The Sampadak Express News Desk
The Supreme Court’s October 15, 2026 judgment that a Hindu person listed as Other Backward Class (OBC) loses entitlement to reservation on converting to another religion has reopened debate over whether India’s OBC classification is religion-neutral. The ruling by Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Shree Chandrashekhar introduces a new emphasis on the “source of social backwardness” in deciding eligibility, according to The Hindu’s reporting.
Unlike the Scheduled Castes (SCs), which have historically been linked to a religion criterion, and the Scheduled Tribes (STs), for whom religion has never been a factor, OBC identification has operated as religion-neutral since the Supreme Court’s 1992 Indra Sawhney vs. Union of India judgment. Across States, OBC assessment typically examines communities against 11 social, educational and economic indicators, and standard OBC certificate forms do not seek or record an applicant’s religion.
In the latest judgment, the Bench held that the “source of social backwardness” must be considered when determining whether a Hindu OBC retains reservation benefits after conversion. For a Hindu OBC individual, the court said, the “legal foundation” of entitlement to reservation is “specifically conditioned upon membership of that Hindu social order.”
The court reasoned that while Indra Sawhney barred use of caste as the sole criterion for OBC identification, caste has historically been the “foundational institution” shaping social and related forms of backwardness in Hindu society. It added that even if an individual’s educational or economic disadvantages persist after conversion, choosing another faith situates the person in a different “social order,” thereby altering the “source of social backwardness.”
This approach marks a departure from how social stratification was discussed in Indra Sawhney, which underpinned OBC identification without inquiring into the underlying source of backwardness across faiths. Since that 1992 ruling, communities seeking OBC status have been evaluated using established criteria—such as levels of child marriage, dependence on manual labour, and female workforce participation—along with whether the group is “considered socially backward by others,” none of which require a probe into the origin of the backwardness.
While Indra Sawhney observed that caste-like hierarchies exist across religions in India, with differences in degree rather than kind, the October 15, 2026 judgment distinguishes social stratification through caste in Hindu society from “caste-like” stratifications in non-Hindu social orders, including Islam. The court clarified that non-Hindu communities can be classified as OBC; however, it differentiated the sources of backwardness for Hindu and non-Hindu OBCs in assessing whether a Hindu OBC’s backwardness—and reservation entitlement—continues after conversion.
The court’s articulation that OBC entitlement for Hindu individuals is anchored in membership of the Hindu social order, coupled with its focus on the origin of backwardness, has opened a fresh debate on the long-assumed religion-neutrality of OBC classification systems.
