Its maverick alumni may never live this down. But St Stephen’s College seems to have scored a perfect ten for political correctness. The college authorities have not only hiked the allocation of seats for Christians from 32 per cent to 40 per cent this year, but have also gone ahead stridently to fulfil one of the longstanding demands of the same community much before the highest court of the country or the government has made up its mind over it. In acknowledgement of what is often argued to be the special needs of Dalit Christians, the college has decided to reserve 25 per cent of the seats allotted to Christians to this sub-category. Apart from this bulk reservation, the college is committed to having a steady percentage set aside for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and other special categories and to the occupation of scaling the peaks of academic excellence.

Conventional wisdom would see ‘Dalit Christian’ as a contradiction in terms. Christianity does not allow for caste distinctions, and converts to this religion are hardly expected to keep them in mind. The presidential order of 1950, which reinforced a 1936 resolution of the British parliament, depended precisely on this accepted truth to rule out reservations for this section. However, over the years, political opportunism of the worst kind, which allowed for confusing national policies on positive discrimination, has brought the order into question. Dalit Christians now want to partake of the same privileges that have been extended to lower-caste Hindus, minority Sikhs and Buddhists, on grounds of being an oppressed group. Reservation for this category can be supported only on the basis of its economic backwardness — the same logic that would justify quotas for Dalit Muslims. But to do that, the criteria for reservations need to be shifted from their present overload on caste factors to socio-economic markers. And that is unlikely to please either those who have so long benefited from the reservation policy or those who push for its infinite extension.