The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Centre on a petition demanding removal of words like ‘Chura’, ‘Chamar’, ‘Bhangi’ and ‘Kanjar’ from caste certificates issued by states to persons belonging to scheduled castes (SC) category.
A bench of justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan issued notice on a petition filed by Akhil Bharatiya Gihara Samaj Parishad that objected to use of such “derogatory” terms in caste certificates even while the use of these terms is considered an offence under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and has a “de-humanising” effect on members of the community.
The petition filed by advocate Harish Pandey said, “There cannot be a situation where intentional use of a word to humiliate a community is crime on one hand and on the other hand, the same word is being used or propagated by the state to issue caste certificates as a proof of a person’s sub-caste.”
The court while examining this question will have to consider amending the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 that notifies Chura, Chamar, Bhangi, Kanjar as sub-castes. Instead, the petition suggested replacing them with ‘Jatav’ or ‘Balmiki’ in the 1950 order. The petitioners in this case belonging to Gihara community claimed that members of the community have been clubbed with Kanjar, which is a derogatory term.
According to the petitioners, the derogatory terms used to describe the SC sub-castes are in vogue in states of Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Mizoram, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, along with Delhi and Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Similar demands to either delete or substitute the words Chura and Kanjar from caste certificates had come up before the Delhi high court in the past years. By separate orders passed in 2011 and 2022, the high court had allowed the petitions to be moved as representations before the Centre and the Delhi government. However, no action was taken on these representations, the petition said.
Referring to international precedents, the petition said that the use of words Niger and Negro, considered humiliating and disrespectful to African American community, have completely been eradicated from American legal and educational system.
“Young people have to use these certificates while taking admission in colleges or for taking jobs…use of these words anywhere will be a stain on the right to dignity as guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” the petition said.