My take on this is that as Indians we unfortunately suffer from various kinds of divides – be it on the basis of caste, language, religion……I don’t think the dalit issue can be tackled in isolation, since there are these various other facets of identity politics. Since we identify ourselves not just on the basis of the caste tag, but also on the basis of religion and language, perhaps the solution is that all such prejudices are tackled together – which I confess is a tall order. Unless we start shedding all prejudices – of religion, language and region – concentrating on caste alone is not going to work. As we have seen in these 60 years. Until we are completely liberal and participatory in our beliefs – and this means embracing differences in religion and language as well – we will never solve this problem.

In a nutshell – as long as we are prejudiced about some form of identity, it is impossible not to extend that prejudice to other forms.