Main Article Content
Abstract
India has nurtured people of diverse cultures and faiths to a greater degree. India has culturally sanctioned inequalities of gender, caste and class than any other nation, and therefore remains one in which the destinies of women and members of disadvantaged communities remain unchanged. People of India have far too long looked away from enormous sufferings and injustice which surrounds lower community members. The convergence of the economics of inequality and the politics of dominant communities has made India a more divided and unequal society. Independent India was called democratic, socialist, and secular country. According to this policy there is a separation between state and religion. Practicing untouchability or discriminating a person based on his caste is legally forbidden. The urban Indians became more flexible in their caste system customs than rural. But still there is a discrimination based on castes. Violent clashes and caste tensions are witnessed, sometimes high castes strikes the lower caste who try to uplift their social status. The caste identity has become a subject of political, social and legal interpretation. In many cases the legal system is involved to decide if a person is entitled for positive discrimination. But with all positive discrimination policy most of the communities who were low in the caste hierarchy remain low in the social order even today. Most of the degrading jobs are even today done by the dalits.
Andre Beteille rightly says that caste not only remains a salient feature of the social morphology, it is still manifestly correlated with every form of social stratification, weather based on wealth, occupation, income, education. Significant changes have taken place in the Hindu religion, but caste remains the same. Every important reformer including Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Vivekananda has attacked caste and hierarchy of caste.
The recent attack on the caste by egalitarians of both radical and liberal persuasions appeared well meaning. Caste should be attacked for its dual role in elective politics and reproduction of inequality. Sociological literature on the caste is voluminous, while addressing social ideal of equality we must recognize it as an equivocal ideal. As great sociologist’s of our time has reminded us ‘’ in every century it has been defined by negating some form of inequality’’- R. Aron
This paper looks at discrimination and social exclusion towards the most backward scheduled castes.
Exclusion is a multilayered concept which requires understanding complex human relations.