward class community.
• A convert to Islam does not, by that act alone, become a member of any of the seven notified backward class communities in Tamil Nadu. A private religious body cannot conclusively decide such a statutory entitlement.
• Someone who returns to Hinduism cannot claim entitlement merely from past status. The competent authority must make an independent, fact-specific assessment of whether the original caste identity has genuinely revived.

Scroll reports the ruling covers people from the Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes, Denotified Communities or Scheduled Castes who convert to Islam.

The Tamil Nadu order

The Madras High Court quashed a Tamil Nadu Government Order dated March 9, 2024, which extended reservation to converted Muslims, ThePrint reports. The state argued that the order was meant to ensure that backward, most backward, denotified and Scheduled Caste communities were not deprived of reservation solely because a person converted to Islam. It said the order rested on a report of the Tamil Nadu Backward Classes Commission.

The High Court case arose from a man who converted from Hinduism to Islam in 2015, with the conversion notified in 2016, and who later sought a certificate identifying him as belonging to the Muslim Lebbai community so that he could claim reservation, according to ThePrint. The High Court held that conversion alone does not entitle a person to reservation under the Backward Class (Muslim) category and that a convert can be treated only as a Muslim, not as a member of a specific notified community.

Details the reports give differently

The date of the High Court order differs between reports: ThePrint gives June 25 and Scroll gives June 24. Scroll says Tamil Nadu challenged the order in July. DNA India and Nagaland Post do not give the High Court's date. None of the reports gives a case number.

Scroll also notes an earlier Supreme Court ruling, in March, that only people belonging to the Hindu, Buddhist or Sikh faiths can claim Scheduled Caste status.