Dance of politicians: Savarna can mean an astrologer, or a son of a Brahmin man and a Kshatriya mother, or of the same colour, appearance, caste or tribe. That was in ancient Sanskrit; more recently it has come to mean upper-caste. The word for one belonging to the lowest caste was shudra; but it dropped out of use because of its negative associations. Ambedkar initially used bahiskrit (bahishkrit in Sanskrit), which means thrown out or excluded. The British used depressed classes; but after the castes were listed in a schedule of the Government of India Act 1935 (the precursor of the Indian Constitution), they were renamed scheduled castes. Gandhi called them Harijan - god's people - but the name did not catch on.
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