Posts tagged "Dalits"

The Untouchables

Feb 25, 2015 • 6 min read

In India the term Untouchable is used to identify a class of people, who are considered to belong to very low castes. In Sanskrit they were called 'Antyaja', the seven 'inferior' castes of the 'last born'. Now they call them Dalits, and officially as Scheduled Castes. Mahatma Gandhi called them Harijans, or the 'Children of God'. However changing the name did not change the position of the social outcaste, guilty by birth and not by deed. The Mahatma failed. Ambedkar failed, through his conversion to Buddhism and the Indian Constitution. Those who are fighting today to eliminate this inequality among mankind have not succeeded so far.