The issue of caste-based reservations continues to simmer in India, with an ongoing tussle taking place between the legislature and the judiciary. In January, the country's Supreme Court issued a notice on a petition by the All India Christian Council that sought reservations for all Dalits irrespective of their religious faith. Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhists had earlier gained the Scheduled Caste (SC) status through amendments, and this has been a longstanding demand on the grounds that socio-economic and educational backwardness of Dalits who have converted to Christianity and Islam is no different from that of Dalit Hindus.
Reservation has long been one of the flashpoints in the debate over caste identity. Indeed, the clamour to be labelled as 'backward' is a phenomenon peculiar to India, with its affirmative action predicated on just this term, as defined by caste. This has led to a number of castes that, though today dominant in some regions – such as the Meenas and Gujjars in Rajasthan – are seeking reservation claiming 'backwardness'. The violent protests in 2008 by Gujjars in Rajasthan resulted in reservations for the community, along with 14 percent for other 'economically backward castes' in employment and in educational institutions. At the behest of a letter from some upper-caste students, however, the Rajasthan High Court stayed these quotas on the grounds that it exceeded the overall 50-percent limit fixed for reservations. Similarly, the issues of 27-percent reservation for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in higher education, and the extent of reservations permissible and reservations for Muslims, are pending before various Indian courts, including the Supreme Court.
The fact that K G Balakrishnan became India's first Dalit chief justice in 2007 is clearly remarkable. Yet this could be likened to the phenomenon of how women heads of state are so common in Southasia, despite the fact that the status of women has been little affected. Along the same lines, Balakrishnan's stature is unlikely to have a significant impact on the relationship between caste and the judiciary, with respect to the judgements delivered. Meanwhile, the deep-rooted caste prejudice towards Dalit judges continues to pervade the largely upper-caste institution itself. An indicator of this relationship was noted by the constitutional expert and jurist Fali Nariman, in a 2006 interview: "Former Law Minister P Shiv Shankar, a Dalit, told me that, as policy in some states, if two justices have to be sworn in on the same day, the guy from the preferred community is sworn in first, so that the guy from the non-preferred community doesn't supersede him in becoming chief justice."
A widely reported incident from about five years ago offers additional indications regarding this state of affairs. In May 2005, the chairman of the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), V P Shetty, was arrested following a complaint by IDBI General Manager Bhaskar Ramteke under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The chairman was alleged to have hurled a volley of casteist expletives at Ramteke. Far from going into the merits of the case, however, the Bombay High Court held that the offence of insulting or humiliating a member of a Scheduled Caste in "any place within public view" had not been established as required, as the incident had taken place in a "private room". In fact, the incident took place in a public space – the chairman's office at the IDBI premises in the World Trade Centre. Ramteke had gone to meet Shetty in connection with official work pertaining to re-adjustment of the SC/ST backlog – the large number of SC/ST reserved posts that had not been filled – ahead of the merger of IDBI Bank and IDBI Ltd. More importantly, of course, this is just one among a plethora of instances of the humiliation of 'lower' caste individuals in public life, and the subsequent lethargic attitudes of courts in implementing legislation dealing with caste-based discrimination.