New Delhi (PTI): The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has favoured according Scheduled Caste status to dalits among Muslims and Christians whom it identified as socially backward communities.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians are socially known and treated as distinct groups within their own religious communities, a report based on a study commissioned by NCM said.

Nor is there any room for disputing the fact that they are invariably regarded as social inferiors by their co-religionists. "In short, in most social contexts, DMs and DCs are Dalits first and Muslims and Christians only second," the report said.

The universally practised forms of discrimination and exclusion include social and cultural segregation expressed through various forms of refusal to have social interaction such as prohibitions on Dalit-non-Dalit marriages, endogamy and severe societal sanctions on both Dalits and non-Dalits who break this taboo.

Untouchability is also sometimes practised but is not widespread and its forms greatly vary, it said. The study was conducted by Prof Satish Deshpande of Delhi University.

The body of evidence is ambiguous in parts but when taken as a whole clear on the fact that there is no compelling evidence to justify denying SC status to DMs and DCs, the study said.

If no community had already been given SC status, and if the decision to accord SC status to some communities were to be taken today through some evidence-based approach, it is hard to imagine how DMs and DCs could be excluded, it said.