UNTOUCHABLES, RELIGIONS OF. At the beginning of the twenty-first century there are well over 160 million untouchables on the Indian subcontinent. They belong to numerous jātīs at the bottom of the caste order, their low position deriving from the belief that they embody extreme impurity. Throughout the twentieth century, constitutional categories such as "depressed classes" and "scheduled castes" and the term harijan ("people of god"), coined by the nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi, have all been widely used to refer to untouchable communities in nonprejudicial ways. The practice of untouchablity was legally abolished in 1948, but the disabilities suffered and discrimination faced by untouchable individuals and groups have been only partially mitigated and have at the same time acquired new shapes in independent India. Strong links between their religious and social subordination and their widespread poverty and economic exploitation make untouchables some of the most...