WHAT happens when a person at the lower end of the caste hierarchy decides to join a religious order other than Hinduism? In an effort to answer this question, sociologist IP Desai undertook a study of Dalit converts to Christianity in rural Gujarat in the early 1970s.

Not surprisingly, he found that although the new converts had access to a place of worship - the church - it did not change their position in the rural society. Those belonging to the Hindu "upper castes" did not care a hoot about these people. It did not matter to them as long as the "untouchables" continued to do the jobs they were assigned as per the normative order of caste.

More importantly, even though the untouchables may have nominally been Hindus - say, for the purpose of reporting during a Census - those belonging to the rural upper castes never saw them as co-religionists. The "untouchables" were, anyway, not allowed to enter Hindu temples or be part of Hindu congregations in villages.

Caste is not an attribute or identity that an individual or a group can choose on the basis of what they perceive to be good for them. It is a relationship embedded within hierarchy, a power structure founded on the principle or ideology of exclusion. It shapes everyday social, economic and political life across the subcontinent.

From agrarian landscapes to urban settlements and democratic political/electoral processes, it continues to matter even in modern times. Though its forms and intensity vary across regions, its core attribute - the practice of untouchability, the culture of humiliation and hierarchy - seems to persist.

This has been found to be true even in regions or villages where Hinduism is not the dominant religion. The position of "untouchables" in a Muslim-dominated village of eastern Uttar Pradesh or in Tamil Nadu is not likely to be any different from that in a neighbouring Hindu-dominated village. Practices of caste-based exclusion and untouchability have been reported even from Buddhist villages of Sri Lanka and Sindhi villages of Pakistan.

Though untouchability had been prevalent for centuries, it acquired a new salience during the colonial period. The British introduced a process of enumeration, the Census. To undertake such an exercise, they needed to classify the innumerable jatis into manageable categories. For this purpose, they invoked the Varna hierarchy. They also introduced new categories, such as Backward Classes, clubbing all untouchable castes. They made special provisions for the welfare and representation of these people in the emerging political system.

However, for the colonial rulers, caste was primarily a Hindu religious practice. Even when they found evidence to the contrary, such as during the Census of Punjab, they did not revise their theories on the Indian caste system. These "theories", derived from Western orientalist writings on India, were nearly all based on a select reading of Brahmanical texts.

While inserting special provisions for the protection and representation of the "untouchable" castes in the Constitution, members of the Constituent Assembly accepted the colonial view of caste. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 unambiguously mentions that "no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste."

The Sikh members of the Constituent Assembly had to vigorously pursue the inclusion of "Ramdasi, Kabirpanthi, Mazhabi and Sikligar castes into the Punjab list of SCs, whether they profess the Hindu or the Sikh religion." Likewise, the Mahar converts to Buddhism were added to the Maharashtra SC list in 1990.

While Sikh and Buddhist "untouchable" castes were added to the SC category, the same has not been the case with Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam. Unlike Sikhism and Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are marked as "foreign" religions. This distinction, too, draws on the British colonial classification of the religions of the subcontinent into "Indic" and "non-Indic" faith systems.