How Conversions, Casteism Pushed Dalit Voters To A Crossroads In Punjab

A caste-bound society, a turn toward Christianity, the scramble for Dalit and church votes, and no real dismantling of caste: that mix has left Punjab's politics tangled and hard to read.

Politicians and religious leaders then raise an alarm - not to repair that order, but to keep Dalit followers and votes. They mourn the exit and skip the work of making structural changes - like providing land, ensuring they feel equal, creating shared places of worship, and ending hierarchy. They leave the discriminating faith while the Church fills the gap.

Elections in Punjab do not invent Dalit conversion; they only make it visible. Videos of turbaned men, most of them Dalits, stepping into baptismal tanks circulate every campaign season. The spectacle is treated as a crisis of faith. It is more accurately a crisis of dignity.

Analysis - High Numbers, Low Power: Punjab's Dalit Paradox

Sikhism promised a casteless sangat, but the temples and gurdwaras still sort bodies. Dalits may fill the pews of new churches and even become pastors; they remain unlikely to be accepted as Granthis or Pathis in the institutions that claim Guru Nanak. That closed door explains two exits at once. Some convert. Others, unwilling to accept Christ and equally unwilling to remain junior partners in an upper-caste Sikh order, press for a separate Ravidassia religion - an official name for a presence they were never granted inside the old fold.

The irony is sharper still. While Dalits leave, a slice of Jat privilege has learned to wear the pastor's collar and run its own ministries. Caste does not dissolve at the font; it merely changes costume. Parties and the SGPC then discover sudden piety, warning of demographic theft while leaving segregated worship and landlessness untouched.

The lure of Dalit and Christian votes in Punjab

Conversion has become Punjab's latest way of talking about a vote that no longer sits still. Dalits, nearly a third of the electorate and decisive on 34 reserved seats, were never a single bloc. Christianity has made that fragmentation visible - and politically noisy.

Conversions have further fragmented the Dalit vote in Punjab, leaving political parties like the BJP and Akali Dal, as well as the SGPC, fearful of losing votes and followers. Hindu and Sikh organisations and political parties have raised this issue in the past, alleging that gullible people were being lured to embrace Christianity.

While the BJP and RSS claim they have brought back thousands of converted people to the Sikh and Hindu fold from Christianity, the Akal Takht termed those claims bogus, claiming the BJP was indulging in propaganda as Sikhs did not convert.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah promised in March this year that if voted to power, the BJP government would ban conversions. "Under the government of the Aam Aadmi Party, religious conversions have reached alarming levels. The entire Punjab is struggling against religious conversions. But if you form a BJP government, then we will bring the first bill to prohibit conversion. The Congress and the AAP facilitate conversion for the sake of vote banks. They do not know that the ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji made the supreme sacrifice to prevent conversion."

The Christian community has strongly objected to the claims made by the BJP, SAD and SGPC denying forced conversions, adding that the Constitution allows citizens the right to profess the religion of their choice.

"Did you receive any conversion complaint against us, if yes, take action. If our Constitution gives us the right to choose any religion, then why the politics over religion? We do not complain against any community or the Christian brotherhood, and in Punjab, we coexist with people of other communities," said Hamid Masih, president of the Punjab Christian Movement.

Interestingly, valuing the Christian votes, the ruling AAP, besides announcing District-level appointments to Christian Welfare Boards, has also earmarked grants worth Rs 15 crore for constructing Christian community halls in 61 villages of the Ajnala constituency in Amritsar.

Punjab's Dalits, nearly a third of the electorate and decisive on 34 reserved seats, do not vote as one bloc. In 2012 they split enough toward the SAD-BJP - about a third of Dalit Sikh and Hindu Dalit votes - to help the Akalis keep power even as Congress still led among Sikh Dalits. In 2017, after caste atrocities and land fights, they deserted the Akalis: Congress took 21 reserved seats, AAP arrived with roughly a fifth of the SC vote, and Doaba swung to Congress.

In 2022, the Channi experiment failed. Anti-incumbency and AAP's welfare pitch delivered 29 of 34 reserved seats to AAP. Identity symbols lose; delivery and anger win.

Dalits make up about 32 per cent of Punjab, yet discrimination still arrives as insults from people who hold office and power. Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring is the latest example: he faces possible arrest after targeting his own party's late Dalit leader Buta Singh based on skin colour and Mazhabi caste.

His statement went viral and infuriated the Mazhabi Sikhs. He later apologised, but Buta Singh's son Sarabjot Singh filed a complaint against him with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC). He has also allegedly been receiving threats for filing a case against the Punjab Congress chief.

Interestingly, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring was not the only Congress leader who had allegedly made derogatory remarks against Dalits. Punjab leader of the opposition Partap Singh Bajwa also courted controversy while allegedly targeting another Dalit leader and Jandiala Guru AAP MLA and cabinet minister Harbhajan Singh 'ETO' in February this year. Despite holding a Master's degree in Political Science and a bachelor's in Law (LLB), Bajwa called him a 'Band Wala', because his father was a bandmaster.

Harbhajan had politely reacted to Bajwa's controversial remarks, saying, "He was a proud son of a hardworking man who used to play in a band to support the family. Mocking someone's father's source of livelihood was shameful".

Now a BJP leader, former Minister of State Ravneet Singh Bittu was also caught making alleged casteist remarks during his stints both in Congress and BJP.

On June 13, 2021, while being a Congress MP from Ludhiana, he criticised the Shiromani Akali Dal for giving 'sacred' or Panthik seats like Chamkaur Sahib and Anandpur Sahib seat to BSP, which contested both these assembly constituencies as SAD's ally. Bittu later retracted and said BSP doesn't mean Dalit.

His verbal duel with the Punjab police on May 26, 2026, resulted in another controversy when he questioned whether Scheduled Caste persons were "bad" after an inspector identified himself as a farmer's son. This sparked public anger against him as Dalits burned his effigy. He later gave a written apology before the Punjab SC Commission.

Besides the alleged casteist remarks hurled by his fellow leaders, former Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, on January 17, 2026 was heard complaining to the party in a meeting held in Chandigarh.

"Punjab Congress president, CLP leader, women's wing and AICC general secretary in Punjab were all upper caste, so where do we go?" Channi's video went viral. He, however, downplayed his own words, quoting Guru Gobind Singh's words,"Manas ki jat sabhai ekai pahichanbo," which meant that all human beings are one.

Well-known Dalit researcher and scholar Prof Ronki Ram, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC), Chandigarh, expressed surprise over the statements made by the politicians against Dalits.

He says it was an irony that despite a sizeable presence of nearly 32 per cent, split along sub-castes, Dalits were being treated as one bottom rung.

"If Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring faces arrest, it is because the law, at least on paper, does not recognise caste hierarchy. The social structure in Punjab still does. The changes that independence was supposed to bring have not arrived even after seven decades," Prof Ronki Ram told NDTV while adding that the biggest reason why Punjab Dalits remain on the brink of social life is that they are landless.

Punjab SCs only operate 3.5 to3.6 per cent of its farm area. Jat Sikhs are roughly a fifth of the population, operating holdings in the 80-90 per cent range. NSS data from the early 2010s showed SCs as only about 13 per cent of cultivator households, and those who do farm are bunched in the under-one-hectare band. The typical rural Dalit household is not a small farmer. It is labour in someone else's field.

"Caste here is also a land question. A large majority of Dalits own little or no agricultural land. They remain dependent on upper-caste landowners for wage work. Those among them who hold land, have left farm labour, or have gone abroad are the ones who can command respect. It is a matter of shame that Dalits have had to raise their own religious places, and that their settlements still stand apart from the main village. When people are denied dignity inside the mainstream faiths, talk of a separate religious path is not mischief. Those who are not given respect have every right to walk away," says Prof Ronki Ram.

Disintegrated, Punjab Dalits are at a crossroads, moving to create a new Dalit religion

Founder of Sikhism and first Guru of Sikhs Guru Nanak Dev's teachings about casteism were blunt as he was against caste hierarchy which humiliated Dalits. He started the community food service called langar and sanctum so that people of all castes eat together but it failed to end the system which has become more rigid with the passage of time. Separate Dalit gurdwaras exist in Punjab because equality of worship was granted and equality of village power was not. When the congregation still sorts itself by who owns the land, who sits on the committee, and who may cook the prasad, a second shrine is not heresy. It is an exit from humiliation.

Chief of Dera Sachkhand Ballan Sant Niranjan Dass recently asked the Centre for a separate Ravidassia religion column. A large Phagwara gathering on 12 July 2026 repeated it.

Prof Paramjit S Judge in his "Caste Hierarchy, Dominance, and Change in Punjab" explains why the caste hierarchy still exists.

Judge says that after Partition, the hierarchy on the ground is rural Sikh, especially Jat dominance who are roughly two-thirds of Sikhs and the landowning upper caste. To challenge Jats is to challenge the structure, not a loose "dominant caste." Sikhism did not erase the three older stacks (Hindu, Sikh, Muslim); it covered them with a shared scripture.

"Land is the second reason the Guru's line and the village plan diverge. Most rural Dalit households sell labour on Jat fields. A gurdwara that is "open to all" can still feel closed if the committee and the acreage belong to one caste," Prof Paramjit S Judge says in his research paper, while adding that the third hierarchy was politics.

The research paper further says that the Republican Party of India (RPI) and the BSP, which once served as a Dalit voice, rose and then diminished. Caste now works through associations leaning on SAD and Congress, or later AAP, all Jat-led. No lasting Dalit party took the shrine fight statewide.

"The fourth is division among Dalits themselves. Chamars, Ad-Dharmis, and Ravidasias, who built deras and fought for co-management. Balmikis, Mazhabis, and Meghs often stayed out or sought their own roof," says Prof Paramjit S Judge.