(i) Gandhiji used to say that religion can never be separated from politics. He believed that politics must be guided by ethics drawn from religion.
(ii) Human rights groups in our country have argued that most of the victims of communal riots in our country are people from religious minorities. They have demanded that the government take special steps to protect religious minorities.
(iii) Women's movement has argued that Family Laws of all religions discriminate against women. So they have demanded that government should change these laws to make them more equitable.
(iv) All these instances involve a relationship between religion and politics. But they do not seem very wrong or dangerous. Ideas, ideals and values drawn from different religions can and perhaps should play a role in politics.
(v) Those who hold political power should sometimes be able to regulate the practice of religion so as to prevent discrimination and oppression.

(i) There are many feminists and women's movements worked to ensure more women as elected representatives.
(ii) In India, the proportion of women in the legislature has been very low. For example, the percentage of elected women members in Lok Sabha has crossed 10 percent of its total strength for the first time in 2009. Their share in the state assemblies is less than 5 percent. In this respect India is among the bottom group of nations in the world
(iii) On way to solve this problem is to make it legally binding to have a fair proportion of women in the elected bodies. This is what the Panchayat Raj has done in India.
(iv) Women organizations and activists have been demanding a similar reservation of at least one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha Assemblies for women.

(i) Our is still a male dominated patriarchal society. Women face disadvantage, discrimination, and oppression in various ways
(ii) The literacy rate among women is only 54 percent compared with 76 percent among men. Girl students drop out because parents prefer to spend their resources for their boy's education rather than spending equally on their sons and daughters.
(iii) The proportion of women among the highly paid and valued jobs is still very small.
(iv) In almost all areas of work, from sports and cinema, to factories and fields, women are paid less than men, even when both do exactly the same work.
(v) In many parts of India parents prefer to have sons and find ways to have the girl child aborted before she is born.

(a) It is based on the idea that religion is the principal basis of social community.
(b) The followers of a particular religion must belong to one community with the same fundamental interests.
(c) Any difference that they may have is irrelevant or trivial for community life.
(d) It also follows of different religion have some commonalities these are superficial and immaterial.
(f) Their interests are bound to be different and involve a conflict.
(g) In its extreme form communalism leads to the belief that people belonging to different religions cannot live as equal citizens within one nation.
(h) Either, one of them has to dominate the rest or they have to form different nations.

(a) This is a form of hierarchical social division.
(b) However, it is not based on biology but on social expectations and stereotypes.
(c) The main responsibility of women is housework and bringing up children.
(d) Women do all work inside the home such as cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, tailoring, looking after children, etc., and men do all the work outside the home. It is not that men cannot do housework.
(d) When these jobs are paid for, men are ready to take up these works. Most tailors or cooks in hotels are men.
(f) Similarly, it is not that women do not work outside their home. In villages, women fetch water, collect fuel and work in the fields.
(g) In urban areas, poor women work as domestic helper in middle class homes, while middle class women work in offices.

(a) Caste system was based on exclusion of and discrimination against the 'outcast' groups.
(b) They were subjected to the inhuman practice of untouchability.
(c) With economic development, large scale urbanization, growth of literacy and education, occupational mobility and the weakening of the position of landlords in the villages, the old notions of caste hierarchy are breaking down.
(d) The Constitution of India prohibited any cate-based discrimination and laid the foundation of policies for reversing the injustices of the caste system.
(e) Eve now most people marry within their own caste or tribe. Untouchability has not ended completely, despite constitutional prohibition.
(f) The political leaders and social reformers like JotibaPhule, Gandhiji, B.R.Ambedkar and PeriyarRamaswamiNaivker advocated and worked to establish a society in which caste inequalities are absent.