We hear it said that, for all the social advancement that India has made over the past fifty years - for all of the cultural and social barriers that we have removed, this remains an inherently socially prejudiced society, in which the higher class has never fully accepted the equal humanity of the lower class. Those who repeat this slander against India neglect the fact that, as I write, some of the most popular TV programmes focus on the lives of proud lower class families, whose members have become some of the best-recognized-and most widely admired-people in India.

The argument above assumes that