Mahatma Gandhi regarded untouchability as a sin and described it as "a snake with a thousand mouths through each of which it shows its poisonous fangs." And to fight it he even went on a 12,500-mile tour of India in 1935 giving up his four-anna membership of the Congress Party in pursuit of his goal. He was not always a welcome guest in some places. In Pune an angry citizen threw a bomb at his motorcade. He received angry mail from sanatanists. But nothing deterred him. He carried on a crusade against untouchability with all the force at his command. And, he succeeded in exposing that ancient social sore.

Gandhi was as much a crusader for social reform as he was a committed politician. The scene today is totally different. The politician-social reformer is an extinct species now. Social reform is of no one's concern. What is worse, caste has been turned into a political base. Many politicians would be out of business were caste to become irrelevant. It is they who are keeping it alive in order to cash in on the system. They would probably fight tooth and nail to prevent the abolition of the caste system, which today gives them political power.

"The castes are a handicap, they are no sin," wrote Mahatma Gandhi in Young India, June 1931. It is no longer considered a brave thing to fight casteism, or for that matter, even communalism. The point is that caste and casteism are no longer considered something basically offensive. Practically all political parties are guilty of condoning the system.

One has only to read the advertisements in the matrimonial columns of our national newspapers to realise how all pervading, deep-seated and exclusive is our caste system. But, why should one think strictly in terms of caste? Aren't there enough rituals and customs that call for change? Journals are full of reports of dowry deaths. The custom of demanding dowries cuts across all castes, creeds and communities. It needs to be fought. There are many similar obscenities which go under the rubric of custom or convention.
Cynicism pervades our society. As one intellectual said after reading a report of a sati: "So what? How many cases of suicides are there every year? At least this woman decided to die as a matter of principle." A new culture has taken root in place of the old. The so-called 'market culture' is dictating social changes which were once the prerogative of the committed social reformers.