Breaking down the question
Two words steer this question. Critically assess asks for more than a list — it demands evaluation, an argument about why untouchability persists despite decades of legal abolition and affirmative action, and a weighing of the forces that reproduce it. Continues to be practised fixes the tense firmly in the present: the examiner wants a contemporary account of a living practice, not a historical narrative of its origins.
The core sociological task is to show that untouchability is not a single act but a system of exclusions organised by the logic of purity and pollution, and that this system has proved remarkably adaptable — migrating from overt village prohibition into covert urban and institutional forms. A strong answer classifies the surviving forms across domains, illustrates each concretely, and then critically explains the persistence, drawing on Ambedkar's diagnosis and on the sociology of caste.
How to approach it
Open by defining untouchability through the purity-pollution axis and noting its abolition under Article 17 and the protective statutes, so the persistence you go on to document reads as a paradox demanding explanation. Organise the body by form — ritual, spatial, occupational, social and newer informal or digital manifestations — attaching a real illustration to each. Then turn critical: explain persistence through internalised ideology, the material stake dominant groups have in it, weak enforcement, and the backlash of atrocity against Dalit assertion. Close by assessing the gap between constitutional promise and social reality. Our note on backward classes and Dalit movements develops the movement response.
Model answer
Untouchability is the practice of treating certain caste groups as ritually polluting and subjecting them to systematic exclusion from social, economic and religious life. Located at the extreme end of the purity-pollution hierarchy, it was, as Ambedkar insisted, not an accidental cruelty but the logical culmination of graded inequality — a system in which each caste guards its status by defiling those below. Though abolished by Article 17 of the Constitution and penalised under the Protection of Civil Rights Act and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, untouchability has not disappeared. It has mutated, surviving in a spectrum of forms that a critical assessment must both map and explain.
Ritual untouchability persists in the denial of temple entry, the exclusion of Dalits from priesthood, and their barring from participation in dominant-caste ceremonies. In many localities separate religious spaces and the refusal of ritual services reproduce the ideological core that Ambedkar identified — the treatment of certain bodies as inherently polluting.
Spatial untouchability appears in residential segregation, where Dalit hamlets lie apart from the main settlement, and in restricted access to common wells, water sources, tea stalls and cremation grounds. The persistence of two-tumbler arrangements, in which separate vessels are kept for Dalit customers, and separate cremation grounds, remain documented illustrations of pollution enforced through physical distance.
Occupational untouchability endures through the hereditary association of Dalits with degrading and hazardous work — most starkly manual scavenging, which continues despite statutory prohibition, and the handling of waste, leather and carcasses. This reproduces the old division of labour that M. N. Srinivas described as maintained by ritual distance, now sustained by poverty and the absence of alternatives.
Social untouchability operates through commensal and marital exclusion: prohibitions on inter-dining, the enforcement of endogamy through violence against inter-caste couples, and, in some schools, the segregation of children by seating or mid-day-meal arrangements. Service providers such as barbers refusing to serve Dalits is a recurring illustration of everyday exclusion.
Newer and informal forms have emerged in urban, corporate and digital settings — discrimination in the rental housing market, where landlords screen tenants by caste; subtle marginalisation in workplaces and universities; and caste abuse migrating onto social media. Untouchability has thus travelled from the overt village register into covert modern ones, showing its capacity to reinvent itself.
A critical assessment must then explain this persistence. First, the ideology is deeply internalised: as Ambedkar argued, untouchability is sustained less by law than by a religiously sanctioned sense of hierarchy that legal abolition alone cannot dissolve. Second, it serves material interests — the free or cheap labour of the stigmatised, control over land and the preservation of dominant-caste privilege give the powerful a stake in its continuation. Third, enforcement is weak: low conviction rates under the Atrocities Act, social pressure on victims and complicity of local officials blunt the protective statutes. Fourth, and paradoxically, Dalit assertion — through education, reservation and political mobilisation — has provoked a violent backlash of atrocities, as dominant groups punish those who challenge the old order. Gopal Guru's work on the humiliation embedded in caste captures the psychological dimension that survives even where overt practice recedes.
Yet the picture is not static. Constitutional protection, reservation, urbanisation, the anonymity of the market, education and sustained Dalit movements have eroded many overt forms and created spaces of dignity and mobility. The trajectory is one of transformation rather than disappearance — untouchability weakening in some registers while resurfacing in others.
In sum, untouchability continues less as open ritual prohibition than as a spectrum of ritual, spatial, occupational, social and informal exclusions, held in place by internalised ideology, material interest and weak enforcement, and inflamed by the backlash against assertion. Ambedkar's warning stands vindicated: the annihilation of caste requires a transformation of consciousness that neither statute nor economic change has yet achieved.
Examiner's perspective
For a 30-mark answer the examiner rewards a script that does two things at once — classifies the surviving forms with concrete illustrations and explains their persistence critically. A high-scoring answer names distinct forms — ritual, spatial, occupational, social, informal — attaches a credible example such as manual scavenging or the two-tumbler system to each, and then advances reasons for continuation rather than stopping at description.
Grounding the analysis in the purity-pollution framework and Ambedkar's concept of graded inequality signals conceptual command, while citing Srinivas and Gopal Guru broadens the sociological base. The word critically demands a weighing of forces and a balanced conclusion that notes erosion as well as endurance. Avoiding a historical drift into origins, maintaining British spelling and mapping forms cleanly to explanations will place the script in the top band.