Indian Social Justice

"Brings Indigenous perspectives and approaches to achieving social justice, sovereignty, and self-determination"--Provided by publisher.

Lectures delivered at the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, April 25-27, 1979.

This book draws upon nearly seven decades of first-hand experiences from the ground to understand social exclusion, and movements and efforts for social justice in India. The author, a renowned champion of social justice for deprived social classes, delves into the roots of discrimination in Indian society as well as explains why caste discrimination still persists and how it can be effectively countered. The volume: examines the caste system and its socio-economic ramifications from the perspective of Dalits, and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes; explores the nuances of the Gandhi–Ambedkar debate on the status and liberation of Dalits and synthesis of the approaches of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Narayana Guru and Marx in resolving certain key issues; analyses legal, economic, social and cultural frameworks to understand caste system and related concepts such as ‘untouchability’, atrocities, reservation, etc. in contemporary India; and provides practical insights into the Constitution-based comprehensive measures required to remedy the consequences of caste system and establish social equality in a holistic manner. The book will interest scholars and researchers of social exclusion and social justice, Dalit, Adivasi and Backward Classes studies, sociology and social anthropology, politics, law and human rights, as well as policy-makers, think tanks and NGOs in the field.

This book explores the political and philosophical underpinnings of exclusion and social injustice in India. It examines social movements, anti-caste uprisings, reformers like Ambedkar and Narayana Guru and writers like Foucault and Serres to establish a link between the political and social milieu of the idea of nationhood. Going beyond the legal framework of justice, the essays in the volume reassemble the social from popular perception and the margins, and challenge Rawlsian and Eurocentric paradigms which have dominated discourse on social injustice. The volume also draws on instances of history as well as contemporary issues, as well as locating them in the context of social and post-colonial theory. An intellectually stimulating yet subaltern engagement with the idea of justice, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social theory, law, modern South Asian history and social exclusion and discrimination studies.

"The author challenges what many of today's social and political philosophers widely accept: that social injustice is identified with inequality and social justice with equality. Rather, Jasay argues that justice preempts so-called social justice, so any attempt to adorn equality in the robes of social justice is an illusion, a sleight of hand, 'much as the Indian rope in the notorious trick is made to stand up skyward on its own.' The fifteen articles in this collection include both published and unpublished papers written over the years 2008 to 2012."--from publisher description.

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.