History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c21.2

v2.c21.2

Those who have written on the Indian caste system have always been struck by the fact of the existence of certain castes that are treated as untouchables. But it should not be supposed that this is something confined only to India. Even nations that have no caste system at all have often carried out complete segregation of certain people dwelling in their midst, which in essentials is the same as the system of untouchability in India. The Encyclopaedia of social sciences vol. XI. p. 339 says that in the southern States of U. S. A. discrimination against Negroes took the form of 'residential segregation, separation of the races in public conveyances and places of amusement, exclusion of Negroes from public institutions and educational discrimination. Disenfranchisement and social discrimination had their economic counterpart in all branches of industry except agriculture and domestic and personal service,³⁸⁵ occupations to which Negroes had been habituated under the slave regime.' It is also within living memory that Mahatma Gandhi had to lead a movement of *satyāgraha* in South Africa against the discriminating treatment of Indians and even now in Natal and other parts of British Africa there is legislation restricting Indians in the matter of residence and purchases of land.