New Delhi, January 21, 2010 Christian Today: A delegation of Christian and Muslim leaders on Wednesday met the Home Minister of India P. Chidambaram and urged the implementation of Ranganath Mishra Commission report that recommends extending SC status to all Dalits regardless of religion.

A memorandum was submitted calling for the deletion of para 3 of Constitutional Order 1950 which originally restricted the Scheduled Castes net to the Hindus and later opened it to Sikhs and Buddhists, but still excluding from its purview the Muslims and Christians.

"For more than five decades Muslims and Christians of Scheduled Caste Origin are being excluded from the process of development. Such an exclusion of a section of the people goes against the “inclusive growth” repeatedly invoked by the Union Government," they informed.

The delegation comprised of Rev. Dr. Enos Das Pradhan, general secretary of Church of North India (CNI), Fr. G Cosmon Arokiaraj, Executive Secretary, CBCI Commission for SC/ST/BC, Mujtaba Farooq, Secretary, Jamaat-e Islami Hind, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, ex-President, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat and others.

They hoped that as India celebrates its sixtieth year of Republic, such discrimination and prejudice against religious minorities can be shunned and equality be practiced.

Mr. Chidambaram told the delegation that the government was intently studying the matter and is also to express its concerns while replying to a petition filed in the Supreme Court.

The Home Minister also acknowledged that although caste is not practiced in Christianity and Islam, the lot of Muslim and Dalits was no better than their Hindu counterparts.

In 2008, a study conducted by the National Commission for Minorities, noted that "Dalit Christians and Muslims are socially known and treated as distinct groups within their own religious communities" and "they are invariably regarded as ‘socially inferior’ communities by their co-religionists.”

The study stated that Dalit Christians and Muslims are Dalits first and Christians and Muslims only second.

"Based only on the descriptive and statistical evidence available, there is a strong case for including Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians in the Scheduled Caste category," it said. "There are compelling arguments in favour of such an inclusion based on principles of natural justice and fairness.”