Ch.4 Gender, Religion and Caste Questions and Answers

Q. Mention different aspects of life in which women are discriminated or disadvantaged in India?

A. Women face disadvantage, discrimination and oppression in various ways:

・The literacy rate among women is only 54% compared with 76% among men.

・A smaller proportion of girl students go for higher studies. When we look at school results, girls perform as well as boys, if not better in some places. But they drop out because parents prefer to spend their resources on their boy's education rather than spending equally on their sons and daughters.

・ The proportion of women among the highly paid and valued jobs is still very small. On an average, an Indian woman works one hour more than an average man every day. Yet much of her work is not paid and thus is not valued.

・ The Equal Wages act provides that equal wages should be paid to equal work. However in almost all areas of work, from sports and cinemas to factories and fields, women are paid less than men, even when both do exactly the same work.

・ In many parts of India, parents prefer to have sons and finds ways to have the girl child aborted before she is born. Such sex-selective abortion led to a decline in child sex ratio in the country to merely 927. This ratio has fallen below 850 or 800 in some places.

Q. State different forms of communal politics with one example each?

A. Communalism can take many forms in politics:

・ The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs. These routinely involve religious prejudices, stereotypes of religious communities and belief in the superiority of one's religion over others religion.

・ A communal minds often leads to a quest for political dominance of ones' own religious community. For those belonging to the majority community, this takes the form of majoritarian dominance. For those belonging to the minority community, it can take the form of a desire to form a separate political unit.

・ Political mobilisation on religious line is another frequent form of communalism. This involves the use of sacred symbols, religious leaders, emotional appeal and plain fear in order to bring followers of one religion together in the political arena.

・ In electoral politics, this often involves a special appeal to the interests or emotions of voters of religion in preference to others.

・ Sometimes communalism takes its most ugly form of communal violence, riots and massacre. India and Pakistan suffered some of the worst communal riots at the time of the partition. The post-independence period has also seen large-scale violence.


Q.  State how caste inequalities are still continuing in India?

A. ・Caste has not disappeared from contemporary India. Some of the older aspects of caste have persisted.

・Even now, most people marry within their own caste or tribe. Untouchability has not ended completely, despite constitutional prohibition.

・Effects of centuries of advantages and disadvantages continue to be felt today. The caste groups that had access to education under the old system have done very well in acquiring modern education as well.

・Those groups that did not have access to education or were prohibited from acquiring it have naturally lagged behind. Thus there is a disproportionately large presence of 'upper caste' among the urban middle classes in our country.

・ Caste continues to be closely linked to economic status.


Q. State the reasons to say that caste alone cannot determine the election results in India.

A. Caste alone cannot determine election results in India:

・ No parliamentary constituency in the country has a clear majority of one single caste. So, every candidate and party needs to win the confidence of more than one caste and community to win election/

・ No party wins the vote of all voters of a caste or community. When people say that a caste is a 'vote bank' of one party, it usually means that a large proportion of the voters from that caste vote for that party.

・ many political parties may put up candidates from the same caste (if that caste is believed to dominate the electorate in a particular constituency). Some voters have no candidate from their caste.

・The ruling party and the sitting MP or MLA frequently lose elections in our country. That could not have happened if all castes and communities were frozen in their political preferences. Clearly while caste matters in electoral politics, so do many other factors.

・ People's assessment of the performance of the government and the popularity rating of the leaders matter and are often decisive in elections.


Q. Mention the constitutional provisions that make India a secular state.

A. ・ Communalism was and continues to be one of the major challenges to democracy in our country. The makers of our constitution were aware of this challenge and thus they chose the model of a secular state. Secularism constitutes one of the foundations of our country.

・ There is no official religion for the Indian State. Unlike the status of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, that of Islam in Pakistan, that of Christianity in England, our constitution does not give special status to any religion.

・ The constitution provides to all individuals and communities freedom to profess, propagate and practice any religion or not to follow any.

・ The constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.

・ At the same time, the constitution allows the state to intervene in the matters of religion in order to ensure equality within religious communities e.g. it bans untouchability.


Q. What is the status of women's representation in India's legislative bodies?

A. ・ In India, the proportion of women in the legislature has been very low. Example, the percentage of elected women members in the Lok Sabha has never reached even 10% of its total strength. Their share in the State assemblies is less than 5%.

・ In this respect, India is among the bottom group of nations in the world. India is behind the averages for several developing countries of Africa and Latin America.

・ In the government, cabinets are largely all-male even when a woman becomes the Chief Minister or the Prime Minister.