"Purity and pollution" continue to shape social exclusion in India despite constitutional abolition of untouchability. Discuss with recent examples.

Article 17 abolishes "untouchability" and forbids its practice "in any form" [1], yet the underlying purity–pollution logic of caste survives — migrating from open exclusion to subtler ritual and occupational forms.

Constitutional and statutory abolition

• Article 17 is among the few Fundamental Rights enforceable horizontally, i.e. against private persons, not only the State [1].
• The Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955, renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act in 1976, penalises denial of access to shops, wells, roads, and places of public resort [2].
• The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 adds stringent penalties for caste-based humiliation and violence [3].

Persisting expressions of purity–pollution

• Ritual "purification": in August 2026, a shuddhikaran ceremony was performed at Haldwani's Ramlila ground days after a rally by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, a Dalit — no entry was denied, yet the space was treated as polluted.
• Occupational pollution: manual scavenging persists despite prohibition since 2013, with sanitation work still caste-assigned [4].
• Everyday segregation: separate utensils, seating and mid-day-meal practices in some schools; restrictions on Dalit grooms' wedding processions and temple entry.
• Scale: NCRB data show tens of thousands of crimes against Scheduled Castes registered annually in recent years [5].

Why the law under-reaches

• The Constitution leaves "untouchability" undefined; statutes target denial of access, so symbolic, post-facto acts of "purification" fall in a grey zone.
• Weak enforcement, low conviction rates, and social sanction of custom blunt deterrence.

Constitutional abolition ended untouchability in law but not the purity–pollution imagination that sustains it. The way forward lies in activating PCR Act vigilance committees and special courts for swift trials, mainstreaming sanitation work through mechanisation and rehabilitation, and building inter-caste social contact through education — advancing Article 17's promise of dignity and SDG-10's pledge of reduced inequalities.