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SEKHAR : “GIVE AWAY VIOLENCE, PRESERVE LIFE"
161 use, on the same terms as the caste Hindus, of public roads, public schools, public hospitals, public wells, public taps, public parks and the like. In some cases their approach within the measured distance is a social crime, and in some other rare enough cases their very sight is an offence. They are relegated for their residence to the worst quarters of cities and villages where they practically get no social service. Caste Hindu lawyers and doctors will not serve them as they do other members of society. Brahmans will not officiate at their religious function.
To abolish this inhuman practice, the Government had given a number of provisions in the Constitutions and had undertaken necessary steps. For instance, the abolition of untouchability (article 17, constitution of India); appointment of a minister in charge of the scheduled castes in some states (article 164); reservation of seats in the Lokasabhā (article 330) and in the Legislative Assembly in every state and union territory (article 332); safeguards for the claims of the member of scheduled castes while making appointments to the Central and State Government jobs (article 335); appointment of a special officer to take care of the interests of the scheduled castes (article 338) and in pursuance of these provisions, the parliament and the State Legislatures have enacted numerous laws but India has suffered, to this day, blame from global community.
2.2. The environmental degradation
Another area of concern is the environment and the people who are affected by it directly. Nature and humans are so close to each other for mutual existence and sustenance. Only by acting on nature can man develop his drives and abilities. Humans appropriate more and more of nature making it the object of their knowing, feeling and acting, by adapting objects of nature to satisfy their various needs. They transform it into material inorganic body that is to say, nature excluding the human body itself. To say that humans live from nature means that nature is their body with which they remain in a continuous interchange in order not to die.3
But the growing menace of pollution of nature is like stripping the mother goddess naked and insulting her. For instance, the spoiling of water resources like rivers, ponds, lakes and even oceans and the 1. M.K. Gandhi, Harijan, 1954, p. 9-10. 2. Walter Fernandes, (ed.) Inequality, its base and search for solutions,
Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 1986, p. 93. 3. S. Kappan, – Marxian Atheism, Bangalore, 1983, p. 57-58.
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