Article 17

Background and evolution

Untouchability, the exclusion of certain castes from temples, wells, schools and social life, was among the deepest injustices of Indian society. Reform movements fought it for decades: the Vaikom Satyagraha (1924–25) for the use of temple roads in Travancore, B. R. Ambedkar's Mahad Satyagraha (1927) for access to a public water tank, Gandhi's Harijan Sevak Sangh (1932) and the Travancore Temple Entry Proclamation (1936).

When the Constituent Assembly adopted Article 17, members greeted it with cries of "Mahatma Gandhi ki jai". The article is short but absolute: it does not allow any exceptions or reasonable restrictions. Article 35 gives Parliament, not state legislatures, the power to make laws punishing acts under Article 17, so that the law is uniform throughout India.

Key features and provisions

• Abolition: untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden.
• Offence: enforcing any disability arising from untouchability is punishable under law made by Parliament.
• Horizontal reach: the right applies against private individuals and groups, not only the State; the Supreme Court said so in People's Union for Democratic Rights (1982).
• Meaning: courts read "untouchability" in its historical sense, as caste-based social exclusion, not as any kind of physical avoidance.
• Laws: the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955, renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act in 1976; the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989; and the law prohibiting manual scavenging (2013).