In this paper, I have tried to define social justice in the Indian context and about the dangers shadowing its basic concept.

Social justice means providing justice to all those people who have had to face injustice having been subject to some form of dominance. They may have had to face injustice due to their varna, ethnicity, profession, gender, economic status, region, religion, tradition, language or physique. Social justice, basically, is an incessant battle against privileges based meritocracy. Humanism and compassion are the cornerstones of this battle. The idea of securing an equal opportunity for all and the theory of social diversity are its sword and rifle.

But today, the politics of social justice has come to mean electoral victories of a few people hailing from deprived communities. At the systemic level, it has been confined to reservations in government jobs and in government-run institutions of higher learning that, more often than not, provide low-quality education. At the most, some people demand that reservations should be extended to the private sector. This is considered the be-all and end-all of the battle for social justice.