Given the constitutional enshrinement of reservations or quotas for
the Dalits, a sector of this Indian minority has achieved some economic
gains. But this has raised questions. Apathy has been generated
within the small privileged sector of that community which was enabled
to take advantage of the quotas. This small privileged elite has been
reluctant to act on behalf of the masses still dispossessed, and its
leadership, or lack of it, has made this apathy permeate the masses of
the community. Many contend that this elite has, in fact, ceased to
identify with the community from which it sprung. While quotas as
instituted in India have provided an economic springboard for a small
minority of the Dalit or Black Untouchable population and have thereby,
to some extent, led that elite to disavow its community, they have not
solved the problem of equal rights and human dignity for the Dalits --
not for the masses, not even for the elite who, despite having achieved
economic status, despite their conversion to Hinduism, still suffer from
the discrimination and antagonism attached to their prior existence as
Untouchables.

This problem stems, as V.T. Rajshekar points out, from their being
forced to assimilate into a society which is already the most rigidly
stratified in the world. Therefore, even though any legal discrimination
against Untouchables as out-castes (i.e. outside the caste system) or
polluted, is attacked by the constitutionally-delineated reforms, these
reforms exist more on paper than in the actual lives of the masses
concerned. The fact that the society into which the Dalits are supposedly
to be integrated is itself profoundly rent by class and caste, remains of
crucial importance. On what level is a formerly despised minority likely
to be accepted in such a society's ideological structures, which
determinedly enforce hierarchy among its own members?

The fact that such a solution holds little attraction for the Dalits is
evidenced by the fact that large masses have chosen instead to convert
to Islam or Buddhism or Christianity. Such conversion does not come
without cost; it means the surrendering of any claim to the benefits of

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