Social means 'pertaining to life in an organized community’, and Reform means 'to transform or to amend’. Thus, social reforms imply amending the ills pertaining to life which are prevalent in the community.
India possesses tremendous contrasts and enormous ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity. Race, language, status and class are the main reasons of social inequality and discrimination. Indian intellectuals have seized upon caste divisions, untouchability, religious obscurantism, practices of dowry and sati, girl-child infanticide, child marriage, child labour and bonded labour as destructive evidence of India's perennial ills needing social reforms.
The caste system and untouchability still survive in various forms, more so in rural areas, strengthened by a combination of social perceptions and divisive policies. The dalits earlier referred to as 'untouchables’, in the past suffered from social segregation in addition to extreme poverty. People of higher castes forbade those from the lower castes to perform a common
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