Indian Social Justice

About the Book

1990 was a year of severe turmoil in social history of India. The acceptance of reservations in services for socially and educationally backward classes created protests and a number of young students lost their lives. After a protracted case hearing, in 1992, the Supreme Court severely castigated the Hindu social structure for its lack of egalitarian ethos, four watertight compartments of four Varnas and a fifth of outcastes or Panchama. It blamed it for centuries of discrimination against other backward classes in which the victims were condemned to follow their hereditary occupations. It rejected the notion of equality and said there could be no equality between the unequal. Although much of the literature to contradict the above colonial times versions of Hindu social structure appeared later, there was enough literature to show even in 1992 that Varnas were not four watertight compartments; the theory of caste occupation nexus did not have universal support; and for ages there had been nothing lower than once born Shudra. This book is an effort to answer, what constituted the Hindu social structure; what were its essences and what aberrations and constructs, and how the law got misapplied in post-independence India.

About the Author

The author is a surgeon by profession. The acceptance of the famous Mandal Commission’s Report in 1990 was followed by a carnage, in which a number of students lost their lives. It affected millions of people. 1n 1991, the author became an inadvertent Intervener in Person on the suggestion of a family friend, who was a High Court judge; argued in person, was found of assistance; published a book in 2002; and appeared before the Supreme Court in 2008 as an intervener in the case of reservation in post-graduate educational institutions. Even in 2008, the Supreme Court, barring the approval of the constitutional amendment and Article 15(5), barely went into other contentious issues. It was bound by the Mandal case judgment. His interest continued and this Book is the result of over 20 years of that interest.