Thus, reservation is not an end but a means – a means to secure social and economic justice. Reservation should not be allowed to become a vested interest.

However, at the end of seventy-five years of our independence, we need to revisit the system of reservation in the larger interest of the society as a whole, as a step forward towards transformative constitutionalism.

What was envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, what was proposed by the Constitution Bench in 1985 and what was sought to be achieved on the completion of fifty years of the advent of the Constitution, i.e. that the policy of reservation must have a time span, has still not been achieved even till this day, i.e. till the completion of seventy-five years of our Independence.

Such data as can be gleaned from a variety of private sources in the United States suggest that the more fortunate American blacks receive a disproportionate share of the benefits going to blacks as a whole in the United States, just as the more fortunate Malays tend to benefit most from affirmative action in Malaysia or the more fortunate untouchables benefit from affirmative action in India.

Given the tenacity with which group preferences and quotas have persisted, and the zeal with which they have been expanded, in countries around the world, subtleties in trying to reform or reduce affirmative action can amount to little more than a verbal fig leaf over the naked continuance of the same policies as before.

Not only has the internal distribution of compensatory benefits borne little relationship—or even an inverse relationship—to the degree of misfortune within the affected groups, such benefits have spread to other groups far beyond the scope of the moral rationale and far exceeding in size the intended beneficiary groups.

Affirmative action programs also generate major social costs that fall on the population as a whole. Losses of efficiency are among these costs, whether because less-qualified persons are chosen over more-qualified persons or because many highly qualified members of non-preferred groups emigrate from a society where their chances have been reduced.

Preferential programs, even when explicitly and repeatedly defined as "temporary," have tended not only to persist but also to expand in scope, either embracing more groups or spreading to wider realms for the same groups, or both.

Even preferential programs established with legally mandated cut-off dates, as in India and Pakistan, have continued far past those dates by subsequent extensions.

Within the groups designated by government as recipients of preferential treatment, the benefits have usually gone disproportionately to those members already more fortunate.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action— Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

They deserve help but, even so, I dislike any kind of reservation, more particularly in service. I react strongly against anything which leads to inefficiency and second-rate standards. I want my country to be a first class country in everything. The moment we encourage the second-rate, we are lost.

The only real way to help a backward group is to give opportunities for good education. This includes technical education, which is becoming more and more important.

But if we go in for reservations on communal and caste basis, we swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate.

I have no doubt that there is a vast reservoir of potential talent in this country if only we can give it opportunity.

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have always considered the price of perfection prohibitive and allowed mistakes as a part of the learning process. I prefer a dash of daring and persistence to perfection.

Total commitment is the common denominator among all successful men and women.

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

This is the origin of quarrels and complaints—when either equals have and are awarded unequal shares, or unequals equal shares.

All men agree that what is just in distribution must be according to merit in some sense.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.

In teaching there should be no distinction of classes.

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

Any man who stands for progress has to criticise, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith.

A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life.

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.

It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

Allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put, and which, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, is the true miracle worker.

While we agree that Clause (4) aims at group backwardness, we feel that exclusion of such socially advanced members will make the 'class' a truly backward class and would more appropriately serve the purpose and object of Clause (4).

It is obvious that if the claims of even Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are to be taken into consideration consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration, the said admonition has to be respected equally while taking into consideration the claims of other backward classes and other weaker sections.

Reservation is necessary for transcending caste and not for perpetuating it. Reservation has to be used in a limited sense otherwise it will perpetuate casteism in the country.

If the extent of reservation goes beyond cut-off point then it results in reverse discrimination.

Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.

I want every scheduled caste man and the Brahmin to forget that he is a scheduled caste man or a Brahmin respectively and that they are all equal and the same.

This business of separatism, whether it took the shape of separate electorates or other shapes has done a tremendous amount of evil to our country and to our people.

The people from this category, who after having availed the benefits of reservation have reached the high echelons in life cannot be considered to be socially, economically and educationally backward so as to continue availing the benefit of affirmative action. They have already reached a stage where on their own accord they should walk out of the special provisions and give way to the deserving and needy.

I am therefore of the view that the State must evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer even from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes so as exclude them from the benefit of affirmative action. In my view, only this and this alone can achieve the real equality as enshrined under the Constitution.

The reservation, if any, has to be limited only for the first generation or one generation and if any generation in the family has taken advantage of the reservation and have achieved higher status, the benefit of reservation would not be logically available to the second generation.

Arise, awake; wake up yourselves, and awaken others. Achieve the consummation of human life before you pass off — "Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached."

Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.

In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.

…every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.

We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.

A healthy republican government must rest upon individuals, not upon classes or sections.

…it must be by the general recognition that the man's heart and soul, the man's worth and actions, determine his standing.

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it.

There are ever so many institutions which are worked into our social fabric like caste and untouchability. Unless these things are scrapped we cannot say that we either seek truth or practise virtue.

…you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.

For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free.