Despite hurdles, clamour for ‘No Caste, No Religion’ option growing in India

On July 19, Justice Lalitha Kanneganti’s bench of the Telangana High Court, in response to a petition filed by Sandepu Swaroopa and David, directed the State to provide a column for ‘No Religion’ and ‘No Caste’ in the online birth certificate application. The couple moved the high court following the dismissal of their request to register the birth of their son without caste and religion.

Coming from two different religions, Swaroopa and David did not want their son to be identified with any religion or caste. It became a difficult task to get the birth certificate sans religion for their son who was born on March 23, 2019 as the online format of the birth certificate makes religious identity mandatory.

The couple’s attempts to convince the authorities that their marriage was inter-religious and as such they had no religion failed. Then Collector Swetha Mohanty promised to issue a certificate against an affidavit. They were not satisfied.

“The question is not of our individual certificate. What we want is an option for ‘No Religion’ or ‘No Caste’ in the birth certificate format. We decided to file a writ petition seeking judicial intervention,” Swaroopa, 32, told The Federal. The petition was filed in the high court in 2021 and they got a favourable order.

Rao’s struggle

However, 52-year-old DV Ramakrishna Rao’s PIL, which raised the absence of a column for ‘No Religion’ in the census enumeration, is still pending with the Telangana High Court.

“There are seven columns in the census format. While the six columns specify religions such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhism etc, the seventh simply says Others. I think it is high time we had an option to state ‘No Religion’ on all instances including census,” said Ramakrishna Rao, who also struggled to get a birth certificate for their daughter because of the mandatory religion column.

His fight for a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ option began in April 2010 around the same time Sneha Parthibarajan, an advocate from Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu, launched her saga to get a ‘No Caste No Religion’ certificate.

Sneha, after nine years of waiting, got the ‘No Caste, No Religion’ certificate on February 5, 2019 from the Tirupattur Tahsildar following a court direction. She became the first Indian citizen to get such a certificate.

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Tamil Nadu

In India, it is virtually impossible to get a birth certificate without filling the columns of religion and caste, complained Sneha.

“Even Tamil Naidu, which had issued two orders, one in 1973 and in 2000, asking school authorities not to insist on religion while admitting children, failed to provide relief. As the existence of these government orders was relatively unknown, many parents had to suffer a lot to enrol their children in schools in the absence of a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ birth certificate,” she said.

As if to prove her argument, in 2016, responding to a PIL, Tamil Nadu High Court Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan asked the state government to reissue the government orders and give them wide publicity. Still, the situation has not changed much.

In August 2022, three-year-old Yuvan Manoj of Ambattur in Tamil Nadu was denied admission to a school as his father Jagadeeshan refused to fill the religion column in the application form. That matter reached the Madras High Court. Justice Abdul Quddhose directed the state government to issue a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ certificate to Yuvan.

The same is the case with Coimbatore couple Naresh Karthik and Gayatri who could not secure their three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Vilma admission to a kindergarten a dozen times as they did not fill the caste and religion column in the admission form.

Finally, in May 2022, they got a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ certificate for their son based on an affidavit they filed stating that they would not avail either reservations or privileges based on caste or religion.

Coimbatore couple

As recently as August 6, 2023, another Coimbatore couple, Beena Preethi and Prolob, also secured a ‘No Caste’ and ‘No Religion’ certificate from the Tahsildar upon filing an affidavit.

On April 1, 2022, Surat-born Kajal Govindbhai Manjula (36) moved the Gujarat High Court seeking a directive to the government to issue a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ certificate for herself. Manjula got the surname Shilu deleted from her name through a gazette notification. It did not remove her caste and religious identity. So, she moved the high court for a direction to the state to issue her a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ certificate.

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Preetisha Saha (35), a lawyer from Chandrapur in Maharashtra, also filed a petition before the district Collector in May 2022 to grant her a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ certificate, aggrieved by the rejection of her request by the sub-divisional magistrate.

“I have filed a petition before the district magistrate and sent a request to the Census Commissioner to include in the upcoming census ‘No Caste, No Religion’ categories with separate code numbers,” Preetisha told The Federal over the phone from Chandrapur. Both Manjula and Preetisha were inspired by Sneha’s achievements.

Akin to NOTA

Talking to The Federal from Tirupattur, Sneha welcomed Justice Lalitha Kenneganti’s order on the ‘No Caste, No Religion’ option but expressed dismay over the long time it was taking to get a certificate. “We all have a lofty ideal of living in a caste-free and religion-free society. When people who believe in caste and religion have certificates issued, why not those who don’t want them? It took nine years for me to get the certificate,” she said, and added that her arguments had been upheld by Swaroopa vs Union of India case.

She said it was a proud moment for her as the number of people who hold similar views were rising. “A time has come now to honour Article 25 of the constitution and amend the rules so that the government issues certificates with ‘No Caste, No Religion’ option,” Sneha said.

The clamour for a ‘No Caste, No Religion’ option needs immediate attention, said Santhan Krishnan, a Supreme Court advocate in New Delhi.

“It is like recognizing the need for an option for NOTA in the ballot paper. When you have acknowledged the freedom to reject candidates in the field, with NOTA, why hesitate to give the option not to choose given religions and opt for no religion and no caste? It's a natural extension of the logic of NOTA,” Santhan Krishnan said.