Lal Bahadur Shastri Quotes

Untouchables are treated as if less than beasts …. Untouchability for me is more insufferable than British rule. If Hinduism hugs Untouchability, then Hinduism is dead and gone.

Our struggle does not end so long as there is a single human being considered untouchable on account of his birth.

The idea of the nation [India] itself is incompatible with the institution of caste.

Untouchability is an error of long standing.

My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity.

While all men are born as equals, to say that Brahmins alone are the highest and all others are low as Pariah (the Untouchables) or Panchama is sheer nonsense. It is roguish to say so. It is a big hoax played on us.

Untouchability is a terrible reality.

You have countries like India that have tried to help untouchables, with essentially affirmative-action programs, but it hasn't fundamentally changed the structure of their societies.

No stone should be left unturned to bring home to the family members that untouchability is a sin and a blot on Hinduism.

We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability.

Brahmins do not have the right to call themselves Indians … If India has to become a modern nation, … It has to establish an egalitarian relationship between Brahmins and the lower castes.

A once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears

In a superior civilization, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste... would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over all the world.

Social injustice still needs to be denounced and fought. [In the post-communist era.]

Nothing can be more repugnant to the individualism and love of freedom of the British race than the Hindu caste system, under which every man is born into a particular water-tight compartment from which he cannot emerge except through death and rebirth …

Cultural inequality is not grounded in race or ethnicity.

Caste has divided us. I wish it should be completely abolished from our society.

Untouchability is a hydra-headed monster.

Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability.

God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one - fifth of our vast population as untouchables.

When untouchability is rooted out, these distinctions will vanish and no one will consider himself superior to any other.

I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning the freedom of India.

To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.

Hinduism dies if untouchability lives, and untouchability has to die if Hinduism is to live.

I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement.