The outsiders? gaze may cause changes in its object. It may be hoped that the expected changes in the sphere of caste discrimination in India will be for the better with the entry of the special rapporteurs to be sent by the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. That the rapporteurs will be leading a three-year investigation into discrimination on the basis of work and descent would be a source of reassurance for the 170 million Dalits in the country. It is really a measure of the strength of the long and painful Dalit movement that two organizations, the International Dalit Solidarity Network and the National campaign on Dalit Human Rights, have impelled the UN?s move through their campaigning. From that point of view, this sequence of events actually indicates that conditions within the country are already undergoing some kind of change. Such an impression is reinforced by the fact that the Indian government has not hemmed and hawed about the proposed study, although the record of the establishment with regard to violence against the backward classes has been far from squeaky clean.

An intervention of this kind brings up certain questions. It is a sorry state of things when one of the greatest shames of traditional Indian social arrangement has to be dragged into international daylight because the stubborn Indian mind has not changed in attitude in spite of pious official pronouncements against casteism. A study from the human rights perspective is doubtless important, and it can only be hoped that the old recalcitrant mindset will be educated in the process, and traditional structures of exploitation dismantled. Here it is necessary to ponder whether the stridently casteist politics of contemporary India is likely to help or hinder in the route to the ideal caste-unconscious society. And whether it is intelligent to keep on multiplying reserved sectors in the name of positive discrimination purely for electoral gain with no thought spared for the future self-respect and independence of the people benefiting from reservations. It is good that casteism is to be studied by outsiders, but the results of that study should not be used as further grist to the mill of avaricious politicians spouting the rhetoric of equality. The sufferers themselves would be their own best helpers, as the initial triumph at the UN has shown.