Examine Right to Equality as a Fundamental Right in the Constitution of India.

Article 14

• Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws to any person, including many non-citizens, against the State.
• Equality before the law is the English rule against privilege; equal protection is the American idea that likes must be treated alike.
• The Supreme Court allows reasonable classification if it rests on an intelligible differentia and a rational nexus to the object of the law; class legislation is void, classification is not.
• Arbitrariness itself can fail Article 14 after Royappa and Maneka; the article is therefore both anti-privilege and anti-caprice.

Articles 15 and 16

• Article 15 bars State discrimination on religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth, with clauses that permit special provisions for women, children, socially and educationally backward classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and later economically weaker sections.
• Article 16 guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment and permits reservation in appointments for backward classes not adequately represented, plus consequential seniority and other designed clauses after amendments.
• Indra Sawhney treated 50 per cent as a general ceiling with extraordinary exceptions; the 103rd Amendment added EWS reservation, later upheld in Janhit Abhiyan with a divided Court.

Articles 17 and 18

• Article 17 abolishes untouchability and makes its practice an offence; it is among the few Fundamental Rights that also bind private individuals in a direct way.
• Article 18 forbids the State from conferring titles (except military and academic distinctions) and bars citizens from foreign titles without consent—equality as republican dignity, not only as a court test.

Limits and living equality

• Reasonable restrictions, national security, and the basic-structure protection of equality after Kesavananda mean Parliament can amend details but not hollow the principle.
• Living equality also needs Articles 15–16 to work in universities and services, and Article 17 to work in villages; a beautifully classified statute that never reaches a Dalit child is not the Right the framers wrote.