Contextualising Backward Classes Discourse

Extract:

"In point of fact, during the entire nationalist phase, the contestation between the dominant middle class and he caste-religion fragmented masses, subsequently to be categorized as the SCs, STs, OBCs and also the minorities, was more pervasive, complex, intractable and acrimonious than the much-vaunted political antagonism between the middle classes and the colonial State…..

Contextualized this way, in history and theory, the scheme of protective discrimination for the Backward Classes offered by the Independent India and the discourses surrounding it may appear neither, proactive, generous, extensive nor emancipator, as claimed either implicitly by many of the mainstream writers."