2025, Vol. 7, Issue 12, Part B

Reservation in India is a form of affirmative action designed to improve the well- being of backward and under-represented communities defined primarily by their ‘Caste’. It's a phenomenon that commenced with the coming into force of the Indian constitution. The constitutional need of caste-based reservation in India aroused due to the dire discrimination based on caste during medieval period.

“Untouchable” as the term itself provide significant information about the grave and dire circumstances of lower castes in the early times and the practice of untouchability was quite common in India. Simon commission coined the term “Scheduled caste” in Government of India Act, 1935. Nomenclature changed not the reality of the society. Untouchables remained in under-privileged sector of the orthodox Indian Society. It all stated in Vedic period where a person’s socio-economic duties used to lay path to define his/ her “Varna” and this system was not bound by one’s birth into any division of the society. Time passed and society evolved with the custom where one’s caste was defined or fixed at the time of his/ her birth and not by what he/she is capable of doing, ignoring the intellect and the capabilities of the person.

The main objective of the Indian reservation system was to provide the level playing field to under privileged and to provide opportunities for them so that their social and educational status can be enhanced and they can be brought back to the mainstream of the society. The thought behind the reservation system was to increase the representation of the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes in state legislatures and political system in order to reform the society, and this was not just for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes but later on for women too, as they also were not in the main stream of the social structure in times when such evil custom and malpractice of treating human based on caste or gender was normal.