Time for a casteless society

Equality and justice: Creating a casteless society used to be a respectable assertion for India, says the writer. – iStock

THE caste factor has been of enduring importance in India for a long time, cutting across regional and provincial boundaries. Its worst manifestation has been in the form of the practice of untouchability, which means a very extreme form of discrimination in which people of some castes are treated as untouchables.

This practice was abolished very firmly by the Indian Constitution and made both illegal and punishable. Yet more than seven decades after India got its admirable Constitution, periodic surveys and studies remind us that this practice has still not gone away and in fact has wider prevalence than what may be visible on the surface.