The Scheduled Castes in India (Volumes I to IV)

Though analogous institutions like caste can be traced in various parts of the world, the caste system that developed in India is peculiarly an Indian product. The caste system on which the traditional order of Hindu society is based attached particular importance to the all-pervasive rules of endogamy and commensality. There have been religious and social reform movements to fight against the ascriptive system, but the integrative processes set in motion by our social reformers and lower caste people themselves through the Sanskritization process were set at naught by the Britishers themselves by pursuing a policy of dividing the Hindus on the basis of caste. The term ‘Scheduled Castes’ was first time introduced in the Government of India Act, 1935 to mean such castes, races or tribes which correspond to the classes of persons formerly known as the ‘Depressed Classes’. The Indian Franchise (Lothian) Committee, specially constituted in 1932 for the purpose of defining the depressed classes and estimating their number. Independent India saw a different trend and attitude in the ‘Scheduling’ of castes. Shorn of the stigma to which the former Depressed Classes were subjected to, there were persistent demands led to the inclusion of a large number of castes in the schedules. The higher mobility within the castes witnessed in the first four decades of this century was irrevocably reversed. Attempts have been made in this study to present an over-all profile of the Scheduled Castes from different dimensions. Facts and figures and their interpretations reveal the policy of perpetuating segregation of a sizeable section of Indian population solely on the basis of caste through decades, for obvious reasons. This analytical study will serve as a base-line for further microlevel investigations.