Harold R. Isaacs, India's Ex-Untouchables. New York; John Day Company, 1965, $4.50.
Under the laws of India, Untouchability no longer exists; it went out Of all the problems-religious, re Although he holds an academic title (senior research associate at M.I.T.'s Center for International Studies), Isaacs is basically a reporter, with the good reporter's inquisitive ear, skeptical eye and impartial attitude toward the facts. His book is journalism of a high order, clearly written sensibly organized and unpretentious. It was a difficult book for which to gather facts: in spite of the Indian government's large expenditures on behalf of the ex-Untouchables, New Delhi has made little effort to gather meaningful statistics about them. Most of Isaac's information is drawn from about 50 interviews with educated ex-Untouchables, and by using direct quotation the author lets his subjects write much of the book themselves. The depth-interview technique, which Isaacs used to successfully in his important study, The New World of Negro Americans, reduces (or should one say elevates?) abstract Untouchability to the level of concrete human experience. As Isaac notes in his preface, the parallels between Indian ex-Untouchables and American Negroes are clear enough without being spelled out. The Indian government has taken fairly substantial steps, including preferential hiring, to alleviate the lot of the ex-Untouchables. But as Isaac point out, anti-Negro discrimination is at variance with America's egalitarian ideology, while Untouchability in India is sanctioned by millenia of tradition, custom, holy writ and backwardness itself.
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