Scheduled castes at the cross roads
- New Delhi Ashish Publishing House 1989
- 203 p.
In these ten essays a close look at one of the most important issues of today: the condition of Scheduled Castes has been analysed. Special attention is focused on the problem of Untouchability, Land Reforms, Religious conversion and the Crisis of Political leadership among the Scheduled Castes in contemporary India.
The author tried to explore and evaluate the growing impediments for the development of Scheduled Castes since independence. The social stigma and ritual pollution is so great that the untouchables cannot engage themselves in many gainful employments and they are caught in the traditional occupations. The reform movements within the Hindu social order have not made any impact in overcoming the disabi lities faced by the untouchables. Economic backwardness is common to them while the policy of protective discrimination militates against them.
It was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, as a leader, who time and again, protested and represented consistently, the cause of India's depressed classes and masses. But after his death in 1956, no other leader of his calibre has emerged. What would Ambedkar think of Scheduled Castes leadership if he were alive today? Ambed kerism, it could be said, has assumed strange new forms which would evoke his amazement and often his indignation for the variety of ways his name is misused and abused in contemporary India.