Equality In India

Introduction

The Constitution of India is known to be egalitarian and equalitarian. Equality under the Indian Constitution is concerned with Articles 14 to 16 in Part III of the Constitution. It has been stated under various circumstances that the Constitution is egalitarian because the essence of its spirit is equality among all men whereas it is equalitarian because the provisions it holds can be used to maintain the equality among equal men and prevents discrimination. Hence under the Constitution there are two major aspects of equality that must be analyzed to ensure the right application as under the various Articles. The distinction made between the two has been aptly expressed by Abe Fortas, Supreme Court Judge of the U.S. “We must,

Taking into consideration specifically the three major provisions that are necessary or crucial to this particular topic i.e. Article 14, Article 15(4) and Article 16(4) it is of utmost importance that all of the above be analyzed separately as well as individually to understand their repercussions, impact and relevance in a clear and unambiguous manner.

As per Article 14 and the meaning discussed in the introduction a very important aspect that comes under it is ‘equality is equality of opportunity’. This is because in the present day context the state is no longer as was previously defined as a police state but has undertaken as per Part IV of the Constitution to bring about a welfare state in India. The issue basically surrounds itself with the fact that the history of India has been dynamic and extreme in nature with specific reference to certain sections, classes and castes of society. This has lead to the gap between the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, the urban and rural populace and the between the various castes and classes to become far and wide. The reasons for this are ancient and the positive discrimination as brought about by the later two provisions under Right to Equality have been brought about to correct the

Hence even the judiciary has agreed to read all three of the articles together, this is mostly because the specific provisions especially with relation to the provisions for the backward classes has been inserted or implemented due to the similar reasons prevalent in the country since time immemorial. Hence it can be stated that the issue at hand is whether positive discrimination is in consonance with Right to equality as per the Constitution of India and if it is then why is there still a need after 60 years of this supposedly temporary measure to still continue it and instead decreasing the percentage of reservation in most cases increasing it. Another facet of the same issue is whether reservations for backward classes or castes come under the ambit of Fundamental Right to Equality. All of these issues have similar repercussions and hence they will be discussed jointly in the next section.

This issue is of critical importance and is also a factor which has lead to a lot of ambiguity in the subject of Constitutional Law. It has been stated that a stable understanding of the same is required to ensure that right to equality among the populace can be maintained without further chaos in the legal