I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

We can debate what their implementation has been like and how much they have benefited the Bahujans but I won't call them mere gestures.

That is debatable. But I was mainly talking about the shift in discourse about caste. The social forces, including the work of anticaste movement, have forced society to acknowledge casteism and caste disadvantage, which has resulted in real legal statutes and policies.

I am thinking in really broad terms, especially the politics that developed post 1920s with Justice Party in Madras and similar provisions in Mysore and Bombay and then pan-India eventually.

During the colonial period, the script completely flipped. Now if a caste group was recognized as "backward", that would result in entitlements. This has continued in the postcolonial period and to a much higher degree.

Express has a stated policy that they will air all views, which while I don't personally agree with, I do respect it. I am very selective about what I read from their op-eds.

Another person that I was thinking about yesterday is Baba Adhav. Do read his article on Savitribai's son Yashvant Phule and others from the family thesatyashodhak.com/descendants-...

It's a great indictment of the Brahminical press that they didn't report on this great social reformer's death and therefore Narke was not able to conclusively prove when Savitribai died. I hope contemporary historians working on that period dig deeper and find something.

माझ्या घरी बनायची पण कधीच खाल्ली नाही. I was picky eater as a child.