Representing India: Niraja Gopal Jayal

Representing India
Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of

Public Institutions
Niraja Gopal Jayal

Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance Series
Series Editor: Yusuf Bangura

The series on Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance is the first
major comparative study on ethnic inequalities in the public sector. It exam-
ines the complex ways ethnic diversity affects the constitution and manage-
ment of the public sectors of multiethnic societies under formal democratic
rule. Contributors have analyzed the structure of ethnic cleavages, including
variations within each group; collected detailed empirical data on four
public institutions: civil service, cabinet, parliament and party system;
examined the rules that determine selection to these institutions; analyzed
whether the distribution of offices is ethnically balanced or uneven, and
studied voter preferences in constituting these institutions. They have also
examined the potential of ethnic inequalities to generate conflict and the
effectiveness of institutions and policy reforms for managing diversity and
inequality. The research on which the series is based employs a typology
that classifies countries according to their levels of ethnic polarization: those
in which one ethnicity is overwhelmingly dominant; those with two or
three main groups; and those in which the ethnic structure is fragmented.
15 countries were studied in the project: Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Botswana, Ghana, Fiji, India, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Nigeria,
Papua New Guinea, Switzerland, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago. The
research was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), in addition to UNRISD core funds.
Michele Tan, Anna Hemmingson, Carl-Johan Hedberg and Toshihiro
Nakamura provided research assistance at various stages of the project.
Gabriele Kohler, formerly UNDP Resident Representative in Latvia, and Nils
Muiznieks, Minister for Integration in Latvia supported the international
conference held in Riga, Latvia, in which the research findings of the project
and their policy implications were discussed.
Titles include:
Yusuf Bangura (editor)
ETHNIC INEQUALITIES AND PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE
Florian Bieber
POST-WAR BOSNIA
Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance
Niraja Gopal Jayal
REPRESENTING INDIA
Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions
Forthcoming titles include:
Jon Fraenkel
ETHNIC STRUCTURE, PUBLIC SECTOR INEQUALITY AND ELECTORAL
ENGINEERING IN FIJI
Ralph Premdas
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Ethnic Conflict, Inequality and Governance
Onalenna Selowane
ETHNICITY, INEQUALITY AND PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE IN
BOTSWANA
Karuti Kanyinga
ETHNICITY, INEQUALITY AND PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE IN KENYA
Abdul Raufu Mustapha
ETHNICITY, INEQUALITY AND PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA
Artis Pabriks
IN DEFIANCE OF FATE
Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance in Latvia
Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance Series

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You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order.
Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with
your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.
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Representing India
Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of
Public Institutions
Niraja Gopal Jayal

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jayal, Niraja Gopal.
Representing India : ethnic diversity and the governance of public
institutions / Niraja Gopal Jayal.
p. cm. – (Ethnicity, inequality, and public sector governance)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–4039–8612–6
1. Representative government and representation–India. 2. India–Politics
and government–1977– 3. Multiculturalism–India. 4. Ethnicity–India. I. Title.
II. Series.
JQ231.J385 2006
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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For the company of cheerful nieces:
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Shivani and Malavika
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Contents
List of Tables viii
List of Abbreviations xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Foreword by Thandika Mkandawire xv
Preface by Niraja Gopal Jayal xvii
Chapter 1 Representing India: Democracy and Diversity 1

Chapter 2 Mapping Diversity in India 15
Chapter 3 Managing Diversity: Institutions, Policies and
Politics 42
Chapter 4 Promoting Diversity and Protecting the Vulnerable 71
Chapter 5 Negotiating Diversity: Parties and the Electoral
System 89
Chapter 6 Representing Diversity in Institutions of
Governance 114
Chapter 7 Conclusion 185
Appendix 198
Notes 215
References 222
Index 228
vii
List of Tables
Chapter 2
2.1 Official languages in India 18
2.2 Religions of India and key social indices of the major
religious groups 21
2.3 Percentage distribution of household income by source
across population groups 24
2.4 Scheduled Castes in India: distribution across states 29
2.5 The Mandal Commission: caste groups as a percentage
of India’s population 30
2.6 Comparative tables of literacy rates incorporating the
gender gap and the gap between the general population
and SCs and STs (1961–1991) 35
2.7 Scheduled Tribes in India: distribution across states 39
Chapter 4
4.1 Departmental distribution of staff in the NCSCST 75
4.2 Service related petitions processed by the NCSCST
(1994–1997) 78
Chapter 5
5.1 Vote share and seats: Congress and BJP (1952–2004) 95
5.2 Electoral performance of pan-Indian, Hindu
revivalist and other ethnic parties: share of valid vote 97
5.3 Social bases of political parties (1996 and 1998) in % 99
5.4 National, state and registered parties since 1989
(Cumulative seats and vote percentage) 107
5.5 14th Lok Sabha: principal contenders in various states 112
Chapter 6
6.1 Muslims in the Lok Sabha (1952–1999) 116
6.2 Reserved seats in Lok Sabha: state and regional
summaries 117
6.3 Caste, class and tribe in the 10th Lok Sabha (1991–1996) 121
6.7 Caste, class and tribe in the 14th Lok Sabha (2004) 127
viii
List of Tables ix
6.8 10th–14th Lok Sabhas: regional configurations of

diversity (caste, class and tribe) 130
6.9 Comparison of diversity (caste, class and tribe) by
region 10th–14th Lok Sabhas 132
6.10 Summary of the representation of Forward Classes,
Backward Classes, SCs and STs 10th–14th Lok Sabhas 134
6.11 Religion, caste and tribe in the 14th Lok Sabha 137
6.12 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe:
10th–14th Lok Sabhas 139
6.13 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe for
each Lok Sabha (10th–14th ) 142
6.14 Summary representation of religion, caste and tribe
10th–14th Lok Sabhas 145
6.15 The Council of Ministers from 1947 to the present:
a comparative overview of cabinet sizes 147
6.16 Composition of the Union Cabinet by religious
community (1947–1990) 152
6.17 Composition of the Union Cabinet by caste
(1947–1990) 154
6.18 Regional representation in the Union Cabinet
(1947–1990) 155
6.19 Religious diversity in the Union Cabinet (1990–2005) 157
6.20 Composition of the Union Cabinet by caste
(1990–2005) 158
6.21 Regional representation in the Union Cabinet
(1990–2005) 159
6.22 Muslim and Christian presence in IAS (direct
recruitment + promotees) (1970–2000) 164
6.23 Religious diversity of IAS officers (at Joint Secretary
level or higher in select ministries of the Union
Government) 165
6.24 Recruitment pattern of candidates belonging to the SC,
ST and OBC groups to the Union Civil Services
(1981–1999) 166
ST and OBC groups to Indian Forest Services
(1981–1999) 169
ST and OBC groups to the Indian Engineering Services
(1981–1999) 170
6.27 Religious minorities in the civil service (January 1, 1980) 171
x List of Tables
6.28 Representation of SCs and STs in IAS and IPS

(January 1, 1983) 171
6.29 Occupational classification of main workers 1961–1991
(all numbers in percentages) 172
6.30 All India enrolment figures for SCs and STs at
undergraduate, postgraduate, technical and professional
education courses, (1977–1978 and 1995–1996) 172
6.31 Employment profile of SCs and STs in central
government 173
6.32 Representation of SCs and STs in public sector
enterprises (January 1, 1996) 174
6.33 Representation of SCs and STs in public sector banks
(January 1, 1996) 174
6.34 Composition of the teaching staff of 13 central
universities (1998–1999) 174
6.35 Composition of the Congress Working Committee
(CWC) (1972–2002) 176
6.36 Composition of the Bharatiya Janata Party National
Executive (1972–2002) 179
6.37 SCs and STs in the military 183
Appendix
Chapter 5
5a Relative strength of political parties and alliances in
the 9th Lok Sabha (1989) 198
5b Relative strength of political parties and alliances in
5c Relative strength of political parties and alliances in
5d Relative strength of political parties and alliances in
5e Relative strength of political parties and alliances in
5f Relative strength of political parties and alliances in
Chapter 6
6a Religion, caste and tribe: 10th Lok Sabha 207
6b Religion, caste and tribe: 11th Lok Sabha 209
6c Religion, caste and tribe: 12th Lok Sabha 211
6d Religion, caste and tribe: 13th Lok Sabha 213
List of Abbreviations
AGP Asom Gana Parishad

AIADMK All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
BAMCEF Backward and Minorities Classes Employees Federation
BBM Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangha
BJD Biju Janata Dal
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BJS Bharatiya Jana Sangh
BSP Bahujan Samaj Party
CAG Comptroller and Auditor-General
CBR crude birth rate
CPM Communist Party of India (Marxist)
CSDS Centre for the Study of Developing Studies
CWC Congress Working Committee
DGBCW Director-General of Backward Classes Welfare
DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
EER Ever Enrolment Rate
FPTP first-past-the-post
GOI Government of India
HCR Head Count Ratio
IAS Indian Administrative Services
ICS Indian Civil Service
IPS Indian Police Service
IUML Indian Union Muslim League
KHAM Kshatriya, Harijan (SC), Adivasi (ST) and Muslim
MBC Most Backward Castes
MIM Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen
MP Member of Parliament
NCRWC National Commission to Review the Working of the
Constitution
NCSCST National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes
NDA National Democratic Alliance
OBC Other Backward Class
PR proportional representation
PRI Panchayati Raj Institutions
RPI Republican Party of India
xi
xii List of Abbreviations
RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

SC Scheduled Castes
ST Scheduled Tribes
UPA United Progressive Alliance
USPC Union Public Service Commission
WPR Work Participation Rate
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Yusuf Bangura, who led the UNRISD project of
which this book is a part, for his untiring and indefatigable efforts in
putting together this series of publications. I would particularly like to
thank Ravindra Karnena who has worked hard and long on the tables in
the book, an area of research rather far removed from his discipline of
social anthropology. However, his disciplinary training was usefully
deployed in the offices of political parties where he cheerfully hung about
doing forensic work on the caste background of particular politicians.
I am immensely grateful to him.
I am indebted also to Neera Chandhoke and Philip Oldenburg who
read and provided critical opinions on this manuscript. As always,
Rakesh and Gayatri have been immensely supportive of my work.
All of the above are, needless to say, absolved of all blame for the
deficiencies of this book.
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements
The author, series editor and publisher of this volume gratefully

acknowledge permission to excerpt and reproduce data and tables as
listed below.
• Table 2.3, p. 24: The National Council of Applied Economic

Research, New Delhi for permission to excerpt data from Table 3.5
on pp. 34–5 of India: Human Development Report: A Profile of Indian
States in the 1990s by Abusaleh Shariff (ed.). Copyright © National
Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi.
• Table 5.2, p. 97: Oxford University Press, Delhi and the author for
permission to excerpt material from Table 1.1 on p. 6 of Ethnicity
and Populist Mobilization by Narendra Subramanian. Copyright ©
Narendra Subramanian and Oxford University Press, Delhi.
• Table 5.3, p. 99: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India
and the authors for permission to use excerpts from Table 4.3 on
pp. 134–5 of Democracy and Social Change in India: A Cross-Sectional
Analysis of the National Electorate by Subrata K. Mitra and V.B. Singh.
Copyright © Subrata K. Mitra and V.B. Singh 1999.
• Table 6.16, p. 152, Table 6.17, p. 154 and Table 6.18, p. 155: The
President, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi for permission to
use data from Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 of The Indian Cabinet: A Study
in Governance by V.A. Pai Panandiker and Ajay Mehra, published by
the Centre for Policy Research and Konark Publishers, New Delhi.
Copyright © Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
• Table 6.36, p. 179: C. Hurst & Co., London, Permanent Black,
Ranikhet and New Delhi and the author for permission to use some
data from Table 13.3 on p. 470, of India’s Social Revolution by
Christophe Jaffrelot. Copyright © Christophe Jaffrelot.
Foreword
India’s complex ethnic cleavages seem to defy classification as a single

ethnic structure. The country is home to more than 1600 language
groups and six major religions. Followers of the Hindu religion are
further divided by a hierarchical caste system. In addition, about 10%
of the population has been characterized as tribal. Despite this com-
plexity, India is an established democracy and has registered high
growth rates in recent years. These outcomes question notions that
link ethnic diversity with low growth and authoritarian rule.
A defining characteristic of India’s ethnic complexity is that its cleav-
ages are largely crosscutting rather than reinforcing. For instance, not
all Hindus are Hindi speakers and they may be further subdivided into
countless castes and tribes. This makes it difficult to mobilize most
Indians on a single cleavage, even though the appeal of caste and reli-
gious parties has been on the rise. Indeed, until the 1980s, the Con-
gress party, which is a coalition of diverse interests, was able to govern
India without building alliances with other parties.
Niraja Gopal Jayal’s study suggests that federalism and multilingual-
ism contained conflicts based on ethno-linguistic differences. There is
relative ethno-regional balance in the composition of India’s public
sector. However, two other cleavages – caste and religion – have been
politicized in ways that have affected the fragmented nature of the
ethnic setting. The discourse on caste divides the society into forward
castes on the one hand and backward and scheduled castes on the
other, even though there are five main castes and a large number of
sub-categories within each. Affirmative action policies that seek to
improve the visibility of lower castes and tribes in the public service
have encouraged the proliferation of caste-based parties with an anti-
Brahmin message. These parties now account for about 15% of the
popular vote.
Religion has also tended to polarize Indian society, leading to com-
munal violence. Hindus and Muslims account for 94% of the Indian
population. Muslims, who are 12% of the population, are more than
100 million strong, making them the second largest Muslim group in
the world. This bipolarity in the religious sphere was politicized during
colonial rule and in the run-up to independence, resulting in civil war
and partition. Right-wing politicians have lately exploited the religious
xv
xvi Foreword by Thandika Mkandawire
cleavage. Jayal’s study suggests that the politics of Hindu revivalist

parties threaten to convert India into a unipolar state using Hinduism
as a vehicle of mobilization. These parties raised their share of the
popular vote to more than 20% in the 1990s. They dominated the
1999–2004 government.
Jayal’s study highlights the potential and limits of redistributive poli-
cies in situations of durable inequalities. Even though underprivileged
castes have improved their presence in India’s public institutions as a
result of reservation policies, these gains have not sufficiently trans-
formed their social status and well being. Individuals of upper caste
background still account for a relatively much larger share of parlia-
mentary seats, as well as cabinet and civil service posts. In addition,
underprivileged castes are concentrated in the lower levels of the
bureaucracy and have been unable to fill reserved vacancies that
require technical qualifications. Parties and MPs that claim to represent
underprivileged castes have not been effective in influencing public
policies. Muslims, whose socio-economic status is lower than that of
Hindus and who are relatively less represented in parliament, are not
entitled to reservation.
Jayal evaluates India’s redistributive policies under three important
yardsticks: policy outcomes, social outcomes and political outcomes.
The relative position of underprivileged groups does not improve on
each of these measures, underscoring the need, as she puts it, for
‘much more determined action from both state and civil society’ to
tackle social prejudice and material inequalities.
UNRISD is grateful to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische
Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the Ford Foundation for their financial
support of the research on Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector
Governance. As is the case with all UNRISD projects, work on the
project would not have been possible without the core funding pro-
vided by the governments of Denmark, Finland, Mexico, Norway,
Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Thandika Mkandawire
UNRISD Director
Preface
This book started life as a long essay and the process by which it was
transformed into a book was energetically led by Yusuf Bangura of
UNRISD, whose ambition for this project and powers of gentle persua-
sion have resulted in the series of volumes of which this book is a part,
and in a bunch of weary authors of whom too this is one. Being part of
a series that has grown out of a multi-country project – albeit one
addressing common research questions – has both strengths and limi-
tations. For a start, not all the countries included in the study are com-
parable in terms of their size and the complexity of their history,
society and polity. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and even Botswana are
clearly not very similar to India. Nevertheless, the choice of countries
was informed by the project design to generate comparisons that are
contained in Bangura’s own essay in the edited volume Ethnic
Inequalities and Public Sector Governance.
There is nevertheless the possibility that this volume may be read
and viewed as a coherent whole, and as such it has two limitations that
need to be prefaced with a caution. Firstly, parts of the book may
appear to be rather introductory in nature, which may suit those who
are unfamiliar with the complexities of Indian history and society, but
will make India-specialists impatient. Secondly, it will possibly not
satisfy those who are looking for a narrowly defined focus, rather than
for a comprehensive or broad-brush account of the big picture. This is
not, it should be clearly stated, a book for those who know Indian
society and politics well and are familiar with the debates on represen-
tation and identity politics in the Indian context.
Even so, this book does seek to contribute something new to these
debates. Firstly, it provides new primary data on the composition of
the Lok Sabha (lower house) of the Indian Parliament, in terms of
caste, religion, tribe and region, from 1991 onwards. This has arguably
been the period in which the most tectonic and important shifts have
taken place in Indian political processes. Similarly, the book provides
new primary data on the Union Cabinet from 1990 onwards. Secondly,
while there are more narrowly focused studies of particular groups –
such as the dalits – and specific institutions – such as the electoral
system – there is no single study which provides a comprehensive
account of representation along the axes of caste, tribe and religion in
xvii
xviii Preface by Niraja Gopal Jayal
the way in which this work does. The one dimension that is excluded
is that of gender, which was outside the common terms of reference of
the project. Finally, there is an attempt to mitigate the boredom of
rather basic account of ethnic diversity (Chapter 2) by a discussion (in
Chapter 3) of the overlapping nature of social and economic inequali-
ties. This is a distinction frequently forgotten in the Indian academy,
as the excitement of debates on multiculturalism has tended to occlude
from scholarly vision the mutually compounding nature of cultural
with material inequality, for instance, low caste status with low eco-
nomic status. This book seeks to restore to the debate on ethnic
inequality the centrality of the issue of material disadvantage, to
suggest that a policy or political solution couched exclusively in the
language of ethnicity and cultural identity is inadequate to the task of
crafting a more equal society in which all groups – regardless of ethnic
origin – enjoy the rights of citizenship in the fullest sense.
Niraja Gopal Jayal

INDIA
JAMMU & KASHMIR States and Union Territories
Srinagar
N
HIMACHAL
PRADESH CHINA
ChandigarhShimla
PAKISTAN PUNJAB (TIBET)
UTTARANCHAL ARUNACHAL PRADESH
Dehradun
HARYANA DELHI
NEP SIKKIM
UTTAR AL Itanagar
PRADESH Gangtok
BHUTAN
RAJASTHAN
ASSAM
Jaipur Lucknow Dispur NAGALAND
Patna
Shillong Kohima
BIHAR Imphal
MEGHALAYA MANIPUR
GUJARAT Agartala
Bhopal Ranchi Aizawl
Gandhinagar WEST TRIPURA
MADHYA PRADESH MIZORAM
JHARKHAND BENGAL
CHHATTISGARH Calcutta MYANMAR
Raipur
DIU ORISSA
DAMAN MAHARASHTRA BANGLADESH
DADAR & NAGAR Mumbai Bhubaneshwar
HAVELI (Bombay)
A
R Hyderabad
A
B ANDHRA
I Panaji PRADESH YANAM BAY OF BENGAL
A GOA (Pondicherry)
N
S
E KARNATAKA
Bangalore
A Chennai
LAKSHADWEEP PONDICHERRY Port Blair
(Madras)
MAHE (Puduchchery)
(Pondicherry) TAMILNADU KARAIKAL ANDAMAN & NICOBAR ISLANDS
KERALA (Pondicherry)
Thiruvananthapuram
Map not to Scale

Copyright © Compare Infobase Pvt. Ltd. 2003
xix
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1
Representing India: Democracy
and Diversity
This volume is part of a multi-country study exploring issues of inclusion,

accommodation and cohesion in the way in which public institutions are
constituted and managed in multi-ethnic societies. The framework of the
project assumes that ethnic difference not merely shapes the identity of a
state, but also structures the opportunities of access to institutions and the
allocation of resources. The project explores the relationship between
various types of diversity and representative opportunities in the gover-
nance of the public sector. The focus in on three institutions in particular:
national legislatures, cabinets and the bureaucracy.
Located in the overarching context of this research project, the present
study is specifically about the Indian experience. In common with the
other country-studies, it maps the landscape of ethnic diversity in broad
brush-strokes, and provides an account of the institutional design to
enhance representation for minorities and groups disadvantaged by
virtue of ethnicity. It presents data on patterns of representation in
institutions where there are safeguards specifically designed to guarantee
representation, and in those where there are not. It attempts to explain
the outcomes and to theorize the general conditions under which rep-
resentativeness is enhanced. Finally, it also examines the tricky question
of whether representation actually leads to better policy outcomes for
disadvantaged groups, and reflects upon the politics of representation in
the form of competitive and imitative ethnic mobilization.
Cultural pluralism, social inequality and the founding

vision of citizenship in India
Modern Indian nationhood was arguably a creation of the movement

for freedom from British colonial rule. The geographical boundaries of
1
2 Representing India
India today bear little resemblance to those of British India, which was
both more and less than what India is today: more in the sense that
the erstwhile princely states which were outside the territorial jurisdic-
tion of British rule are today part of India, and less in that the territo-
ries of modern Pakistan and Bangladesh were, at the time, part of
British India. However, India’s vastness and diversity lies not only in its
geographical spread but equally in the cultures that inhabit it. British
colonial rule had contributed to the shaping of cultural identity, some-
times in divisive ways, and when the sun did finally set on the British
Empire in India, it was partitioned into the two independent nations
of India and Pakistan (which was subsequently also partitioned to
create Bangladesh). India’s cultural diversity, and the politics of mobi-
lization (along lines of caste and religious community) that it had
spawned, with official encouragement in the colonial era, informed the
social agenda of the movement for freedom, as also the constitutional
design that was proposed for the new republic.
The project of the founders of the republic was therefore the cre-
ation of a society whose citizens shared a strong sense of national
identity despite cultural diversity; the protection of historically disad-
vantaged ethnic groups; and the management of diversity within a
democratic framework. Unlike many nation-states, which are pre-
mised on the claim of a unique language, culture or race, the found-
ing idea of India was an idea of the nation-state as intrinsically
diverse and plural. There is of course some irony in the fact that
while the identity of a nation is constructed on the premise of shared
heritable characteristics (such as race, language or ethnicity), it is
undermined only moments after the birth of the nation, as the latter
embarks on a nation-building project, striving to transcend ‘divisive’
particularistic identities.1 Indeed, Bhikhu Parekh [1994] (2003) has
reminded us of the transience of even national identity, as it is born
out of interactions between historical experience and potentially
endless future constructions and reconstructions.
The conundrum between universalism and particularism can be recast
and perhaps even resolved by postulating it as a distinction between a
national identity defined in civic terms rather than in ethnic terms.
(Beiner, 1995:8) In India, though national identity was defined in
‘national-civic’ rather than ‘national-ethnic’ terms, it remained a rather
fragile construct, a somewhat complicated ‘national-civic-plural-ethnic’
combination that did not however seem to be chaotic or untidy, much
less inconsistent. Thus, the Indian Constitution privileged the concep-
tion of universal citizenship, perceived as a critical dimension of the
Representing India: Democracy and Diversity 3
project of ‘nation-building’. At the same time, it consciously sought to

accommodate the claims of minorities and disadvantaged groups on the
grounds, variously, of protection or compensation for disadvantage,
rather than on the grounds that these were distinctive interests that
needed special representation in the political system.2 The normative
weight, as between the universalist and particularist dimensions of citi-
zenship clearly belongs to the former, with the latter merely facilitating
the realization of the background conditions of equality, and so advanc-
ing the eventual accomplishment of the universalist ideal. Conflicts
between these two dimensions were perhaps inevitable, even though
the optimism of the time precluded any serious attention to the mecha-
nisms by which these might be resolved. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph
have pithily and correctly summarized this: ‘The contradiction in
India’s concept of secularism was its simultaneous commitment to com-
munities and to equal citizenship’. (Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987:178)
(emphasis added)
The project of Indian modernity – and its approach to cultural
diversity – is nowhere better exemplified than in Jawaharlal Nehru’s
Discovery of India, which was unarguably the locus classicus of the
unity-in-diversity approach. His understanding of communal conflict
between the Hindus and Muslims was irreproachably Marxist (Nehru,
1989:466–7) and, therefore, poverty, backwardness, caste, region and
religion were all viewed as different faces of the same retrograde phe-
nomenon, which could be transcended only by the alliance of science,
reason and economic development. Modernization, on this account,
would provide an impetus to processes of secularization, and the
conflict between universalist and particularist citizenship would be
negotiated and ultimately resolved on this terrain.
The mainstream secular nationalist position of the time echoed
Nehru in holding up economic modernization as the answer. Minoo
Masani’s Our India – 19533 was a manifesto of the new India as it
embarked on the ambitious project of what was then called ‘nation-
building’. It spoke of the diversity of India in every sphere, from the
natural and physical to the economic and social, suggesting that this
enormous diversity should be harnessed in the cause of planned eco-
nomic development, which would lead to enhanced productivity and
eventually the conquest of poverty. The new India was to be con-
structed, rather like the Soviet utopia on which it was modelled,
through a variety of economic activities. Cultural differences, however,
were cheerfully swept under the carpet, and a centralizing model of
political and economic development was assumed to be the appropriate
instrument through which the idea of India would, willy-nilly, get fash-
ioned. On this view, the primordial identities of caste and language
would gradually wither away as economic modernization and its con-
comitants – widespread literacy, urbanization, modern bureaucratic and
managerial structures and social mobility – struck roots. It was, of
course, intended that these processes would be facilitated by a strong
interventionist state, and complemented by India’s role as a leader of
the decolonized and decolonizing nations of the world.
Thus, though the Indian Constitution – ‘openly and determinedly
secular’ (Galanter, 1984:305) – privileged the conception of universal
citizenship, it also consciously sought to accommodate the claims of
minorities and ascriptively-defined disadvantaged groups. Instead of
adopting an identical strategy of accommodation towards different cul-
tural communities, therefore, the state in independent India has
devised different institutional mechanisms for giving recognition to
their interests. This is why the constitution makes different policy pro-
visions for different types of ‘differences’, each justified in terms of
some criterion of appropriateness.
The constitutional attempt to balance the demands of universalist
citizenship with the special needs of communities4 took the form, first,
of a recognition that, along with equal civil and political rights for all
citizens, it is important to secure and guarantee the rights of religious
minorities. This was done through guarantees for the freedom of reli-
gion, including the freedom to practice and propagate it, as well as
through providing for separate personal laws for members of minority
communities, alongside a universally applicable criminal law. The
promise of equality, secondly, was given greater content through con-
stitutional provisions for affirmative action for the scheduled castes
and tribes, both in public employment as well as in the central and
state legislatures. Finally, at the macro-institutional level, a federal
structure based on linguistic boundaries, was legislated. The overarch-
ing framework for all these was a liberal-democratic polity of the par-
liamentary type, with a multi-party system.
The institutions of governance were thus intended to conform to
the liberal-individualist conception of equal citizenship, encompass-
ing equal rights for all citizens and upholding the principle of equality
before the law. The only significant exceptions to this were (a) the
recognition of certain categories of rights for which (cultural) commu-
nities rather than individuals would be the bearers of rights; and
(b) the provisions for compensatory discrimination for historically dis-
advantaged groups. How were these exceptions justified? In the nor-
mative argument that underpinned the departure from the principle

of equality, the underlying assumption in respect of religious minori-
ties was that the democratic principle of equality is an insufficient
guarantee for minorities who will, in the presence of a dominant
majority, always be insecure in the enjoyment of their cultural rights.
In relation to members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes,
the normative justification was that equality of opportunity would be
effectively denied to these groups as they could not, given their histo-
ries of marginalization, compete on really equal terms, and hence
required special guarantees of access to education and public employ-
ment as enabling background conditions of equality. In other words,
the reservation of seats in public institutions was not, as it seemed to
be, a denial of equality; on the contrary, it was a measure designed to
promote effective equality.
The separate personal laws as also policies of compensatory discrim-
ination were, it should be mentioned, viewed as interim measures on
the path to a society in which greater social equality and processes of
secularization would eventually lead to the universalist norms of citi-
zenship becoming firmly entrenched, and render special provisions
redundant. Thus, the long-term objective of a uniform civil code was
quietly tucked away along with other good intentions in the chapter
on Directive Principles of State Policy, to be realized when seculariza-
tion processes would make its retrieval less contentious. The provisions
for reservations for the scheduled castes and tribes were given an
unwarrantedly optimistic ten-year term that has subsequently been
extended by Parliament every ten years. As is only too well known,
both these have been highly contentious issues in Indian politics in
the 1990s. The first has created unexpected paradoxes, as when the
endorsement of religious personal law by the state, also entails acqui-
escing in the violation of individual rights and principles of gender
justice. Similarly, though policies of affirmative action have been
extended to castes previously outside their fold, they have often led to
the formation of new elites within the formerly excluded groups and
generated imitative patterns of politicization. In recent times, the
biggest challenge to this founding vision, based on cultural pluralism,
has been the Hindu nationalism of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
which led a coalition government at the centre from 1998–2004. This
attempt to create a new unity, itself parasitic upon particularistic inter-
ests, also diminishes the currency previously enjoyed by the universal-
istic conception of citizenship and the commitment to political
inclusion.
Democracy, representation and quotas
As we have noted, guaranteed representation, in the form of quotas, is

constitutionally provided only to the members of the scheduled castes
and scheduled tribes. Why was such representation assumed to be the
optimal way of redressing social inequalities, and why was it not
extended to all disadvantaged groups?
When the desirability of a legislative body fairly representing all sec-
tions of the people in a political community is asserted, the conception
of representation that is appealed to is microcosmic representation, as
distinct from delegated or symbolic representation.5 In microcosmic
representation, the main characteristics of a population should be mir-
rored in, say, the assembly, so reflecting the social composition of the
nation in microcosm. (Birch, 1971:39) Further, the role the legislator is
expected to play vis-à-vis her/his electors is central to the issue of who
can and should represent a people. When James Mill said that ‘The
benefits of the representative system are lost in all cases in which the
interests of the choosing body are not the same with those of the com-
munity’, he was speaking of a political community rather than of an
ascriptively defined social group within the larger political community.
Today, in the age of universal adult franchise, universally defined rights
of political citizenship are widely viewed as insufficient guarantees of
the representation of acriptively defined social groups. As such, the
question of making special provision for the interests and preferences of
minority social groups has assumed great importance.
The first assumption here is that a community needs to speak for
itself and its interests if its potential is to be realized. This is accompa-
nied by the assumption that only members of a particular community
are capable of expressing the interests of, and working for the good of,
that community and that nobody else can do this. The question of how
a legislator can best represent the interests of her constituents finds
varying answers in theories of representation within the liberal tradi-
tion. In the Whig theory of representation, for instance, the elected
representative deliberates independently on national policies, and is
obliged to consult only his own judgement and not, on every issue, the
wishes of his constituents. The most famous defence of this position is
found in Edmund Burke’s Address to the Electors of Bristol in 1774.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judge-
ment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to
your opinion.
….Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors, from different and

hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent
and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament
is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of
the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to
guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of
the whole. You chose a member indeed; but when you have
chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of
parliament.
(Burke in Hill, ed. 1975:158)
Diametrically opposed to this is the Levellers’ conception of representa-

tion, underpinned by a radical notion of popular sovereignty, viewing
the political representative as an agent sent to Parliament by his electors
to give or withhold their consent to measures of taxation and legisla-
tion proposed by the executive. It is evident that safeguarded quotas
implicitly uphold the latter conception of the representative, sent to
Parliament to represent the particular interests of the group. The denial
of quotas to religious minorities was of course underpinned by memo-
ries of the divisive colonial institution of separate electorates for Hindus
and Muslims, and the creation of the independent state of Pakistan on
the basis of religion.
The imperfections of representation: normative and empirical
Despite guarantees and safeguards in the form of quotas, representa-

tion is attended by two sets of imperfections, which we will here label
as normative and empirical. It is possible to identify at least three nor-
mative imperfections in the representative ideal. Firstly, and most fun-
damentally, representation is a compromise with the democratic ideal
in its fullest sense, which is perhaps realizable only in a direct democ-
racy. As such, representation is the answer to the question of how to
arrive at a practical second-best mechanism for representing the inter-
ests and preferences of individual members of a democratic polity.
Secondly, representation presumes an identity between the represented
and the representative. As we have already noted, the dispute between
mandate (the idea that the representative is antecedently bound by the
mandate of her/his constituents) and independence (the idea that the
representative enjoys a certain independence of mind and judgement
in assessing the public interest) remains, perhaps inevitably, unre-
solved. (Pitkin, 1989:142) But this issue can become contentious when
we consider the problem of internal minorities such as women belong-

ing to religious groups that are controlled by men and make claims for
the rights of cultural community that may work to the detriment of
women within those communities. Thirdly, it is widely recognized that
individuals have multiple identities, and that one may be black, a
woman and a Muslim, all at the same time. Can any one representative
represent all these identities?
The argument for guarantees of representative opportunities for
groups that are likely to be disadvantaged does not however attend to
the three normative imperfections listed above. The rationale for safe-
guarded quotas for representing particular social groups lies in the
reality of the way representative institutions actually work: in that they
do not ensure adequate policy concern for groups which are marginal-
ized or excluded. It is this political exclusion of some that provides the
best justification for what Anne Phillips has described as a politics of
presence (in which women, ethnic minorities and other excluded
groups are guaranteed fair representation) as opposed to a politics of
ideas (a political choice between policies and programmes of political
parties, rather than on the basis of group concerns and interests).
(Phillips, 1996) Thus, a politics of ideas provides a choice between the
political programmes of different parties in a democracy; a politics of
presence works to represent all shades of opinion and interests through
the assured presence in decision-making bodies of all groups in society.
It is however important to distinguish between (a) the logic of
affirmative action as it aims to provide access – through reservations –
to opportunities of education and/or employment, and (b) the logic of
quota-based representation which is aimed at providing guaranteed
access to the process of decision-making through participation in
elected legislative bodies. Unlike affirmative action, which provides
access to essentially material goods and opportunities, representation
in elected bodies provides those who come in through quotas with a
voice in decision-making. As such, it invokes more fully the ideal of
citizenship, of participation in the collective deliberation by members
of a polity in matters relating to its future.
In the Indian case, however, it is arguable that the objective was not
microcosmic representation, nor even a politics of presence. The
purpose of quotas was the enhancement of the capabilities of the dis-
advantaged groups through the equalization of background conditions.
This is why the eventual phasing out of these was envisaged.
In empirical terms, it may be observed that even when representation
is guaranteed, the advantages do not always translate into desirable
policy outcomes. How can we assess the outcomes of representation?

This study makes a case for evaluating at least three types of outcomes:
policy outcomes, societal outcomes and political outcomes. The first
helps us to assess the extent to which quotas have actually expanded
access to domains from which such groups were previously excluded,
and the extent to which such access has been universalized within
groups. Societal outcomes can be assessed in terms of the increased inse-
curity of minorities and their vulnerability to violence; the generation
of resentment among other less disprivileged groups; the fragmentation
of civil society; and the fate and future of the project of universal citi-
zenship, nationhood and nation-building. Thirdly, and finally, political
outcomes in terms of patterns of political mobilization, as well as state
capacity and state discourse, are important. This study uses these broad
categories to frame its conclusions.
Structure of the book
Seeking an explanation for the representational outcomes in three

institutions, this book examines the role of the constitutional frame-
work; institutional design; laws and policies; and the political process.
As such, this study has three major components: an analysis of social
cleavages, informed by an understanding of their construction over
time, as also the way in which they are shaped by the institutions and
policies designed to manage diversity; the ethnic composition of three
major public sector institutions, viz. Parliament, the cabinet, and the
bureaucracy; and, finally, the party and electoral systems which
mediate the relationship between the first two.
In Chapter 2, an attempt is made to map ethnic diversity in India in
the most basic descriptive terms, and to link the disadvantages associ-
ated with ascriptive identities with social and economic deprivation.
Chapter 3 specifies and describes the constitutional mechanisms and
institutions devised to manage diversity and redress inequalities. It
shows how these have evolved in the course of the struggle for
national freedom as well as through ethnic conflict after indepen-
dence. The construction of identity forms a necessary part of this nar-
rative, which also helps to nuance the ‘objective’ account of diversity
that is provided in Chapter 2. The Indian Constitution provided safe-
guards for the rights of religious minorities, but guaranteed reserva-
tions in education and public employment for only two categories of
historically disadvantaged social groups, viz. the Scheduled Castes
(SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs). In subsequent decades, these
provisions were supplemented with additional institutions, laws and

policy initiatives specifically designed to advance the welfare of these
groups as well as of religious minorities. These ranged from essentially
protective institutions such as the National Minorities Commission and
the Commissioner (later National Commission) for Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes (NCSCST) to promotional initiatives such as rural
and tribal development programmes. Most recently, constitutional
amendments were enacted to revive the institutions of local self-
government, with provisions for reservation for these groups as well as
for women. Chapter 4 describes and assesses the performance of some
of these institutions.
The first three chapters thus provide a snapshot account of linguistic,
regional, caste and tribal diversity in India, and the institutional mech-
anisms designed to manage these within a democratic framework. It
particularly emphasizes the overlap between what may be called sym-
bolic or cultural inequalities and economic inequalities, to argue that
neither the constitutional design, nor subsequent law and policy, have
been adequately attentive to this overlap. There have been even fewer
attempts to engage in an ongoing stocktaking of the actual distribution
of advantages, insofar as these could be expected to address intra-group
inequalities. Also, while the constitution and various official commis-
sions have defined backwardness in social and educational terms, the
same criteria have not been employed to take cognizance of the exis-
tence of backward groups within religious minorities like the Muslims.
As far as the specific set of institutions being examined across coun-
tries in this research project is concerned, it is notable that quotas have
been institutionalized in the lower house of Parliament (the Lok Sabha)
as also in the bureaucracy, but not in the formation of Cabinets.
Nevertheless, it has been customary to attend to regional and religious
differences in Cabinet-formation, though many would argue that –
given that Members of Parliament (MPs) from the scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes generally become junior Ministers, but almost never
hold important party or cabinet positions6 – this is little more than
tokenism. Given these limitations of institutional design and state
policy, in what way has the party political process contributed to the
representational pattern in public sector institutions? In the constitu-
tion of the legislature, it is frequently assumed that the choice of the
first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system generates representational
outcomes skewed in favour of majorities. The Indian experience
however belies this, to the extent that a more diverse national legisla-
ture has actually been achieved despite the FPTP system. This is largely
attributable to the emergence, in the 1990s, of smaller parties whose

strategies of electoral mobilization are based on social cleavages such as
caste. Since 1989, the party system has become increasingly frag-
mented with the number of national parties remaining more or less
constant, while the number of state parties have more than doubled.
The carving up of parliament among a large number of parties has also
led to another outcome that is generally associated with proportional
representation (PR) systems, viz. coalition government.
The role of political parties in mobilizing identity has been crucial
not just to the processes of identity-formation and construction, but
also to the many forms of political conflict that have besieged the
Indian polity. Whether it was the sons-of-the-soil type of political
articulation (as witnessed in Maharashtra and Assam in the 1970s
and 1980s respectively, and uncannily resurfacing again today); or
the sub-national, occasionally even secessionist, assertions of auton-
omy (as in Punjab in the 1980s); or the assertions of ‘social (as an
euphemism for caste) justice’; all these challenges to the Indian state
have been led by political parties of at least regional importance.
They have severely tested the ability of the state to accommodate
new demands based in ethnicity, with some – such as Kashmir –
remaining unresolved to the present. How do political parties express
the aspirations of particular social constituencies? In the current situ-
ation of a multiplicity of parties and greater political fragmentation
of identity, is it more strategic for parties to seek to narrow rather
than broad-base their appeal in ethnic terms? In particular, do
the national parties work towards greater representation, e.g. in the
distribution of tickets to winnable parliamentary seats, and in the
formation of party committees and cabinets?
Chapter 5 of this study explores in some detail the relationship
between the electoral and party systems, on the one hand, and the rep-
resentational outcomes, on the other. It argues that while, on the
surface, the evidence appears to support the hypothesis that in ethni-
cally divided societies, national parties are inevitably forced to broad-
base their appeal, the Indian experience suggests some important
caveats. For the first few decades after independence, the Congress
itself – as the single dominant ‘umbrella’ party – represented a coali-
tion of this kind, albeit by encompassing a wide range of diversity
within its own fold. For this period, the hypothesis held true, even
though there was of course only one dominant party on the political
landscape. The erosion of the wide support base of the Congress was
accompanied by the emergence of a large number of regional parties,
many of whom claim to represent particular sections of society, such as

the backward castes. The coalition that ruled from 1998–2004 was led
by the BJP, whose way of broad-basing its appeal was the exact reverse
of the Nehruvian-Congress model. Rather than seeking to build a social
coalition on the basis of respect for diversity, it chose to posit an alter-
native construction of identity: an overarching Hindu identity, which
can submerge multiple identities (of, for example, caste and language),
to yield a potential jackpot of a four-fifths majority.
The party system is arguably going through a transitional phase in
which neither of the two so-called national parties is capable of
forming a government on its own. The Congress, which once had this
ability, has now lost it, partly through organizational attenuation and
partly through the gradual loss of sections of its social base. The BJP
has not yet developed such a capacity. Consequently, even as both
these parties represent themselves as national forces, they are necessar-
ily dependent upon the support of a variety of regional and state-level
players that can deliver the seats required to make up a majority. In
themselves, they have come to constitute the two poles around which
parties may cluster and coalition governments become viable, though
the Congress’s ability to lead a coalition is yet to be tested or demon-
strated. The imperatives of coalition-building are, therefore, less about
representativeness and more about government-formation. To the
extent that the governments so formed are broadly representative is an
unintended consequence of this imperative. Chapter 5 of the study
extrapolates from Election Commission data, combined with recent
political history and analysis, to provide an account of and explana-
tion for, the nature of alliances and coalitions that have emerged in
the 1990s, and the current transition the party system in the country is
undergoing.
In Chapter 6, we examine three public sector institutions in some
detail, viz. Parliament, the Union Cabinet, the bureaucracy and polit-
ical party executives, with some additional reflections on the judiciary,
the military and political party executives. Most of the data in this
chapter has been generated especially for this study, to document the
shifts in the patterns of representation over time, and to analyse the
possible reasons for the slower pace of change in, say, the bureaucracy
as compared to the legislature. The composition of the lower house of
the Indian Parliament over the last five terms is discussed through
primary data that have involved the profiling of approximately
540 members of parliament in each of the last four Lok Sabhas, in
addition to the current house, elected in May 2004. Since information
about their ethnic backgrounds is not officially documented, this exer-

cise has substantially relied upon interviews with expert informants
from the various states of India. The data make it clear that this, more
than any other sphere of Indian society, has witnessed a broadening of
the social base. Though the percentages may not appear to be very dra-
matic, in real terms the character of Parliament has certainly changed,
as many non-elite groups that were not formerly a part of the political
process now are.
Data on the Union Cabinet were already available from 1947 to
1990. However, the period since 1990 – following increasing backward
caste assertions – is a period of more rapid change than the previous
four decades, and this is captured in the primary data collected for this
latter period, and organized by Prime Ministerial terms. This also
coheres with the time-period chosen for the section on Parliament. In
methodological terms, it should be clarified that, for this section of the
study, one representative Cabinet of each Prime Minister was chosen,
with the cabinet size being taken as the average of that Prime
Minister’s cabinets at different points in time.
On bureaucracy, the only existing diversity data was part of a study
(Goyal, 1989) that used the raw data available as on 1 January 1985. In
this study, we began our data collection exercise from the year 1975,
taking the 10 most important Ministries of the Union Government, in
addition to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (later Office) and the
Cabinet Secretariat, and identifying all the officers of Joint Secretary
and above in each of these Ministries for every five years between 1975
and 1995 (i.e., 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995). Those belonging to
services other than the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) were
excluded, generating a sample of over 100 officers in each time-slice,
all belonging to the IAS, institutional successor to the so-called heaven-
born Indian Civil Service (ICS) of colonial times. The religious and
caste diversity data of the higher echelons of the Union Government is
supplemented here by official data following the extension of reserva-
tion to the other backward classes (OBCs); some data pertaining to the
Indian Forest Service, abstracted from official reports; and data on
Muslims in the administration from other sources. These data are inter-
preted to present a broad picture of the ethnic composition of the
bureaucracy.
There would be little or no disagreement about the fact that the
panoply of institutions and policies created to manage diversity have
failed to substantively address the disadvantages that mark the condi-
tion of the vast majority of these groups. This is only partially
explained by the fact that elites within these groups have tended to
corner the benefits and reproduce them inter-generationally. More
alarming is the widely noted fact that despite quotas having provided
for their presence in the legislature and the bureaucracy, the policy
initiatives for these groups have been woefully inadequate. A more
radical argument would, with some justice, blame this failure on the
entrenched social hierarchies that underwrite the stranglehold of
the upper castes and upper classes (and sometimes these are the same)
on Indian society.
It will be argued in this book that any explanation for the patterns of
representation of ethnic diversity in public sector institutions in India
has to be multi-faceted. It must take on board the nature of the institu-
tional design as well as other policy initiatives, their promise and
performance. The extent to which these have failed to address the
material underpinnings of social and cultural difference may point us
to the flaws in institutional design, or to the entrenched character of
social hierarchies, and the interaction of both these with the political
process, specifically the role of the party and electoral systems. As such,
there is a need to historicize the Indian political and institutional expe-
rience, as much as we have noted the importance of historicizing
various identity-constructions.
This study will highlight the overlap between cultural and material
inequalities and argue that any policy strategy which addresses only the
cultural and symbolic aspects – through the politics of recognition – is
likely to be deficient to the extent that it fails to simultaneously encom-
pass economic inequalities – or the politics of redistribution – as well.
Secondly, this work will describe the patterns of representation as they
have emerged in three governing institutions – parliament, cabinet and
the bureaucracy – in relation both to policies such as compensatory
discrimination, and in relation to the political strategies of parties and
the electoral system. Finally, the work will evaluate the usefulness of
guaranteed political and administrative representation as a strategy for
offsetting the effects of social and economic inequalities. It will do so
through an examination of its societal and political consequences as
well as policy outcomes.
2
Mapping Diversity in India
The President of the Indian republic today is a Tamil-speaking Muslim

from southern India, the Prime Minister is a Punjabi-speaking Sikh, and
the President of the ruling Congress Party is an Italian-born Catholic.
None of this is particularly astonishing in a large country where diver-
sity is almost a cliché, and where, though the boundaries of ethnicities
cannot always be very clearly demarcated, claims couched in the vocab-
ulary of ethnicity are regularly made and contested. The cultural diver-
sity of the Indian nation is however not merely a composite of multiple
ethnically distinct units. It is rather a product of criss-crossing and over-
lapping identities based in region, language, religion, sect, caste and
tribe.
Though India is a crucible of cultural diversities, it defies characteri-
zation as an ethnic structure. This is because the identities that have
crystallized on the basis of these diversities have historically been
invented and re-invented, through negotiation with each other and
with political authority. These processes have, in no small measure,
shaped our perception and understanding, indeed even our descrip-
tion, of these diversities. This study begins by mapping diversity in
India in broad brush-strokes, in terms of linguistic, regional, religious
and caste differences, though without losing sight of the fact that these
descriptions cannot be seen as objective or definitive. The discussion of
diversities in this chapter must however be prefaced by three caveats.
Firstly, it is well established that identities are shifting and fluid,
and subject to processes of invention and re-invention, making some
of them more politically salient than others at particular points in
time. It is in these terms that we may view the recent attempt by the
forces of Hindutva, to construct a homogenized Hindu social order, to
replace a plural society with one that is unipolar or, at best, bipolar.
15
The interaction between shifting and fluid identities, processes of

political mobilization, and state policy have contributed to fixing and
reifying some identities, even as they overwrite and dissolve others.
There is moreover a disconcerting lack of permanence about these.
Consequently, any description of ethnic structure must be seen as
historically contingent with respect to both the past and the future.
Secondly, quite apart from the contingency of ethnic identity, there
are also many overlaps such that co-religionists of different language
groups may have less in common with each other than with other
members of the same linguistic, but different religious, community.
Thus, a Muslim in Kerala may have more in common with other
Malayalam-speakers in his own state than with a Muslim in Bihar. In
all likelihood, the two may belong to very different sects and be gov-
erned by rather different customary laws. This suggests that social
cleavages in India are cross-cutting rather than reinforcing. The social
universe of most Indian citizens is composed of multi-layered identities
encompassing language, region, caste, religion, as well as the more
‘modern’ secular identities of being an Indian, a woman, or an urban
professional.
A third important aspect of ethnicity in India is that it frequently
overlaps with other forms of disadvantage. Caste inequality is fre-
quently – though not invariably – accompanied by economic depriva-
tion, which makes it that much more difficult to address through
policy initiatives. Traditional and historical forms of social inequality
thus co-exist with, and are reinforced by, inequalities arising out of the
sphere of production and economic activity. Alongside its description
of ethnic diversity in India, this study provides some illustrations of
the widely acknowledged overlap between, say, social marginalization
and material disadvantage in terms of income levels as well as human
development indicators.
While identity is not a primordial given, and is subject to construc-
tion by political actors, the convergence between social and economic
disadvantage cautions us against adopting a purely constructivist posi-
tion and so dismissing the problem as a political artefact. The mobiliza-
tion of identity for regional autonomy or for greater representation in
governing institutions cannot be dismissed as altogether invalid simply
because it has become an instrument of politics. The diversity of
Indian society is very real and the imperative of making the structures
of governance reflect this diversity was recognized by the Congress
Party before independence1 and given formal expression in the
Constitution of India in 1950. If the practice of the last half-century
Mapping Diversity in India 17
belies this expectation, it also begs the question of what explains the
actual representational outcomes.
This chapter attempts to map ethnic diversity in India in the most
basic descriptive terms, even at the risk of some over-simplification. It
does so along the four main axes of language, religion, caste and tribe,
and keeping in view the major contestations around these categories.
More importantly, and following from the discussion (in Chapter 1) of
how the politics of recognition have often tended to eclipse the politics
of redistribution, this chapter also emphasizes the importance of
linking the disadvantages associated with ascriptive identities with
social and economic deprivation.
Language
Unsurprisingly, given the size of the country, India manifests immense

linguistic diversity. The main source for data on languages is the
Census of India, which determines the number of speakers of a particu-
lar language, on the basis of the language reported by individuals as
their ‘mother tongue’. In 1961, the Census recorded a total of 1652
languages, of which it identified 197 as dominant languages. The 1981
Census recorded 106 dominant languages, with the drop in number
signifying not the sudden disappearance of languages but the decision
to record only those that were reported by more than 10,000 speakers
as their ‘mother tongue’.
All of these 106 languages do not possess the status of an official lan-
guage. The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution lists the 18 languages
accorded recognition as ‘official’ languages. The term official language
is distinct from ‘national’ language, and merely denotes the language
in which the State conducts transactions. The original Eighth Schedule
listed 14 official languages, and was later expanded to include four
others, including Sindhi, Manipuri, Konkani and Nepali. Among the
‘unwritten’ criteria for including a language in the Eighth Schedule are
the following: that the language should have a literary tradition of its
own, and preferably a separate script; or that it should have a sufficient
number of speakers, preferably in a geographically contiguous area; or
that it should be a classical language which is a root language for other
modern languages. Sometimes, a language may gain admittance as the
main language of a newly created state. It was in this way that
Manipuri and Konkani entered the Eighth Schedule, as the languages
of the states of Manipur and Goa respectively. Nepali or Gorkhali was
given this status as a way of making political concessions to the large
number of Nepalese people in India. However, there remain many lan-

guages which are spoken by over a million people but are not included
in the Schedule, though claims have been made – and even protest
movements mounted – for their inclusion. Examples of these are Dogri
(spoken in parts of Jammu and Himachal Pradesh), Bhili and Gondi
(languages of tribal peoples) and many others.
The languages spoken by the people of India belong to five linguistic
families: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman and
Andamanese. The Indo-Aryan languages include Hindi, Bengali,
Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi and Assamese, while the Dravidian
languages include Tamil, Telegu, Kannada and Malayalam. The official
languages, along with the number and percentage of their speakers, are
indicated in Table 2.1 based on the Census of 1991.2 This does not
include the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
It is important to note that these figures do not include those who
speak English (estimated at 2.5%, but an ever-increasing number).
Further, on December 23, 2003, Parliament enacted the Constitutional
(One Hundredth) Amendment bill, approving the inclusion of Maithili,3
Table 2.1 Official languages in India
Number Percentage
Hindi 337,272,114 40.22%

Bengali 69,595,738 8.30%
Telugu 66,017,615 7.87%
Marathi 62,481,681 7.45%
Tamil 53,006,368 6.32%
Urdu 43,406,932 5.18%
Gujarati 40,673,814 4.85%
Kannada 32,753,676 3.91%
Malayalam 30,377,176 3.62%
Oriya 28,061,313 3.35%
Punjabi 23,378,744 2.79%
Assamese 13,079,696 1.56%
Sindhi 2,122,848 0.25%
Nepali 2,076,645 0.25%
Konkani 1,760,607 0.21%
Manipuri 1,270,216 0.15%
Kashmiri 56,693 0.01%
Sanskrit 49,736 0.01%
Other Languages 31,142,376 3.71%
Total: 838,583,988 100.00%
Source: Census of India, 1991.

Dogri and two tribal languages, Bodo and Santhali, in the Eighth
Schedule, taking the number of official languages in the country to 22.
The inclusion of Bodo was part of the memorandum of settlement
between the Bodos,4 the Government of Assam and the Central
Government. Santhali was included because it was widely spoken by
another tribal group in the north-east. In the debate on the bill, the
Deputy Prime Minister stated that the government proposed to bring a
comprehensive legislation to include more languages in the Schedule, as
there were 35 more such demands pending, many of which were from
various dialects of Hindi such as Rajasthani, Bhojpuri and Braj Bhasha.
(The Hindu, December 23, 2003)
Though the Constitution does not specify any particular privileges,
the status of an Eighth Schedule language is much coveted, as it carries
with it the privilege of simultaneous translation facilities in parliamen-
tary proceedings; the possibility of taking the civil service examina-
tions in the language; the allocation of central government funding for
developing the language and its literature; the eligibility to compete for
literary and film awards; the right to submit a representation for the
redressal of a grievance to the state; and so forth. (Singh, 2003:743)
Despite the privileges granted to the official languages, however, there
are some constitutional provisions which inhibit their implementation.
Article 348, for instance, stipulates that, until the Parliament by law so
provides, the language of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts
shall be English. It will also be the language of Parliament, in that all
legislation shall be enacted in English, as will orders, rules, regulations
and bye-laws. Finally, ordinances promulgated by the President or the
Governor of a state will also be in English. The next article stipulates
that no such change may be contemplated for a period of 15 years
(from the enactment of the Constitution) and even then only if the
President is convinced of the need for such a change. At the same time,
the Constitution states that it shall be ‘the duty of the Union to
promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may
serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite
culture of India…’ (Article 351) As we shall see, the issue of Hindi being
given the status of a ‘national’ language has been a politically con-
tentious one, that can now with reasonable confidence be declared
dead. In the recent parliamentary debate on the inclusion of four new
languages into the Eighth Schedule, for example, the Deputy Prime
Minister (a BJP hardliner) said that English would retain its current
status because ‘National unity is more important than the language
issue’. (The Hindu, December 23, 2003)
It has been argued that Eighth Schedule status gives a language clout,
for
Out of the 1650 languages spoken in India, only a handful dominate

the language scene because the schedule empowers 18 languages in
terms of access to recognition, prestige, education, judiciary, adminis-
tration, trade, commerce, national communication networks, and
access to funds for development.
(Chandhoke, forthcoming:34)
Four articles of the Constitution protect the rights of minorities to pre-

serve their distinct language, script or culture (Article 29); to establish
and administer educational institutions of their choice (Article 30); to
make representations for the redress of grievances to the state or central
government in any language (Article 350); and to receive instruction in
their mother-tongue at the level of primary education (Article 350A).
According to Article 347 of the Constitution, if the President is ‘satisfied
that a substantial proportion of the population of a State desire the use
of any language spoken by them to be recognised by that State, (he may)
direct that such language shall also be officially recognised by that State
or any part thereof for such purpose as he may specify’. This provision
makes it possible for certain districts within states to have an additional
‘official’ language apart from the official language of the state. Official
rules and notices can be issued in the specified language, even though it
is a minority language, so long as its speakers constitute 15–20% of
the population at the tehsil/municipality level, or 60% of the population
of a district. The Constitution also establishes a Commissioner for
Linguistic Minorities which functions as a watchdog for the rights of lin-
guistic minorities. Speakers of a language listed in Eighth Schedule, who
form a minority in a particular state, can thus exercise their right to be
educated in their mother-tongue at primary school, and appeal against
discrimination in this respect. It is, above all, the federal organization of
the polity, with states based on language, that represents the institu-
tional recognition of linguistic diversity.
Religion
According to the 2001 Census (see Table 2.2), 80.5% of India’s popula-
tion is Hindu. The remaining 19.5% is divided between Muslims
(13.4%), Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.9%), with the Buddhists, Jains,
Jews, Zoroastrians and others constituting less than 1% each. All the
Table 2.2 Religions of India and key social indices of the major religious
groups
Religion Population Proportion Sex Sex Literacy Female Work

Ratio ratio Rate Literacy Participation
(0–6) Rate Rate
1. Hindus 827,578,868 80.5 931 925 65.1 53.2 40.4

2. Muslims 138,188,240 13.4 936 950 59.1 50.1 31.3
3. Christians 24,080,016 2.3 1009 964 80.3 76.2 39.7
4. Sikhs 19,215,730 1.9 893 786 69.4 63.1 37.7
5. Buddhists 7,955,207 0.8 953 942 72.7 61.7 40.6
6. Jains 4,225,053 0.4 940 870 94.1 90.6 32.9
7. Others 6,639,626 0.6 992 976 47.0 33.2 48.4
ALL INDIA 1,028,610,328 – 933 927 64.8 53.7 –
Source: Abstracted from the Census of India, 2001.
world’s major religions have a presence and following in India. Of

these, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are ‘Indic’ religions
which took birth here, while the others – Christianity, Islam, Judaism
and Zoroastrianism – came from outside.
The category of ‘Others’ includes those professing the Jewish or
Zoroastrian faiths. It should be noted that the category of the Hindu
as employed in the Census is an artefact. It includes the dalits (for-
merly untouchable castes) who have for centuries been excluded
from, or subsisted on the margins of, mainstream caste-defined Hindu
society. It is arguable that if these groups were excluded from the cate-
gory of Hindu, the proportion of Hindus in the total population of the
country may come down to two-thirds from its present four-fifths.
Similarly, tribal people are often counted as Hindus. Colonial ethno-
graphers described them as practising ‘animism’, but many of them
today practise folk Hinduism or Christianity.
Despite recent attempts to construct a Hindu political identity, Hindu
society has been and continues to be highly fragmented – and inter-
nally competitive – along lines of caste, sect, ritual and social practices,
class, region and language. In terms of both doctrine and practice,
Hinduism has been described as ‘a federation of faiths which has a hori-
zontal as well as vertical distribution, rather than a single homogeneous
religion. Not only do the religious beliefs and practices of Hindus vary
from one cultural region of the country to another (say, between Bengal
and Maharashtra), Hindu castes in each area are also characterized by
similar differences.’ (Madan, 2003:775)
Hindus are spread all over the country and outnumber people of all
other religions in most states, with the exception of Arunachal Pradesh
(where they represent 37% of the population), Punjab (34%), Meghalaya

(15%), Nagaland (10%), and Mizoram (5%) (and 5% also in the Union
Territory of Lakshadweep). In all these states, as indeed they would be in
Jammu and Kashmir, Hindus are the principal minority.
The only other religious community with a similar spread are the
Muslims. The second largest religious community in the country, the
Muslims – at 13.4% of the Indian population – account for two-thirds
of all the religious minorities taken together. This is despite the fact
that, at the time of the partition of India, the Muslims accounted for
24% of the country’s population, exactly double of what it is today.
While the 1991 Census was not conducted in the state of Jammu and
Kashmir, in the 1981 Census, the Muslims accounted for 64% of the
population of the state. They also account for 94% of the Union
Territory of Lakshadweep. Muslims are the main minority in the states
of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, in all of which
their proportion in the population ranges between 15%–28%. They are
also the chief minority – though with smaller proportions – in the
states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Gujarat, Karnataka, Haryana and Delhi, in all of which states their
number exceeds one million. (Muslim India 227, November 2001) The
differentiation and heterogeneity noted in the case of the Hindus is
characteristic of Indian Muslims too. Though just three states (Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) account for more than half the popula-
tion of Muslims in India, there are Muslim communities in many
regions and, which is more important, there is considerable variation
between them in terms of region, culture and language, making it
difficult to speak in terms of Muslims in India as a monolithic or
homogeneous category.
Christians form the majority community in three states, all of which
are located in north-east India: Nagaland (where they represent 88% of
the population), Mizoram (86%) and Meghalaya (65%). They happen
to be the biggest minority in the states of Manipur, Goa, Daman and
Diu, the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They
are also internally differentiated, with about half of the approximately
20 million Christians – i.e., over 9 million – being Roman Catholic,
and about eight million being Protestant (belonging to a variety of
churches). (Larson, 1997:23)
Of the other religions of India, Sikhs form the majority in the state
of Punjab (63%), and are the principal minority in the neighbouring
state of Haryana (6%) and in the Union Territory of Chandigarh (20%),
which also happens to be the shared capital of these two states.
Buddhists predominate only in the district of Ladakh – in the state of

Jammu and Kashmir – where they account for three-quarters of the
population, but have a significant presence also in Sikkim (27%),
Arunachal Pradesh (13%), and Mizoram (8%). Jains are concentrated in
Rajasthan, Delhi and in the southern coastal states. The category of
‘Other Persuasions’, which includes the Zoroastrians and the Jews,
accounts for less than 0.4% of India’s population. The Zoroastrians –
better known as the Parsis – are mostly located in the urbanized areas
of Maharashtra and Gujarat. The Zoroastrian population of the world is
estimated to number 120,000, and four-fifths of these live in India. The
Jewish people in India are located in Calcutta (the so-called Baghdadi
Jews); Cochin (the Cochin Jews); and Bombay (the Bene Israel Jews). In
1947, there were estimated to be about 25,000 Jews in India, and many
are now believed to have left for Israel. (Larson, 1997:29–30)
It is also important to remember that none of these religions is prac-
tised in a uniform or undifferentiated way across the country. Each has
witnessed significant reform movements over the centuries; and each
has conflicting theological schools and is characterized by internal sec-
tarian differences. Above all, the way in which boundaries between
people professing different faiths are experienced and transcended in
everyday life can be very different from the scripturally given bound-
aries. People have, over centuries, learnt to live together separately.
Many of the Indic religions are found also in the neighbouring states
of Nepal (which is a Hindu state, both in terms of the faith professed by
the majority of its population, as well as in terms of being a declared
Hindu state), and Sri Lanka (Buddhism and Hinduism). Bangladesh and
Pakistan are primarily Muslim, but also have Hindu, Christian and
Buddhist minorities.
Other than the agitation for a separate Sikh state of Khalistan in the
1980s, conflicts around religion in India have, for the most part, cen-
tered around the relationship between Hindus and Muslims. In
Chapter 3, we shall examine the politicization of religious identity in
colonial India leading up to the Partition; the constitutional protec-
tions for religious minorities after independence; and the nature of
communal strife up to the present. Here, however, it is important to
take note of the fact that large sections of the Muslim community in
India suffer from social, educational and economic deprivation. The
most recent and 55th all-India survey of the National Sample Survey
Organisation (1999–2000) has shown that Muslims in India suffer sub-
stantially more than Hindus from economic deprivation. The differ-
ence between Hindus and Muslims in per capita income shows a
percentage difference of 18.52%: while the per capita income of

Hindus (Rs. 4514) is marginally higher than the all-India average
(Rs. 4485), that of Muslims is considerably lower (Rs. 3678). Likewise,
the literacy rate for Hindus is 53.5%, just marginally lower than the all-
India figure (53.5%), while that of Muslims is 49.4%. Similar differ-
ences are found in relation to access to civic amenities such as
electricity and piped water. The access of Hindus to electricity is 43.2%,
that of Muslims just 30%; likewise, 25.3% Hindus have access to piped
water, while only 19.4% of Muslims do. (Razzack and Gumber,
2000:35–6)
Likewise, the average consumption expenditure for each member of
a family in rural India was less than Rs. 300 a month for 29% of
Muslims, as opposed to 26% for Hindus. In urban areas, the divide was
more marked, with 40% of Muslims belonging to the bottom 20%, as
opposed to 22% for Hindus. Given that one-third of Muslims in India
live in the urban areas, this clearly shows that poverty among Muslims
is considerably higher than among Hindus.
The India Human Development Report’s comparison of the various
religious groups in terms of the percentage distribution of household
income by source is revealing (Table 2.3).
Compared to Hindus, Christians and other minorities, Muslims man-
ifest the lowest share of income from agriculture, but double the share
from artisanship and petty trade and business. However, their share of
income from salaried and qualified professional work is the lowest.
(ibid.:36) Unsurprisingly, then, Muslims constitute the poorest of all
population groups, with the exception of the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes. Their Head Count Ratio (HCR) is 43%, as opposed to
Table 2.3 Percentage distribution of household income by source across

population groups
Agr/ Artisan/ Petty Org Salaried Qualified Agr Non-

Allied Ind Trd/Small Trd empl profess. wage Agr
activity Work Bus. Bus wage
Hindus 56.1 4.3 4.6 1.8 16.4 0.5 8.0 6.2

Muslims 44.1 8.3 9.9 2.9 14.7 0.8 7.7 3.8
Christians 46.3 2.9 4.1 1.9 23.5 0.4 9.4 3.1
Other 60.3 3.1 3.7 0.6 17.6 0.8 5.2 1.7
Minorities
Source: Shariff (1999:35).

that of the Hindus (39%), Christians (27%) and other minorities (34%).
(ibid.:45) The Work Participation Rate (WPR) for Muslims is below that
of Hindus. A study of five states (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal,
Kerala and Maharashtra) has shown that the WPR for Muslims is below
not only that of the Hindus, but also below the state average in all
these states. The female WPR is lowest among Muslims: only 10%, as
compared to 17% among Hindus and 25% among Christians, not to
speak of 23% for SCs and 28% for STs. (ibid.: 85) Thus, while the differ-
ential between the all-India average male WPR (51.9%) and male
Muslims’ WPR (48.0%) is only 3.9%, that between the female all-India
average (18.4%) and the all-India Muslims female WPR (9.6%) is 8.8%.
(Razzack and Gumber, 2000:29)
Cultivation of land is an important indicator of status in rural India.
The data show that access to land is harder for Muslims, and 51% of
them are actually cultivating little or no land, the corresponding figure
for Hindus being 40%. In urban areas, only 27% of Muslim families
had one person in regular salaried employment, 52% being self-
employed and 15% working as casual labour. Hindus manifest lower
rates of casual and seasonal employment. Unemployment rates for
Muslims are high in both rural and urban areas, as are illiteracy rates.
The all-India Muslim literacy rate is 49.5%, with the corresponding
figure for Hindus being 53.3%. The Ever Enrolment Rate (EER) in edu-
cation for Muslims is, at 61.6%, among the lowest, almost as low as
that for SCs and STs. A Hindu child – especially boy – is considerably
more likely to go on to college than his Muslim counterpart. The
highest EERs, by contrast, are recorded by Christians at 91.3%,
followed by Hindus at 72%. (ibid.:108–9) Consequently, Muslim (male
and female together) levels of literacy at almost 50%, can be unfavour-
ably compared with Christians at 81%, though they are somewhat
higher than those for the STs and SCs at about 40%. Within this,
gender disparities are also fairly high for all religious groups except the
Christians. Turning to health indicators, we find that the crude birth
rate (CBR) – generally associated with poverty and landless labour – is
high for poor households and Muslims, and lowest for Christians.
Immunization levels are also low among Muslims and STs.
Caste
Caste is frequently taken to be the defining characteristic of Indian

society. However, the way in which caste comes to be defined and
acted upon by public policy is rather different from the way in which
caste has, historically and socially, been experienced. This explains

the rather curious phenomenon – observed and commented upon in
recent years – that while the importance of caste in social interaction is
markedly on the decline, its significance as a basis for political mobi-
lization has dramatically increased. Any account of caste, therefore,
must be sensitive to its sociological and political construction, both
during colonial rule and after. The recognition of constructedness
should not, however, lead us to believe that caste is purely an orien-
talist fiction. Indeed, those who have suffered, and continue to suffer,
the indignities and oppressions of lower caste status would testify
strongly to the contrary. It is a very real form of social inequality,
both symbolic and material, encoded in the deeply inegalitarian and
hierarchical structures of the Hindu social order.
For the limited purpose of this exercise, the vast topic of caste must
necessarily be circumscribed, and it is proposed to do this by providing
only a brief and descriptive introduction to an extremely complex
subject, along with some recent data on existing socio-economic
inequalities, which illustrate the overlap between caste and material
disadvantage in Indian society. It must be kept in mind that any
description of caste in India that speaks to contemporary reality is
already the product of more than a century of processes of identity-
formation, political negotiation, and official construction. These
processes provide the context for understanding the interaction
between caste categories and official policies, in particular the constitu-
tional mechanisms and state policies of independent India designed to
redress caste inequality. They also provide us with the tools with which
to analyse and assess the failure of state policies to improve the social
and economic welfare of disadvantaged caste groups. The following
pages must therefore be read in conjunction with the section on caste
in Chapter 3, in which a historical account of caste in the colonial
period is followed by an account of the ‘official’ discourse on caste in
independent India. This is then elaborated in terms of policy strategies
for the amelioration of caste disadvantages, with a focus on two
groups, viz. the Scheduled Castes and the so-called Other Backward
Classes (OBCs). The dimension of caste representation in the institu-
tions of governance is, of course, addressed in subsequent chapters
which deal specifically with these institutions.
Caste is the central principle of stratification in the Hindu ritual and
social order, in which castes are social groups mutually ranked within
a single hierarchy. This enormously complex structure can, at the risk
of oversimplification, be described as a hierarchy consisting of the
Brahmans at the top and the Dalits/Harijans/Scheduled Castes5 at the

bottom. Implicit in this ranking is a certain occupational association,
so that – in descending order – the Brahmans signify the priestly class;
the Kshatriyas are the rulers and warriors; the Vaishyas are engaged in
production and wealth-creation (including agriculture, commerce and
trade); and finally the Shudras serve the superior castes. At the bottom
of this social hierarchy, and outside this four-fold varna ranking, lie
the various Untouchable castes, now called dalits. Notions of purity
and pollution are central to this ranking, as the so-called untouch-
ables were traditionally assigned the tasks of ritual cleaning and
the removing of polluting substances. This apart, the link between
caste status and actual occupation has – even in times past, let alone
in the present – been an abstract and under-determined one.
Every Hindu is born into a caste, signified by particular names that, at
least locally, if not more generally, serve to identify the caste of the
individual. The English term ‘caste’ tends to blur the important distinc-
tion between the concepts of varna and jati, though in some usages
varna appears as an equivalent of caste and jati as an equivalent of sub-
caste. The distinction is, however, important, because all the varna cate-
gories are highly differentiated internally, and the reference-group for
members of a particular caste would generally be a more local jati, an
endogamous unit with its own traditions and rules as to individual
conduct. Caste acquires different meanings in different contexts:
dining, marrying, forming a political association, and so forth. Hence,
the meaning of caste can be extremely localized in one situation (as
in relation to kin group or endogamous group), but refer to a much
broader cluster in another (such as political organization). Some anthro-
pologists argue that the jati affiliation is the concrete one experienced in
everyday social practice, as in deciding which groups an individual may
marry into, while the varna affiliation is more symbolic. As we shall see,
the political mobilization of caste has attempted to transcend this
distinction at some moments, and self-consciously evoke it at others.
Technically, the term caste applies only to the Hindu population of
India, though in real terms caste practices have infiltrated Sikhism,
and even Christianity as practised in India. There are estimated to be
2000–3000 castes/sub-castes (jatis) in India today, the size of each
ranging between 5000–15,000, and though they are arranged in a
broad four-fold hierarchy (varna), there are relationships of interde-
pendence between subordinate and superordinate castes, important
local and regional variations that subvert the hierarchy, and some
mobility between the designated compartments. However, what
has remained relatively constant over centuries has been the social
and economic condition of the groups at the bottom of the caste
hierarchy, once called the ‘untouchables’ because of their low ritual
standing in Hindu society and the ‘unclean’ occupations (sweeping,
scavenging, leather-working, etc.) to which they were condemned.
The 2001 Census records the population of ‘scheduled castes’ as
166,635,700 or 16.2% of India’s population. Their regional distribution
is as follows (see Table 2.4).
As Table 2.4 shows, the state with the highest proportion – 28.9% –
of Scheduled Castes is Punjab, while many of the largely tribal states
of north-east India – such as Mizoram, Nagaland, and Arunachal
Pradesh – have less than 0.1% Scheduled Castes. These figures also
make evident the diversity among the Scheduled Castes themselves.
As Mendelsohn and Vicziany write, ‘the Untouchables are not a
people of any single ethnic or cultural identity. They speak the lan-
guage of their region….And crucially, Untouchables are divided into
castes which are organised on a regional basis; they know little or
nothing of comparable castes in other regions.’ (1998:9)
Since data on caste has not been gathered after the Census of 1931,
there is no reliable data available on the non-Scheduled Caste and non-
Scheduled Tribe population, including the OBCs. In the early 1950s, the
Backward Classes were officially believed to constitute 31.8% of India’s
population. The most recent valid data on this is that contained in the
report of the Mandal Commission itself, which indicates that there are
3248 communities in the OBC category, accounting for 52% of India’s
population (Table 2.5). In any case, it is important to remember that none
of these categories has been fixed for any length of time even in the last
50 years, as different ‘communities’ have mobilized to be ‘listed’.
An interesting aspect of the Mandal Commission Report is that,
while it admits the existence of castes – especially backward castes –
or caste-like entities within the non-Hindu religious of India, it treats
caste as intrinsic only to Hinduism. It is this ‘official’ doctrine that has
excluded – from the purview of reservation policies – the Sikh
‘untouchables’ or those dalits who, led by Ambedkar, converted and
continue to convert en masse to Buddhism (also known as the neo-
Buddhists). This is because it is presumed that other religions, such as
Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism are essentially egalitarian,
and that only Hindus practice untouchability. As such, all Scheduled
Castes are assumed to be Hindus, and any such individual converting
to, say, Christianity or Islam is no longer entitled to the benefits that
accrue from being a Scheduled Caste.
Table 2.4 Scheduled Castes in India: distribution across states
S.No. State/ Union Territory Total Scheduled Castes

population
population %6 %7
India 1,028,610,328 166,635,700 16.2 100.00

1. Jammu & Kashmir 10,143,700 770,155 7.6 0.46
2. Himachal Pradesh 6,077,900 1,502,170 24.7 0.90
3. Punjab 24,358,999 7,028,723 28.9 4.22
4. Chandigarh 900,635 157,597 17.5 0.09
5. Uttaranchal 8,489,349 1,517,186 17.9 0.91
6. Haryana 21,144,564 4,091,110 19.3 2.46
7. Delhi 13,850,507 2,343,255 16.9 1.41
8. Rajasthan 56,507,188 9,694,462 17.2 5.82
9. Uttar Pradesh 166,197,921 35,148,377 21.1 21.09
10. Bihar 82,998,509 13,048,608 15.7 7.83
11. Sikkim 540,851 27,165 5.0 0.02
12. Arunachal Pradesh 1,097,968 6,188 0.6 0.01
13. Nagaland 1,990,036 – 0.0 0.00
14. Manipur 2,166,788 60,037 2.8 0.04
15. Mizoram 888,573 272 0.0 0.00
16. Tripura 3,199,203 555,724 17.4 0.33
17. Meghalaya 2,318,822 11,139 0.5 0.01
18. Assam 26,655,528 1,825,949 6.9 1.10
19. West Bengal 80,176,197 18,452,555 23.0 11.07
20. Jharkhand 26,945,829 3,189,320 11.8 1.91
21. Orissa 36,804,660 6,082,063 16.5 3.65
22. Chhattisgarh 20,833,803 2,418,722 11.6 1.45
23. Madhya Pradesh 60,348,023 9,155,177 15.2 5.49
24. Gujarat 50,671,017 3,592,715 7.1 2.15
25. Daman & Diu 158,204 4,838 3.1 0.00
26. Dadra & Nagar Haveli 220,490 4,104 1.9 0.00
27. Maharashtra 96,878,627 9,881,656 10.2 5.93
28. Andhra Pradesh 76,210,007 12,339,496 16.2 7.41
29. Karnataka 52,850,562 8,563,930 16.2 5.14
30. Goa 1,347,668 23,791 1.8 0.01
31. Lakshadweep 60,650 – 0.0 0.00
32. Kerala 31,841,374 3,123,941 9.8 1.87
33. Tamil Nadu 62,405,679 11,857,504 19.0 7.12
34. Pondicherry 974,345 157,771 16.2 0.09
35. Andaman & Nicobar 356,152 –0.0 0.00
Islands
Source: Census of India 2001.

Table 2.5 The Mandal Commission: caste groups as a percentage of India’s

population
Caste groups % of India’s population

Forward Hindu Castes and Communities 17.58%
Backward Hindu Castes and Communities 43.70%
Scheduled Castes 15.05%
Scheduled Tribes 7.51%
Non-Hindu Communities (including 16.16% (52% of these, or 8.40% of
backwards) the total population, were
identified as backwards among the
non-Hindu communities)
Total 100%
Source: Government of India, 1980a:56
A Presidential Order of 1950 invoked Article 341 of the Constitution

to say that ‘no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism
shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste’. In 1956, the
Sikh religion was brought within the purview of this Order, thus provid-
ing reservations for Mazhabi and Ramdasia Sikhs. The Buddhist
Scheduled Castes were likewise brought on par with Hindus in 1990.
(Ghosh, 1997:149) This essentially leaves the so-called Scheduled Castes
within the two biggest minority religions – Islam and Christianity –
outside the purview of reservation policy. If a Scheduled Caste converts
to Christianity or Islam, s/he is automatically deprived of that status.
However, if the convert happens to be a Scheduled Tribe person, s/he
continues to be eligible for the benefits of reservation, because this
is based on ethnicity rather than religion. Thus, the so-called Dalit
Muslims and Dalit Christians remain excluded. In recent years, there
have been appeals, including from the National Commission for
Minorities, to amend the Presidential Order of 1950 such that the crite-
rion for deciding the issue of SCs is not religion. The Dalit Muslims are
critical of the fact that the largely ‘upper-caste’ Muslim leadership –
comprising Sayyads, Shaikhs, and Pathans – do not endorse their
claims, and ask for a quota for an undifferentiated Muslim community.
Dalit Christians are those who converted from their previously
untouchable status to the Christian faith. They comprise 60% (of 16
million) of the total Christian population of India, and are clearly eco-
nomically backward, many of them being landless, with an average
annual income of Rs. 903, and a high illiteracy rate of 65%. (ibid.:153)
The Dalit Christians, too, have been demanding inclusion in the list of
Scheduled Castes, but without success. In the mid-1990s, this demand
was voiced more strongly, leading to many political parties incorpo-
rating it into their manifestoes in the 1996 elections. The United Front
(UF) government that came to power had made a similar promise,
but was unable to proceed in the face of BJP opposition. Some re-
conversions to Hinduism are believed to have resulted, chiefly for
access to the status of SC. (ibid.:154)
The category of OBCs, as we have seen, has been more accommoda-
tive and flexible. In 1971, for instance, the Backward Classes Reserva-
tion Commission in the southern state of Kerala recommended
reservation for backward classes in professional colleges in the follow-
ing proportions: Ezhavas (9%), Muslims (8%), Latin Catholics (2%),
Other Backward Christians (1%), and Other Backward Hindus (5%).
(Galanter, 1984:467)
There are many non-Hindu groups, including those of Muslims, that
are internally differentiated, endogamous and hierarchically ranked. The
ranking generally remains the same as that of the caste before conver-
sion. Among the two most well-known of such groups are the Meos in
Rajasthan and Haryana, who are technically Muslims, but regard them-
selves as Rajputs, and follow rituals based on the distinction between
purity and pollution. The Syrian Christians of Kerala claim descent from
originally Brahman converts and have even been known to practise
untouchability. The Sikhs are also conscious of caste, such that a mar-
riage between, say, a jat Sikh (essentially belonging to a backward caste)
and a mazhabi Sikh (a lower caste convert to Sikhism), would be virtually
unthinkable. The technical question that is often raised is, of course,
whether such internal hierarchical rankings should properly be called
castes. This has also become a political and policy question in recent
years, as with the Dalit Christian claim to reservations, which implicitly
privileges their dalitness over their Christianness.
There are similarly Muslim communities of aristocratic descent who
also look down upon the low-caste converts to Islam. It has been argued
that a sociology of Indian Muslims cannot be based exclusively on a
study of religious values. The adoption of the practice of endogamy has
imparted to Islam in India the distinct imprint of Hinduism, and indeed
that the framework of caste domination is retained in Indian Islam.
The caste system serves not only to mark rank among the non-
Ashraf, it serves also the Ashraf themselves, originally the con-
querors and now the dominant, giving them the satisfaction that
they continue to dominate lower levels. It allows the creation of a

‘barrier’ between themselves and local converts.
(Gaborieau [1993] 2003:303–4)
But, even as it creates distinctions within the society of Indian

Muslims, it is also this that enables Hindus and Muslims ‘to co-exist
and co-operate because at bottom they constitute one single society’.
(ibid.:309) Indeed, a recent account of Muslims in Bihar society and
politics speaks of the ‘forwards’ and ‘backwards’ among this com-
munity, and provides detailed data on the composition of various
boards and committees of community organizations to show the over-
whelming preponderance of the ‘forwards’. (Anwar, 2001:137) The
Muslim members of the Legislative Assemblies from 1937 to 1995 are
listed with their party affiliation and caste (the term used is jati), to
show that upper class/caste Muslims predominate. In the state assem-
bly (Vidhan Sabha) election of 1995, for example, the Congress Party
put up 42 Muslim candidates, of whom only 13 belonged to the lower
‘castes’. Similarly, of the 24 candidates put up by the ostensibly more
‘backwards’-oriented Samata Party there were only five belonging to
these groups. (ibid.:257–8) In all Bihar Assembly elections in indepen-
dent India, between 1952 and 1995, there were a total of 245 Muslim
candidates who won the election. Of these, 197 belonged to the
Shaikh, Sayyad and Pathan jatis. The backward Muslims, on the other
hand, got barely 19.2% of the seats. (ibid.:170–1) Anwar’s contention
therefore is that Muslim society is divided into backwards and
forwards in approximately the same proportion as Muslims and
Hindus in India, i.e. 80:20. (ibid.:169) This is partly on account of the
Partition, in which it was mostly the upper class Muslims who
migrated to Pakistan.
Claims for reservation have long been made by and on behalf of
some of these groups. In 1939, Abdul Qaiyum Ansari of the Bihar
Provincial Jamiat-ul-Momineen, for instance, wrote to Jawaharlal
Nehru asking for reservation for the Momin community. In his reply,
Nehru wrote:
…I entirely agree with you in your remark that certain upper

class groups among the Muslims have more or less dominated the
Muslims in India, much to the disadvantage of the others. This
applies even more so to the Hindus, as you well know, where
some upper class groups have dominated vast numbers of other
people. The problem is essentially similar in both cases. This dom-
ination has been cultural, educational etc. but essentially it has

been economic.
(quoted in Anwar, 2001:229–30)
As a secular modernizer, Nehru was convinced that ‘the kind of reser-

vation we have today has not done us much good’ (ibid.:231), but –
after independence – accepted the necessity of some reservation for the
most socio-economically deprived groups in Indian society, for a
limited period of time, to provide them with the background conditions
of equality.
Indeed, despite the fact that reservation policies have been in place
for almost six decades, the Scheduled Castes (and Scheduled Tribes)
remain worse-off than most other social groups in terms of social and
economic characteristics. Many of the Scheduled Castes are agricul-
tural labourers or unskilled workers,8 and hence it is not surprising
that the proportion of the poor in these groups is also higher. The
Human Development Report for India, produced by the National
Council for Applied Economic Research, shows that the Scheduled
Castes have a household income of Rs. 17,465 or 68% of the all-India
mean household income. The per capita income of the Scheduled
Castes stands at Rs. 3237, well below the national average of
Rs. 4485, and 72% of the all India mean per capita income. Indeed,
both total household incomes as well as per capita incomes are
lowest among the Scheduled Castes, followed by the Scheduled
Tribes. (Shariff, 1999:29–30) The proportion of SC and ST households
in the lowest income category is over 70%, compared to only 50% of
all Hindu households. (ibid.:32) The poverty parameters show that
both the incidence of poverty, as also as its intensity, are higher
among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as compared to
the national average. The HCR9 is 50 for the Scheduled Castes, as
compared with 39 for rural India as a whole. The Sen Index10 is as
high as 0.24 among SCs, as well as STs, in comparison with only 0.18
for the rural population as a whole.
The chief source of household income for the Scheduled Castes is
agriculture and allied activities. However, ownership of land is lowest
among the SCs than any other social group. Ownership of land is
highest among Hindus (70%), lower among Muslims (57%), but lowest
among SCs (only 47%). The same disparity is found in the ownership
of durables such as television sets, radios and bicycles. Thus 37.7% of
the SCs are dependent on agricultural and allied activities, while
another 19.7% are dependent on an agricultural wage, a total of 57.4%.
(ibid.:35) In 1991, only 19% of SCs lived in urban areas as compared to

29% for the general population. (Visaria and Visaria, 2003:200)
On most human development indices, the Scheduled Castes fall far
below the national average. Their literacy rate is 41.5% as against the
Indian average of 53.5%. Comparing it to other disadvantaged social
groups and minorities, we observe that only the literacy rate for the
Scheduled Tribes is lower, while the Muslims (at 49.4%), and the
Christians (at 80.8%) are higher. However, compared to 1971 – when
the literacy rate in these groups was only 15% – it is a substantial
increase. (Mendelsohn and Vicziany, 1998:35) Like other landless wage
earners, the Scheduled Tribes and the Muslims have very low levels of
school enrolment. The enrolment rate of the Scheduled Castes is only
62.5%, compared to 72% for the Hindus. The gender disparity in liter-
acy is also high: only about 25% of women belonging to the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes are literate as opposed to 50% of men, and
only about 50% of women in the other social groups are literate, as
compared with about 75% of men belonging to these groups. The
National Sample Survey data indicate that the WPR of women is also
higher in the SCs than any other social group with the exception of
the Scheduled Tribes. The higher levels of poverty in this group are
accompanied by higher levels of mortality and morbidity, but also by
higher levels of fertility (lower age of marriage and lower prevalence of
contraception). (Visaria and Visaria, 2003:199)
A comparative view of some important forms of deprivation is also
revealing. Majumdar and Subramanian’s Capability Failure Ratio
(drawing upon the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen) seeks to
correct conventional measures of poverty by looking at the inter-group
disparities within the distribution of particular forms of deprivation.
Their all-India data measuring levels of educational deprivation for
1981 show that rural women belonging to the scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes have an educational deprivation level of 0.937 as com-
pared to 0.783 for rural women not belonging to these groups. The gap
is even more marked among men in the rural areas: those belonging to
the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have an educational depriva-
tion level of 0.717 (it is worth noting that this is slightly lower than
rural women not belonging to these groups) while other men have edu-
cational deprivation levels of 0.458. The pattern for men and women
in urban areas are very similar. (Majumdar and Subramanian,
2001:116) Thus, levels of educational deprivation are highest among
rural female scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and lowest among
urban males who do not belong to these social groups. The gender gap
Table 2.6 Comparative tables of literacy rates incorporating the gender gap
and the gap between the general population and SCs and STs (1961–1991)
Year Total Population Scheduled castes Scheduled Tribes
Male Female Total Male Female Total Gap Male Female Total Gap
1961 34.44 12.95 24.02 16.96 3.29 10.27 13.75 13.83 3.16 8.54 15.48
1971 39.45 18.72 29.46 22.36 6.44 14.68 14.79 17.63 4.85 11.39 18.08
1981 65.50 29.85 43.67 31.12 10.93 21.38 22.29 24.52 8.05 16.35 27.32
1991 64.13 39.29 52.21 49.91 23.76 37.41 14.80 40.65 18.19 29.60 22.60
Source: Fourth Report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (1998)
in literacy, as well as the gap between the general population and these
groups, is further illuminated by data provided by the NCSCST. The
additional significance of Table 2.6 is that it underscores the fact that
the gap has not significantly diminished over a 40-year period.
The infant mortality rates show similar trends, with infants being
less ‘wasted’ in non-SC/ST communities than they are in SC/ST
groups. Thus, Majumdar and Subramaniam show that the number of
deaths of children under the age of one year (per 1000 live births) is
121.4 for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes living in the rural
areas, as opposed to 110 for people not belonging to these groups. It is
correspondingly high in the urban areas, with 88.9 deaths per 1000
live births for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, as opposed to
62.5 for others living in urban areas. (Majumdar and Subramanian,
2001:121)
The Income-Poverty Ratios, finally, also suggest that the headcount
indices of poverty are of a consistently higher magnitude among the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes than the others. This is true
across the Indian states, as well as for India as a whole. Thus, the head-
count ratio of poverty for rural citizens of the SC and ST groups is
59.86 (39.99 for all other groups); and for those members of these
groups living in urban areas, it is 55.34 (as opposed to 39.21 for
others). (Majumdar and Subramanian, 2001:125)
Given social indicators like these, what can we deduce about the
success or otherwise of programmes and policies of compensatory dis-
crimination? Have they completely failed to redress the social inequal-
ities of caste? A recent study of the representation of some disadvantaged
social groups in the middle class suggests that the middle class has today
expanded to include members of lower castes as well as of religious
minorities. On the basis of indicators such as level of education; white-
collar employment; ownership of house (made of brick and cement) and
of other assets; and self-identification as middle class, the study shows

that the domination of the upper castes in the middle class persists,
though it has been reduced over the last 50 years.
Members of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the
OBCs have also entered the middle class. These groups, together with
Muslims, account for 75% of the sample population, and for half of
the middle class population surveyed. They account for 56% among
the high school educated; 47% among white-collar workers; and over
50% among asset owners. These are clearly indicators of social mobil-
ity, showing also that low ritual status has not obstructed the entry of
these groups into the middle class, nor proved a hindrance in the way
of their acquiring a self-identification as middle class individuals.
(Sheth, 2002:228)
Despite the cumulative historical inequality that characterizes their
social position, the dalits have also begun to enter the middle class,
albeit to a smaller extent than many other groups. Close to 12% have
received higher education; almost 10% have white-collar jobs; and
almost 21% own houses and other assets. These are, in all likelihood,
attributable to the policies of affirmative action. However, it is notable
that only 9% of these dalits identify themselves as being middle class.
By comparison, the backward castes – much more numerous as well as
heterogeneous – remain largely tied to their traditional occupation of
agriculture, and are underrepresented on every indicator, including
ownership of assets. This does not however prevent them from possess-
ing a middle class self-identification in larger numbers. Tribals likewise
are under-represented in white-collar employment, while Muslims
occupy middle-class positions more or less in accordance with their
proportion in the population. (Sheth, 2002:226)11
On the whole, then, Sheth’s study suggests that while caste continues
to be consequential in Indian society, its role in political mobilization
and as the basis for political representation has far outstripped its role as
the signifier of ritual hierarchy. By setting up the colonial state as the
arbiter of caste, colonial rule actually facilitated the creation of translo-
cal caste identities, and eventually the forging of horizontal linkages
and federative associations for representation and reservations. Even the
quintessentially ‘modern’ discourses of rights, equality and justice were
fairly early on, he argues, appropriated by and attached to caste iden-
tity. The ‘umbrella’ character of the Congress as the party of social con-
sensus managed to combine nationalist ideology with caste politics
without any apparent contradiction. Its central leadership – and there-
fore that of the Union government – was substantially upper caste (and
upper class). Indeed, so complete was the fusion between caste and class
that it was not clear whether the source of privilege was the westerniza-
tion and English education of these elites, or their ritual superiority as
upper castes. This leadership was vertically linked in a collaborative rela-
tionship with regional elites whose dominance derived from their status
as intermediate or backward castes. These groups were instrumental in
procuring votes for the Congress essentially through networks of
patron-client relationships in the countryside. It was only with the
decline of Congress hegemony, and the recognition of their numerical
strength, that these latter groups began to mobilize, no longer as fac-
tions under the Congress umbrella, but independently, as interest
groups and even political parties. The distinction between interests and
identity was now conclusively blurred. (ibid.:217–21) As a result, Sheth
argues, ‘the ritual hierarchy of closed status groups is being transformed
into a relatively more open and fluid hierarchy among the new social
groups’. (ibid.:223)
Tribe
The category of ‘tribe’, it has been contended, is wholly a colonial con-

struction, as opposed to that of caste which, apart from its particular
construction by the colonial state, was also experienced as a way of life.
Official colonial ethnography initially used the terms of tribe and caste
interchangeably, even synonymously. In the last census of the nine-
teenth century, the social groups today described as tribes were labelled
as ‘forest tribes’, suggesting that their distinctive characteristic was that
they were forest-dwellers. (Xaxa, 2003:375) In the censuses of the early
twentieth century, animism was believed to be the defining characteris-
tic of the tribe, and among the labels used were ‘hill and forest tribes’
and ‘primitive tribes’. In administrative discourse as well as anthropo-
logical writings, there was a general assumption that tribes were
definable as self-contained and self-governing endogamous societies,
with distinct linguistic and cultural boundaries, and non-monetized
economies, generally living in isolation in hill or forest regions. But this
ideal-type came to be questioned fairly early, as did the view that tribes
represented a stage of evolution that was ‘primitive’. (Beteille, 1977)
The British in India ostensibly sought to protect these groups by a
policy of territorial insulation, in enclaves called Excluded Areas and
Partially Excluded Areas, where the general law did not apply and the
executive was entrusted with powers to make orders of a protective
nature. The Government of India (GOI) Act of 1935 was the first legal
instrument that provided for representation for these groups in the

Provincial Legislatures, to which end a list of Backward Tribes was
announced in 1936 for all provinces excluding Bengal and the Punjab.
This duality of control – representation in the legislatures along with
substantively executive control over designated areas where there was a
concentration of the tribal population – was maintained in the Indian
Constitution of 1950. As in the case of Scheduled Castes, the President
specifies, after due consultation with the governors of the states, which
tribal communities will be on the list of Scheduled Tribes for each
state. The President also has the power to alter/de-schedule the
Scheduled Areas. (Galanter, 1984:148)
The official definition of tribe has thus prevailed over that of the
anthropologist, with the result that the term tribe merely describes the
particular groups listed as Scheduled Tribes in the Constitution. Shortly
after independence, in 1950, additions were made to the pre-existing
lists of the 1930s, and the President promulgated an amended list of
Scheduled Areas and of Scheduled Tribes. The contingent nature of
these inclusions is well illustrated by the fact that some groups which
had been previously listed as Scheduled Castes were now moved to the
list of Scheduled Tribes. In 1956, following the 1951 census, this list
was expanded by about a million tribespeople, on the grounds that
they had been mistakenly omitted earlier. In 1976 again, another three
million people were added to the list. (Galanter, 1984:149)
Meanwhile, in 1951, the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes initiated an official search for the definitive criteria
for identifying the characteristics of tribes, and the state governments
were asked to make suggestions. The criteria so generated included
physical/racial features, religion, language, occupation, ecology and
extent of cultural exposure. Some of these criteria have also been
deployed by The People of India project, the most recent such exercise,
undertaken by the Anthropological Survey of India, which enumerates
461 tribal communities, of whom 174 are subgroups. (Xaxa, 2003:379)
The assumption that tribes in India have lived without interaction
with other social groups, and that caste and tribe represent two wholly
distinct orders governed by different sets of principles, has now been
interrogated by research showing the ‘age-old linkages – political, eco-
nomic, and social – between tribal and non-tribal groups.’ (ibid.:384)
The issue of definitional criteria thus remains unresolved, repeatedly
confounded by the unpredictability of the empirical, which calls into
question the neat boundedness of categories and suggesting overlaps
and hybridities instead. The Census of 1991, for instance, showed that
while many tribals reported as their religion the traditional form prac-
tised in their community, an equal number reported themselves as
Hindu, Muslim or Christian. Even more surprising was the fact that
more tribal people stated the language of the state to which they
belonged as their language, instead of their dialect. (Stuligross and
Varshney, 2002:445–6)
Unlike the other categories of religion and caste, and much more
than language, the Scheduled Tribes of India are geographically concen-
trated in three regions of India: the north-east, eastern India and central
India. Approximately 90% of tribals are to be found in 9 states of the
country. In 1961, more than one-third of the ST population lived in the
Scheduled Areas (where they formed less than two-thirds of the popula-
tion); and further, more than half of the STs lived in parliamentary
constituencies where they formed a majority of the population.
The Census of 2001 records the population of Scheduled Tribes in
India as 84,326,240, which forms 8.2% of India’s population as a
whole. Their geographical spread is as follows:
Table 2.7 Scheduled Tribes in India: distribution across states
S.No. State/ Union Territory Total Scheduled tribes

population
population %12 %13
India 1,028,610,328 84,326,240 8.2 100.00

1. Jammu & Kashmir 10,143,700 1,105,979 10.9 1.31
2. Himachal Pradesh 6,077,900 244,587 4.0 0.29
3. Punjab 24,358,999 – 0.0 0.00
4. Chandigarh 900,635 – 0.0 0.00
5. Uttaranchal 8,489,349 256,129 3.0 0.30
6. Haryana 21,144,564 – 0.0 0.00
7. Delhi 13,850,507 – 0.0 0.00
8. Rajasthan 56,507,188 7,097,706 12.6 8.42
9. Uttar Pradesh 166,197,921 107,963 0.1 0.13
10. Bihar 82,998,509 758,351 0.9 0.90
11. Sikkim 540,851 111,405 20.6 0.13
12. Arunachal Pradesh 1,097,968 705,158 64.2 0.84
13. Nagaland 1,990,036 1,774,026 89.1 2.10
14. Manipur 2,166,788 741,141 34.2 0.88
15. Mizoram 888,573 839,310 94.5 1.00
16. Tripura 3,199,203 993,426 31.1 1.18
17. Meghalaya 2,318,822 1,992,862 85.9 2.36
18. Assam 26,655,528 3,308,570 12.4 3.92
19. West Bengal 80,176,197 4,406,794 5.5 5.23
Table 2.7 Scheduled Tribes in India: distribution across states – continued
S.No. State/ Union Territory Total Scheduled tribes

population
population %12 %13
India 1,028,610,328 84,326,240 8.2 100.00

20. Jharkhand 26,945,829 7,087,068 26.3 8.40
21. Orissa 36,804,660 8,145,081 22.1 9.66
22. Chhattisgarh 20,833,803 6,616,596 31.8 7.85
23. Madhya Pradesh 60,348,023 12,233,474 20.3 14.50
24. Gujarat 50,671,017 7,481,160 14.8 8.87
25. Daman & Diu 158,204 4,838 8.8 0.01
26. Dadra & Nagar Haveli 220,490 137,225 62.2 0.16
27. Maharashtra 96,878,627 8,577,276 8.9 10.17
28. Andhra Pradesh 76,210,007 5,024,104 6.6 5.96
29. Karnataka 52,850,562 3,463,986 6.6 4.11
30. Goa 1,347,668 566 0.0 0.00
31. Lakshadweep 60,650 57,321 94.5 0.07
32. Kerala 31,841,374 364,189 1.1 0.43
33. Tamil Nadu 62,405,679 651,321 1.0 0.77
34. Pondicherry 974,345 – 0.0 0.00
35. Andaman & Nicobar 356,152 29,469 8.3 0.03
Islands
Source: Census of India (2001)
In terms of social and economic characteristics, the Scheduled Castes

and Scheduled Tribes are worse-off than most other social groups, with
a higher proportion of the poor. The Human Development Report for
India shows that the Scheduled Tribes have a household income of
Rs. 19,556 which is 76% of the national average. The per capita income
of the Scheduled Tribes stands at Rs. 3504, well below the national
average of Rs. 4485, and 78% of it. Indeed, both total household
incomes as well as per capita incomes are lowest among the Scheduled
Castes, followed by the Scheduled Tribes. (Shariff, 1999:29–30) The
poverty parameters show that both the incidence of poverty, as well as
its intensity, are higher among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes as compared to the national average. The HCR is about 50
among these groups, as compared with 39 for rural India as a whole.
The Sen Index is as high as 0.24 among STs and SCs in comparison
with only 0.18 for the rural population as a whole.
The source of household income for the Scheduled Tribes is mainly
agriculture and allied activities. Thus 55.6% of the STs are dependent
on agricultural and allied activities, while another 11.7% are depen-
dent on an agricultural wage. Together, the total of 67.3% exceeds the

corresponding figure for the Scheduled Castes, which stands at 57.4%
(37.7% on agriculture and allied activities, and 19.7% on agricultural
wages). (ibid.:35) Levels of urbanization are also lower, with only 7% of
STs living in urban areas in 1991, as compared to 29% for the general
population. (Visaria and Visaria, 2003:200)
On most human development indices, the Scheduled Tribes fall far
below the national average. The literacy rate is 39.3% as against the
Indian average of 53.5%. Comparing it to other disadvantaged social
groups and minorities, we observe that the literacy rate for the
Scheduled Castes is 41.5%, the Muslims 49.4%, and the Christians
80.8%. Not surprisingly, the Scheduled Tribes have the lowest enrol-
ment rate of 60.3%, compared to 72% for the Hindus. The gender
disparity in literacy is also high: only a quarter of women belonging to
the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are literate, as compared to
approximately half of women in the other social groups. Health data
also show a higher Morbidity Prevalence Rate among Scheduled Tribes,
including a high incidence of diarrhoea, fever and tuberculosis.
Unsurprisingly, because this tends to be correlated with levels of liter-
acy and general levels of village development, immunization levels are
also low among these groups. (Shariff: Ch.7)
In this chapter, we have sought to emphasize the overlapping and
reinforcing character of cultural and symbolic inequalities, on the one
hand, and material or economic inequalities, on the other. The next
chapter presents a description of the institutions designed, both by the
constitution and in subsequent policy initiatives, to manage diversity
and redress inequalities. It will attempt to show that the institutional
design has been rather less sensitive to material inequalities than to
symbolic ones, which may account for the persistence of economic
deprivation linked to ethnic status and also perhaps explain the
vulnerability of such groups to political mobilization.
3
Managing Diversity: Institutions,
Policies and Politics
The introductory chapter of this volume showed how, in the founding

vision of the Indian republic, different institutional strategies were
deployed to ameliorate different types of social disadvantage. This
chapter describes and reviews the institutions and mechanisms pro-
vided for in the constitutional design to deal with the diversities of
language, religion, caste and tribe discussed in the previous chapter. It
also attempts a broad synoptic survey of the political articulation of
conflicts around these cleavages, by instantiating a select number of
important conflicts of this kind, and examining the way in which they
have been managed by state agencies and the polity.
Language
The settlement of the language question in the Constituent Assembly

has its roots in two controversies in colonial India, the first of which
related to the English language as a medium of instruction, and the
second to the relationship between the Indian languages, most notably
Hindi and Urdu. It was during the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon in the
first decade of the twentieth century that the policy decision was made
to allow the mother-tongue to be the language of instruction for
primary school children. However, English was to be introduced at the
middle-school level to prepare children for High School, at which level
the education would be wholly in English. The National Education
Movement, sponsored by the Congress, also endorsed the idea that
while the learning of English would be compulsory, it was important
for students to be versed in the language and literary traditions of their
mother-tongues. Nevertheless, English continued to be the language of
advantage. (Singh, 2003:744)
42
Managing Diversity: Institutions, Policies and Politics 43
The second controversy was that of the relative status of Hindi and
Urdu, and the scripts – Devanagari and Persian-Arabic respectively – in
which they are written. It was because the Hindi-Urdu controversy got
associated with the communal polarization between Hindus and Muslims
that this issue acquired such political significance. Among the issues at
stake were the following: whether Sanskritized (and therefore written in
the Devanagari script) Hindi should displace English as the official lan-
guage of the new nation, or whether Hindustani, the mix of Hindi and
Urdu commonly spoken across north India, should be written in both
Devanagari and the Persian-Arabic script, and adopted as the official lan-
guage. With the Partition of India, the presumed (though flawed) associa-
tion between the Muslim community and the Urdu language was broken.
Now the chief issue before the Constituent Assembly was that of deter-
mining whether India – with all its linguistic diversity – needed a single
national/official language, and whether this could be Hindi or English or
something else. For a nationalist movement that had just achieved hard-
won freedom, to accept English was clearly difficult, partly, as Alok Rai
has argued ‘due to reasons of prestige, significantly bruised by the
colonial encounter’, but partly also because freedom and democracy
would have little meaning for the millions of poor and unlettered Indians
if it were to make sense only to the English-educated. (Rai, 2001:106)
Hindi had the advantage of being spoken by a large number of Indians,
and understood by many more. However, the designation of Hindi as a
national language was resisted by those who came from areas where
Hindi was not spoken. They were willing to accept Hindi as an official
language, but not as a national language. This was therefore enacted
prospectively, so that it would be implemented only after 15 years,
till which time English would be retained as the official language. In
the states, however, the governments could use the main regional lan-
guage – as specified in the Eighth Schedule – as the official language for
administrative purposes.
Linguistic diversity in independent India has been politically con-
tentious in chiefly two types of situations: first, when it was proposed
that Hindi (spoken by 40% of the population) be designated as the
official or ‘national’ language for the country as a whole; and second, in
the reorganization of the states of the federation on the basis of lan-
guage. The Congress Party had, fairly early in the national movement,
begun to visualize a future and free India in terms of linguistic states, on
the premise that language corresponded with particular types of culture,
literature and tradition that could be identified in territorially bounded
terms. Indeed, the Congress organization itself was based on such a
proto-federal principle. In 1908, Bihar – which was a part of the Bengal

Presidency – was given the status of a ‘province’ within the Congress
party, and in 1917, the Sindh and Andhra units – which were part of
the Bombay and the Madras Presidencies respectively – were awarded
similar status. In 1920, at the Nagpur session of the Congress, Gandhi
declared his support for linguistically based states. Consequently, the
Congress party was organized into 21 units based on language. In 1928,
the Motilal Nehru Report reiterated the importance of the linguistic
basis of states, and this became one of the central principles that
informed the future vision of the national movement. (Chandhoke,
forthcoming)
After independence, the demand for separate states for Tamil, Telegu
and Kannada speakers was fuelled by the overlap between language
and caste. For instance, realizing that they were marginal players in the
politics of the predominantly Tamil Madras Presidency, the Telegu-
speaking Kamma and Reddy castes demanded a separate state of
Andhra Pradesh. A well-known Gandhian, Sri Potti Sriramulu went on
a fast unto death for a separate Andhra state in 1952, and as Nehru
hesitated – for fear of a hostile Tamil response – Sriramulu died.
Language riots followed, as did the Prime Minister’s announcement of
the formation of a separate state.
For similar reasons, the Kannada-speaking Lingayat and Vokkaliga
castes (land-owning, and often dominant, castes) demanded the sepa-
rate state of Karnataka. At stake were the aspirations of these groups for
better access to education, jobs and power, which the formation of the
separate states was expected to fulfil. It is no accident that the Kammas
and Reddys have dominated the political scene in Andhra Pradesh ever
since, while the Lingayats and Vokkaligas have been dominant in
Karnataka politics. For precisely the same reason, other groups resisted
the formation of linguistic states. Political mobilization on the question
of linguistic provinces contributed to the formation of the States
Reorganisation Commission in 1953, which resulted in the Seventh
Amendment to the Constitution (1956), and the formation of the
first set of linguistic states. The creation of Kerala, Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Gujarat all belong to this period.
A decade later, the bilingual state of Punjab was also bifurcated on
the basis of language, split into the states of Punjabi-speaking Punjab
and Hindi-speaking Haryana, with some mountain areas being trans-
ferred to Himachal Pradesh (upgraded now from a Union Territory to a
full-fledged state). The movement for a Punjabi Suba (state) ostensibly
invoked language as the basis of its demand for a separate state, but it
was clear that religious identity was very much at stake. The Hindus of
Punjab insisted that the Punjabi language was merely a dialect of
Hindi, and had encouraged their co-religionists in the state to report
Hindi as their mother tongue in the Censuses of 1951 and 1961.
Various compromise formulae of bilingualism were attempted
but failed. The States’ Reorganization Commission also rejected the
demand for a Punjabi Suba, on the grounds that the ‘majority’ were
opposed to it. (Singh, 2000:90–1) Eventually, it was a series of political
circumstances – both regional as well as national – that culminated in
the bifurcation of the existing state of Punjab in 1966.
The subsequent creation of states has been based on broadly ethnic
factors – in some cases correlated with developmental neglect – but not
on language per se. This is as true of the north-east, as it is of the most
recently created states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (created on the basis
of tribal identity) and of Uttaranchal (based on the distinctive culture
of the hill regions of Uttar Pradesh, from which this state was carved
out).
Arguably the most violent agitation on the issue of language has
been that in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s. As we have seen, the issue of
designating Hindi as the national language was contested in the
national movement and hotly debated in the Constituent Assembly,
which decided to make Hindi the official language but deferred its
implementation to a later date (1965). The first anti-Hindi agitation
had taken place as early as the 1930s in Tamil Nadu. The suggestion of
the Congress leadership that the use of Hindi should be encouraged for
purposes of inter-state communications and trade, was viewed as the
imposition of Hindi, and stoked the fires of Tamil nationalism. This
helped to focus Dravidianist mobilization not against ethnic outsiders
(who accounted for less than 10% of the state’s population), but
against the state and central governments. It also paved the way for
Dravidian populism,1 which combined an anti-Brahmanical project
with a Tamil nationalist one. (Subramanian, 1999:128–9) The violent
anti-Hindi protests in Tamil Nadu were eventually resolved in 1967 by
an amendment to the Official Languages Act, which provided that
both Hindi and English would be used in Parliament; and that the
Union Government would use Hindi only when communicating with
the governments of Hindi-speaking states and English with the others.
Language policy was also placed within the jurisdiction of states, with
the constitutional protection for minority languages guaranteeing such
protection for linguistic minorities within states where the majority
speaks a different language.
Apart from playing a role in communal politics (as the Hindi-Urdu

controversy did in colonial India) and in regionalist demands (as in
Punjab and Tamil Nadu), language has also been politically used to
further nativist agendas. The state of Assam in eastern India witnessed
immigration on a large scale from what was then East Bengal (later East
Pakistan, and now Bangladesh) from the 1930s onwards. These immi-
grants, both Hindu and Muslim, were Bengali speakers, though they
sometimes reported their mother tongue differently from one census to
the next, to be protected against sons-of-the-soil politics. Thus, an
increasing number began to report Assamese as their mother tongue
rather than Bengali. This explains the extraordinary figure of 149.5%
growth in the Assamese speaking population of the state between the
Censuses of 1931 and 1951, while in the next decade the growth rate
was 36.5%. (Ghosh, 1996:61–2) Bengalis also dominated employment
in both the public and the private sectors. In the early 1980s, following
the influx in the previous decade of a large number of migrants from
Bangladesh (consequent upon its war of liberation), the Assamese
began to express fears of being swamped, numerically and therefore
politically and culturally, by the Bengali migrants. There was bloody
conflict, which ended only with the Assam Accord signed between
Rajiv Gandhi’s government at the Centre and the leaders of the Assam
movement. This leadership of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), dom-
inated by the Assamese Hindus, rode to power in the 1985 elections.
This was a conflict in which language became the instrument and the
basis of ethnic political mobilization for control over developmental
resources, political and administrative control, and employment.
Essentially, however, the conflict was over economic and political
resources. (Das Gupta, 1991; Baruah, 1999)
Effectively, as Paul Brass (1992:154) has argued, the languages of
India are arranged in ‘a hierarchy of official status’, with Hindi and
English (as official languages of the Union of India) at the top; the
Eighth Schedule languages of the linguistically organized states next;
the Eighth Schedule languages – such as Sanskrit or Sindhi – which do
not have a territorial home below these; and, at the bottom of the hier-
archy, the dozen or more officially unrecognized languages but spoken
by more than a million people each.
Linguistic identities in India were negotiated over more than half a
century, through processes of political assertion and mobilization. This
should not, however, blind us to the fact that state response to such
mobilization has depended on its strength and potential for violent
conflict. Some movements for statehood based on language – such as the
Maithili movement – failed to accomplish their objectives, while many

others which held out credible threats of violence succeeded. Despite
this, it would be correct to say that the organization of the Indian polity
as a federation, based on linguistic states, has substantially resolved and
settled the issue of linguistic diversity. The management of linguistic
diversity has indeed been among the more successful experiments of
institutional engineering in the history of modern India.
Religion
The politicization of religious identity in India, as well as the role of

the state in its manipulation, suppression or fomentation, cannot be
understood without taking a few steps back into history. In the late
nineteenth century, the Aligarh movement,2 under the leadership of
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, aimed at empowering the Muslim community
through religious and educational reform, especially modern western
education. Syed Ahmad Khan was, however, a nationalist who believed
that the destiny of Indian Muslims was Indian, but that the community
would stand to gain from being loyal to the British rulers. The
Government of India Act of 1909 provided for separate electorates for
the Muslims, a decision that was to have far-reaching, profound and
enduring consequences. As Mushirul Hasan writes:
Separate electorates, along with reservations and weightages, gave

birth to a sense of Muslims being a religio-political entity in the
colonial image – of being unified, cohesive and segregated from the
Hindus. They were homogenised like ‘castes’ and ‘tribes’ and suit-
ably accommodated within political schemes and bureaucratic
designs. Self-styled leaders were emboldened to represent an ‘objec-
tively’ defined community and contend with others for patronage,
employment and political assignments. In this way separate elec-
torates created space for reinforcing religious identities, a process
which was, both in conception and articulation, profoundly divi-
sive….The ideological contours of the future Pakistan were thus
delineated by British opinion and policy-makers long before Jinnah
burst upon the political scene with his insistence on having a
Muslim nation.
(Hasan, 1997:35)
The space offered by the structures of governance for the articulation of

the communitarian interests of Muslims was entrenched in subsequent
reform legislation as well, especially in the GOI Acts of 1919 and 1935.
Political safeguards in the form of separate electorates for communal rep-
resentation were all along resented by the Congress Party which viewed
these as a manifestation of the British policy of ‘divide and rule’. Recent
research has demonstrated the construction of communalism in the
colonial period, a process in which the colonial state played no small
role. (Pandey, 1990: Ch.2) As the Indian struggle for independence
approached its climax, the Muslim League’s claim for a separate nation-
state of Pakistan became more insistent, and eventually the Mountbatten
plan, announced in March 1947, provided for the division of India into
the two independent states of India and Pakistan.
At independence, the secular forces in the Congress were in the
ascendant, but the formulation of the Constitution took place in the
context of a bitter and violent Partition. The Constituent Assembly was
faced with the difficult task of balancing the interests of groups and
communities, on the one hand, with the claims of equal citizenship of a
secular modern state, on the other. The concept of secularism that was
adopted reflects this contradiction, which has been attributed to its
‘simultaneous commitment to communities and to equal citizenship’
(Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987:38–9).
In the nationalist view, separate electorates were the divisive legacy
of the colonial period. The Constitution-makers therefore abandoned
the provisions (in the GOI Act of 1935) for separate electorates and
reserved seats for Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. However, a set of
cultural rights for minority religious communities was enshrined in the
chapter on Fundamental Rights. The chief ideological legacy that is
embodied in the chapter on Fundamental Rights in the Indian
Constitution is that of the Motilal Nehru Report of 1928, which in turn
drew heavily upon the American and European constitutions. In par-
ticular, the Nehru Report expressed the importance of giving protec-
tion to minorities, providing for the right to freedom of conscience
and the free profession and practice of religion.
Article 25 of the Constitution provides that ‘all persons are equally
entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, prac-
tise and propagate religion’. While this article emphasizes the practice
of religious freedom by individuals, the next article highlights the
establishment of institutions. Article 26 thus is about the right of every
religious denomination to ‘(a) establish and maintain institutions for
religious and charitable purposes; (b) to manage its own affairs in
matters of religion; (c) to own and acquire movable and immovable
property; and (d) to administer such property in accordance with law’.
(Article 26) Article 27 follows this up with the freedom of the citizen in
regard to religious worship or religious instruction at an educational
institution. It stipulates that religious instruction cannot be provided
at any educational institution funded wholly by the State. In institu-
tions recognized by the state, or receiving aid from it, citizens are free
not to take part in any religious instruction or worship.
It is the provisions of Articles 29 and 30 that give minorities protec-
tion for their distinctive culture/language/script, and the right to estab-
lish and administer educational institutions of their choice. A huge
amount of case law has been generated around Article 30, especially in
relation to the quantum of reservation of places for members of
the minority that has established in the educational institution. On
the whole, however, the effort of the constitution-makers was to lay
the foundations of a secular and pluralistic society, in which the inter-
ests of diverse castes, religious communities, and linguistic communi-
ties could be reconciled.
Though the Constituent Assembly decided that the criminal law of
the land would apply to all citizens equally, it was decided to allow
religious minorities to follow their separate personal laws in matters
relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and so on. For Hindus,
some standardization and uniformization of personal law was
attempted in the Hindu Code Bill of 1950. However, conservative
opposition to the Bill eventually led to the passage of a discrete set of
bills (e.g., separate bills relating to inheritance, marriage and divorce,
etc.), while the proposed comprehensive legislation was dropped. The
long-term objective of a common civil code for members of all reli-
gious communities was placed in the non-justiciable Directive
Principles of State Policy, Article 44 of which provides that the State
‘shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code
throughout the territory of India’. This has been a contentious issue in
Indian politics since the enactment in 1986 of a law on the right of
Muslim women to maintenance after divorce. Feminists have also
been in favour of a uniform civil code as this would enhance the
prospects of gender justice. However, with the right-wing BJP insisting
on a Uniform Civil Code for quite different anti-minority reasons,
feminists have backtracked. Family law reform has also been occasion-
ally contentious in relation to Christians, but nowhere more than
with respect to the Muslim community. (cf. Parashar, 1992)
The Minorities Commission was established by a Government reso-
lution in 1978, but was a non-statutory body until 14 years later, when
a National Commission for Minorities Act was passed in 1992, and
appointments were made to the Commission. The stated function of

this Commission is to evaluate the progress of the development of
minorities all over India; to monitor the working of the constitutional
and legal safeguards provided to minorities; to look into specific com-
plaints regarding the deprivation of rights or any discriminatory prac-
tices; to undertake research into the socio-economic and educational
development of minorities; and so forth. (The National Commission
for Minorities Act, 1992:4) The Commission has been forthright in its
condemnation of communal violence, as in Gujarat but is limited by
its chiefly monitoring and advisory role. The Commission has, in its
recent functioning, apparently upset the minorities more than it has
allayed their anxieties. Its proposal for an inter-faith dialogue between
the extreme Hindu right, on the one hand, and the Christians and
Muslims, on the other, has provoked angry reactions from bodies like
the All India Christian Council and community newspapers like
The Milli Gazette, which have even demanded that it be disbanded. The
central problem appears to be its lack of teeth, as also the lack of credi-
bility of its members and chairperson, who are government appointees.
Even where recommendations are made in good faith, they are rarely
implemented.
At least a few hundred thousand pages have been written on the
nature of Indian secularism, and the relationship between religion and
the state that is envisaged in the Indian constitution and law. Some
have tried to show that the state’s approach has been one of benign dis-
position towards, but equidistance from, all religions, while others have
argued that the Indian state effectively practices multi-theocratic secu-
larism. Competing notions of secularism are also perceived to be at
work: the Nehruvian idea of dharma nirpekshata (the separation of reli-
gion and politics, and state neutrality) vs the Gandhian concept of sarva
dharma sambhava (the principle of equal respect for all religions). This
historical and theoretical debate is, apart from being irrelevant here,
also irresolvable. The important point to be noted is that political
parties and leadership have consistently manipulated religious identity
for political purposes. Hasan’s contention about the role of the colonial
state (cited above) can easily apply to independent India as well.
In the following paragraphs, we shall attend to three issues: first, the
Shah Bano judgement and its aftermath, which illustrates the issue of
gender in relation to religion; the question of Urdu, which highlights
the interplay of language and religion; and finally, and most impor-
tantly, the issue of Hindu-Muslim relations and communal violence. In
all these cases, we will observe the role of politics and the State.
Shah Bano
In 1985, the Supreme Court delivered a judgement in the case of Shah
Bano v. Mohammed Ahmed Khan which has had a lasting impact on the
national debate on religion and politics. Shah Bano was, at the time, a
seventy-three year old divorcee, who had received a paltry mainte-
nance allowance of Rs. 179.20 (less than $5) per month from the High
Court of Madhya Pradesh. It was against this decision that her former
husband, Mohammed Ahmed Khan, appealed to the Supreme Court.
In doing so, he argued that he had paid her an allowance for the three
lunar months after he had pronounced an oral divorce,3 and that
under Muslim Personal Law, he was obliged to do no more. Indeed, it
was his case that Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (being
criminal, and not civil law, and therefore uniformly applicable to all
citizens), under which he had been instructed to provide maintenance,
conflicted with his rights under Muslim Personal Law. The Supreme
Court was being asked – and not for the first time – to pronounce on
this conflict. It upheld the judgement of the High Court, quoting
profusely from Islamic texts to show why Khan must pay maintenance
to his divorced wife. It also made a reference to Article 44 of the
Constitution, and the importance of a common civil code, arguing
that if communities would not bring about reform, it was the duty of
courts to do so. (Engineer, 1987: 23–34)
This judgement was widely acclaimed, but there was some mobiliza-
tion around the counter-view that the Supreme Court had meddled
with something that was outside its ken, viz. the right of a minority
community to determine its own personal laws. The loss of some parlia-
mentary seats in a series of by-elections in December 1985 alerted the
Congress to the political potential of this judgement, and caused it to
swiftly renege on its earlier position of hailing the judgement. Indeed,
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi – after a series of consultations with the
Muslim ulema, but disregarding completely the many representations
from Muslim women and progressive community leaders – introduced a
legislation, the Muslim Women’s (Protection of Rights in Divorce) Bill,
which was subsequently passed. This Act, which Mushirul Hasan has
described as ‘a significant and reckless departure from the informal
consensus established by Nehru on non-intervention in matters of
faith’ (Hasan, 1997:277), removed Muslim women divorcees from the
purview of Section 125, thereby – for the first time – limiting the uni-
versal and uniform application of the criminal law of the land. Even as
the rights of cultural community – the ostensible rationale of this legis-
lation – were thus recognized, a sharp blow was simultaneously dealt to
the cause of gender justice. By privileging the Muslim woman’s commu-

nity identity over that of gender, the secular interests of Muslim women
were sacrificed at the altar of the Muslim leadership’s right to control
community affairs. The Muslim female citizen was doubly disadvan-
taged: both as a member of a minority religious community (vis-à-vis
the predominantly Hindu majority) and as a woman (vis-à-vis Muslim
men, the state and even other women in society).4
Urdu
The Urdu language is the mother tongue of over 40 million Indians
according to the Census of 1991. Though it has been identified with
the Muslim minority, it is worth entering two caveats. The first is that
only Muslims in north India speak Urdu, while Muslims in other
regions of India speak the relevant regional language. In the states of
Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, which have a
concentration of Muslim population, the majority of Muslims speak
the relevant regional language. Even in the northern states of Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar, Urdu speakers are limited to the small upper
strata/castes of the population, while the vast majority of Muslims
speak local Hindustani dialects. (Alam, 2003:4884) Secondly, prior to
independence, Urdu was the language of upper-class everyday life in
north India, regardless of religion. It was customary for primary educa-
tion in undivided Punjab, Uttar Pradesh (then the United Provinces)
and Bihar to be conducted almost entirely in Urdu. This despite the
fact that Urdu (the word comes from the Turkish ortu, meaning
military camp) is itself seen as a hybrid of Persian-Arabic and Hindi, a
patois of the bazaars and the cantonment.
In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, however, Urdu had
increasingly modelled itself on the Persian literary tradition, and
evolved its own very distinguished literary tradition, particularly strong
in poetry. Salil Mishra (2003) has traced the evolution, through the
19th century, of the ‘normative association’ of Hindi with Hinduism,
and that of Urdu with Islam. His work demonstrates the cultural roots
of this increasing identification between linguistic and religious iden-
tity. As the demand for a separate Muslim nation came to be articu-
lated in the 1940s, Urdu was declared to be the language of the new
Muslim nation. This had the peculiar consequence of Urdu being
imposed as the official language on Pakistan in which, in 1947, Urdu
was the mother-tongue of only 4% of the population. Even after the
creation of the separate Bengali-speaking nation of Bangladesh in
1971, this proportion had risen to only 8%, with Urdu being ranked, in
terms of number of speakers, the fifth language of Pakistan. (Mishra,

2003:21–2)
In the Constituent Assembly, Muslim members pleaded for
Hindustani – in either the Devanagari or the Urdu script, or with
Devanagari as its primary and Urdu as its second script – to be made
the ‘lingua franca’ of India. As Maulana Azad argued, the language
spoken in north India effectively had three different names – Hindi,
Urdu, Hindustani – and therefore Hindustani would be an appropriate
compromise, avoiding the Persian-Arabic extreme of Urdu, on the one
hand, and of Sanskritized Hindi, on the other. (Noorani, 2003:294–5)
Gandhi too had always been in favour of Hindustani, the language he
spoke as he travelled across India. The lack of acceptance of his pro-
posal led to Azad’s resignation from the Drafting Committee. It was
clear that the fuss over Urdu was actually an expression of hostility
against the Muslims.
Today, Urdu is the official language of only one state in India, the
Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. In October 1947, the
state government of the then United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh)
decided to make Hindi – written in the Devanagari script – the state
language. In 1989, an attempt to make Urdu the second official lan-
guage of the state sparked off some episodes of communal violence in
the name of language riots. (Chandhoke, forthcoming:43) Concern is
periodically expressed for the decline in the circulation of Urdu news-
papers and journals, though in certain districts of some southern
states, Urdu is an official language. Hasan has noted that even the
defenders of Urdu abandoned its cause after being co-opted by the
establishment, and were satisfied by the trivial sops of Urdu academies,
literary awards and other forms of official cultural patronage. (Hasan,
1997:278) The policy neglect of the Urdu language is inextricably
linked with its supposed identification with the largest minority com-
munity in the country, and has therefore been a casualty of communal
politics.
Communal violence
The history of independent India is replete with instances of commu-
nal violence, from the bloody partition of 1947 to the brutal killing of
Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Ashutosh Varshney’s study of Hindu-
Muslim riots between 1950–1995, based on a compilation of newspa-
per reports, suggests that there has been a rising curve of violence since
the mid to late 1970s, which peaked with the destruction of the Babri
Masjid at Ayodhya in December 1992. However, after this peak of
1992–93, Varshney argues that the next two years witnessed a decline.
His analysis of this data reinforces the commonly held view that com-
munal riots are an essentially urban phenomenon. In the 46-year
period under study, only 4% of the reported deaths were in rural areas.
In terms of regional spread, contrary to the popular impression that
Uttar Pradesh is the state most greatly afflicted by communal violence,
it appears that Gujarat, Bihar and Maharashtra have higher per capita
rates of death in communal incidents. (Varshney, 2002:95–7) In ex-
planatory terms, Varshney rejects both essentialist/primordialist as well
as instrumentalist theories of ethnic conflict, to argue instead that
‘civil society is the missing variable’. (ibid.:39) As such, associational
civic engagement – through business organizations, trades unions, pro-
fessional associations and political parties – can promote inter-ethnic
peace in urban settings. Varshney demonstrates this by contrasting
three pairs of Indian cities, each pair having one city that has experi-
enced communal violence and another that has not.
It could however be argued that, despite the compelling nature of
Varshney’s evidence, he has underplayed the role of the state. The
Gujarat riots of 1992, which Varshney has claimed lend further
credence to his thesis, actually show more starkly than at any previous
point in Indian history the unabashed and blatant participation of the
state in the pogrom in which almost 1000 Muslims were brutally mur-
dered, while their homes and shops were looted and burnt. It is true
that the silence of local civil society was palpable,5 but it is also the
case that state agencies, state officials, the state machinery and even
the head of the administration, the Chief Minister, were implicated in
this violence. The victims found it difficult, if not impossible, to even
file cases against their perpetrators at the police station, or claims for
compensation with the administration.
The complicity of political parties and administration is vividly illus-
trated in a recent work by Paul Brass (2003) on Hindu-Muslim violence
in Aligarh, undoubtedly one of India’s most riot-prone cities. Viewing
riots as theatrical productions in which many actors participate, and
which manifest phases of rehearsal, of staging and of interpretation,
Brass makes three important points. First, that ‘there is a direct causal
link between riots and electoral/political competition’, as demon-
strated by the fact that riots commonly ‘precede elections and intensify
political competition’. (2003: 33–4) Secondly, Brass argues, riots are
‘functionally useful to a wide array of individuals, groups, parties and
the state authorities’ (ibid.:34), as they provide political benefits.
Finally, it is his contention that riots involve mass participation in the
way they are enacted and this feeds on a discourse of Hindu-Muslim

communalism ‘that has corrupted history, penetrated memory,
and contributes in the present to the production and perpetuation of
communal violence in the country’. (ibid.)
The state and political parties have indeed played an important role
in the construction of minority identity, in the creation of majoritarian
discourses and politics, and even in brutal violence against minority
groups. The marginality of minorities in governance structures is only
partly a function of these, but partly also the result of the socio-
economic inequalities that mark the condition of at least the largest
minority group, the Muslims. As a prelude to discussing the levels of
social and economic deprivation that obtain among the Muslims, let
us take stock of political and voting behaviour among the Muslims.
The collapse of the Muslim League in the immediate post-Partition
period did see a rush of Muslims towards the Congress. The Congress
Party has historically projected itself as the protector of minorities, the
guarantor of minority rights and a secular state. It is no surprise there-
fore that, till very recently, the Congress was the party most favoured
by the Muslim voters. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph have, however,
argued that since the shifts in Muslim voting patterns from 1977 to
1984 parallel the regional and national outcomes in these elections,
this raises ‘the question of whether the minorities’ purported support
for Congress results more from a special relationship based on
Congress’s commitment to equal citizenship and secular values or from
a perception of Congress as the dominant party and as such the likely
winner and prospective governing party’. (Rudolph and Rudolph,
1987:187) In fact, there is a distinct similarity in the voting behaviour
of Muslims, the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes. However,
the thesis that there is ‘a special relationship’ between the Congress
and the Muslim voters, while it may have held true till Nehru’s time, is
of doubtful validity from the early 1960s onwards. In the 207 parlia-
mentary constituencies which have Muslim populations of 10% or
more, the Rudolphs found that in three consecutive elections – 1977,
1980 and 1984 – the Congress received a lower percentage of votes in
these constituencies, than in others. Further, in 1977 and 1980, it won
a lower proportion of seats in Muslim constituencies than it did
overall. (ibid.:194) As such, there is little evidence to support the thesis
of ‘a special relationship’ between the Congress and the Muslims.
Indeed, a recent study argues that it is the Congress that must take
the blame for the under-representation of Muslims, because the per-
centage of Muslim nominations by the party has been consistently
low. In the first five Lok Sabha elections (1952–1971), the Congress
nominations for Muslims remained between 4.29% and 5.74%. In
these elections, Muslim candidates belonging to the Congress managed
to win even in constituencies where the Muslim population was only
between 3% and 18%. (Ansari, 2003:134) It was in the 1977 (post-
Emergency) election that the Congress, for the first time, nominated
7.52% Muslim candidates. It is, however, interesting to observe that
in this particular election, the Muslim vote conformed to the general
pattern and went against even Muslim candidates if they were Con-
gress nominees. (ibid.:18) In the next two general elections (1980 and
1984), the number of Muslims elected reached their highest number.
Both these elections saw a massive pro-Congress wave which was
echoed in the Muslim vote. Beginning with the 1989 election, there
has been a downward curve of Muslim representation, repeated in
1991, 1996 and 1998. These elections have seen a spread of the Muslim
vote, with – in 1998 – the 28 Muslim MPs representing 12 different
parties. The corresponding figure was 6 parties in 1991 and for 7 parties
in 1996. In the 1996 election – which, not unimportantly, was the first
parliamentary election after the demolition of the Babri Masjid – the
Congress lost Muslim support by just four percentage points, from 38%
in 1991 to 34% in 1996. In the parliamentary elections of 1998 and
1999, it appeared that the Muslim anger had subsided and there was a
return to the Congress, signalled by an increase in the Muslim vote for
the Congress, to 43% in 1998 and 50% in 1999. (Yadav, 2003:65) The
13th Lok Sabha, elected in 1999, had 32 Muslim MPs, up from 28 in
each of the previous three Lok Sabhas, and representing 11 different
parties. In the current – fourteenth – Lok Sabha, elected in 2004, the
number of Muslims MPs is 35, of which 25 were elected from con-
stituencies with a Muslim population higher than 15%. Ten out of
these 35 MPs are from the Congress Party and the rest are from 10
other parties.6
The vacuum of political leadership has been a genuine problem for
the Muslim community, which has therefore been held hostage by a
small set of mostly conservative leaders. Every major political party –
including even the BJP – does have a token Muslim or two in the upper
echelons of the party leadership. These individuals, however, are
objects of criticism on two counts. Firstly, it is argued, they are seeking
personal success, and so prefer to attach themselves to the major polit-
ical parties from which they can obtain benefits such as ministerial
office. Less dishonourably, it is argued that some of them prefer to
project themselves as possessing broad-based appeal, and do not wish
to be seen as only Muslim leaders. Secondly, though they win elections

from Muslim-majority constituencies, and hence on the basis of their
Muslim identity, these politicians choose to let the mainstream parties
benefit from this. The potential for translating their electoral victory
into empowerment for the community is thus lost. Muslim politicians
in the Congress, the BJP, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) alike have been blamed for dissipating the potential of the
Muslim vote in this manner.
Further, there are mainly two political parties claiming to represent
the Muslims, both of which are essentially regional parties in south
India. The first of these is the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML),
which is predominantly a Kerala-based party, that has been in alliance
with the Kerala Congress for many years, and part of the United
Democratic Front (Congress-led coalition) governments in that state.
Its electoral base is in the Muslim-majority constituencies of Kerala.
The second party is the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) of
Andhra Pradesh. As regional parties, the IUML and the MIM con-
vened, in 1998, a meeting to push for the formation of a national
political party of Muslims. In 1999, a number of Muslim organizations
put forward a ‘Muslim agenda’ for the general elections, urging the
secular national parties – evidently without success – to give them
greater representation. (Noorani, 2003:279–82)
Despite some recent discussion on the desirability of PR, however,
the major concerns reflected by the public pronouncements of Muslim
social organizations and political parties are unsurprisingly centered
around the issue of the Ayodhya dispute and the security of Muslim
citizens’ lives and property in the face of communal violence. In the
last few years, the question of quotas – especially for Muslims belong-
ing to the backward classes/lower castes has also become more pro-
minent. Of course, this may presage divisions within the Muslim
community, which has long – and sociologically incorrectly – been
viewed by politicians as a monolith. Some leaders, such as Syed
Shahabuddin, argue that the entire Muslim community in India forms
a backward class and should be recognized as a Backward Class eligible
for reservation. Others – such as the All India Muslim OBC Organisa-
tion – believe that Muslim society in India is divided according to
castes. These positions clearly represent conflicts of interest, as those
Muslim groups that have already received official recognition as OBCs,
would obviously like to keep the ‘upper caste’ Muslims out of the lists
to prevent a shrinking of the pie for those whom they believe to be
truly deserving. The All India Muslim OBC Organisation is, however,
demanding Scheduled Caste status for Muslim Dalits. (Jenkins,

2003:115–17)
Caste
Historically, the stratificatory system of caste has, despite its apparently

static inflexibility, been dynamic, fluid and changing. Colonial rule
and the condition of modernity – political and economic – have been
instrumental in transforming it beyond all recognition. The manner in
which castes have been enumerated would make little sense to a visitor
from some ancient time, well-versed in the textual and ritualistic
aspects of caste. British colonial rule treated caste as ‘the institutional
keystone of Indian society’. (Fuller, 2003:481) Beginning with the first
decennial all-India census of 1871, the census became the main instru-
ment of gathering information about the ‘caste system’ and classifying
it. These exercises of data-collection also fed into the organization of,
for instance, the British Army in India, whose regiments (e.g., the Jat
regiment or the Sikh regiment) were caste/community based, depend-
ing on the colonial state’s stereotyping of certain communities as
‘martial races’. The measurement of castes and sub-castes according to
size and number in the census contributed to the ‘fixing’ of caste iden-
tities in ways hitherto unknown. With their identities so fixed, caste
groups began to form caste associations, some of which would periodi-
cally petition the colonial government to reconsider their ranking in
the hierarchy! The arbiters of the caste system were thus no longer part
of the ritual order, but rather external to it. Thus was a pre-existing set
of social relationships shaped and moulded by the British rulers of
India, which, even as it reinforced the Brahmanical principle of the
hierarchy, gave it added ‘secular’ legitimacy, and imparted to it a
certain fixity and inflexibility.
In their attempt to fashion a modern, secular and egalitarian
nation, the Indian nationalists condemned the evils of caste and
caste practices, and advocated social reform and the ‘uplift’ of the
untouchable castes, which were then called the Depressed Classes.
From the 1920s onwards, under Gandhi’s leadership, the struggle for
freedom also incorporated the issue of social equality for the
untouchables, rechristened by Gandhi as Harijans (or children of
God). In particular, Gandhi fought against the ‘sin’ of untouchabil-
ity, and advocated the ‘upliftment’ of this section of society. Sharply
critical of the Gandhian view was the more radical rejection of
Brahmanical Hinduism articulated by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, ‘untouch-
able’ lawyer, educated at Columbia University, who later became the

President of India’s Constituent Assembly.
In 1909, when the Muslims were granted communal electorates in
the Morley-Minto Reforms, the Depressed Classes also became con-
scious of the politics of numbers. The caste Hindus were keen that they
should be counted as Hindus, while the Muslims argued that they
should not. (Pai, 2002b:4) In the Government of India Act of 1919, the
Depressed Classes were given representation – albeit as non-official
nominated members – in the Central Legislative Assembly as well as
the Provincial Legislatures. This legislation was the first official recogni-
tion of the status of the Depressed Classes as a distinct and disadvan-
taged group. In different parts of the country, there was a proliferation
of caste associations, caste conferences and a widespread expression of
anti-Brahman sentiment, fuelled by the resentment against the
Brahmin monopoly over public employment. The Justice Movement
launched in 1915–16 in the Madras Presidency, for instance, pointed to
the Brahman predominance in education, public services and politics.
Despite accounting for only 3.2% of the population of the province,
Brahmans held 55% of the positions of deputy collector and 72% of
munsif posts in 1912. (Sarkar, 1998:159) A similar situation prevailed
in the princely state of Mysore in southern India. The 1920s thus saw
demands being made, in different parts of the country, for reservations
in education and public employment, and for special representation in
the various legislative bodies. The designation of some groups as ‘back-
ward’ has its origins in such demands, such that, in 1921, Mysore state
defined every single community except Brahmans as backward and
provided them with educational reservations. The absence of such a
movement in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) is explained by
the influence, in this region, of the Congress and Gandhi, who used
the language of ‘upliftment’ rather than the more radical Ambedkarite
idea of mobilization.
The devolution of powers to elected governments in the provinces,
and the three-fold increase in the size of the Indian electorate, both
mandated by the GOI Act of 1935, gave a new salience to the question
of community identity. Ambedkar’s demand for separate electorates for
the untouchables had already generated new fears among the (mostly
caste Hindu) nationalists, since the backward classes represented
between 15 and 20% of the population, not a proportion to be scoffed
at in the electoral arithmetic. This was particularly the case in Bengal
and the Punjab, in both of which the Hindu and Muslim populations
were fairly evenly balanced in terms of numbers. The compromise
formula arrived at in the Poona Pact was to keep Hindus and the
Depressed Classes in the same electorates, but reserve a proportion of
seats in the assemblies for candidates belonging to the latter group.
This arrangement was formalized in the Communal Award of 1932,
whereby a fixed number of seats in every provincial legislature were to
be reserved for members of the Depressed Classes, as well as of the reli-
gious minorities. This was clearly an important precursor to the provi-
sions of the Constitution of independent India, as was the procedure of
creating Schedules for tribes and castes deserving of such reservation.
Initiated in 1936, this task of ‘scheduling’ attempted to identify and
list every depressed community in every province, and the initial list
contained 400 untouchable groups apart from many tribes. This is the
origin of the terms Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. (Bayly,
1999:260–3)
The term ‘backward classes’ has its own distinctive genealogy, and has
its origins in the dissensions within the anti-Brahman movements of the
early twentieth century (especially in Madras and Bombay), in which
members of low ranking, but ‘clean’ (as opposed to the ‘Untouchable’)
castes, adopted the term Backwards as self-description, to distinguish
themselves from the ‘Forward’ or higher-ranking non-Brahman groups
who largely controlled these movements and organizations. (Bayly,
1999:241n) Galanter provides a list of ten different denotations of
the term ‘backward classes’, ranging from its usage as a synonym for the
Scheduled Castes to a term covering all communities other than the
most advanced. (1984:155)
Effectively, the term Backward castes has today come to denote
caste groups – such as the Sudras – that are low in the caste hierarchy,
though not as low as the dalits. Sometimes, this becomes virtually a
residual category, excluding only the Brahmans and the dalit castes.
As we have seen, some states like Mysore defined every single commu-
nity except Brahmans as backward. By 1950, the all-India Backward
Classes Federation had been formed, and four years later there were at
least 14 organizations demanding reservations for these groups, both
at the regional and the national levels. Indeed, long before this cate-
gory became politically salient throughout India, governments in the
southern states had promulgated lists of the OBCs, members of whom
would be eligible for reservations. In Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the
reservations thus covered almost 75% of the states’ population.
The Constitution drafted for the newly independent nation-state
sought to enact a universalistic conception of citizenship. This is delin-
eated especially in the chapter on the Fundamental Rights of citizens,
which has two articles that specifically mention caste. The first of these
is Article 15, which prohibits the State from discriminating between
citizens ‘on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth’. In
apparent recognition of the practice of untouchability, Clause 2 of
Article 15 goes further to list a number of sites in which such discrimi-
nation may be practised (by private individuals and groups) and is
therefore forbidden. These include access to shops, public restaurants,
hotels and places of public entertainment, as well as wells, tanks, roads,
bathing ghats and places of public resort which are either wholly or
partially funded by the State. The last clause of this Article specifies
that, notwithstanding these prohibitions, the State may make special
provision for ‘the advancement of any socially and educationally back-
ward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes’. Article 17 explicitly abolishes untouchability, and forbids its
practice in any form, stating that it shall be an offence punishable
under law. In the chapter on the Directive Principles of State Policy,
finally, Article 46 of the Constitution enjoins the state to ‘promote
with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker
sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, and…protect them from social injustice and all
forms of exploitation.’ (The Constitution of India) It has been argued
that the law, politics and government of the young Republic embodied
a curious irony in the zealous promotion of the idea of a modern,
casteless India, along with the recognition of caste as a social reality
and the need therefore to remove the disabilities attached to it. (Bayly,
1999:266) The Constitution, it could be argued, similarly expresses a
paradox in that, even as it legislates out of existence the practice of
untouchability and discrimination on grounds of caste, it simultane-
ously recognizes and seeks to redress the special disadvantages arising
out of caste oppression.7
While the idea of separate electorates was emphatically rejected for
religious minorities, as well as for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, in
recognition of the history of inequality and injustice suffered by the
latter, an elaborate set of protective measures was devised. These
included, above all, reservation of seats in legislatures, government
service and academic institutions. The Constitution thus provides for
reservation of seats in proportion to their numbers for the Scheduled
Castes (and Scheduled Tribes) in the lower House of Parliament, the
Lok Sabha, as well as the lower houses of the Legislative Assemblies or
Vidhan Sabhas in the States.8 There are no reservations in the Rajya
Sabha (the upper house of Parliament), or in the upper houses in those
States that have them. This quota does not, however, constitute a sepa-
rate electorate. In a separate electorate, a particular group is represented
by a legislator chosen by an electorate that is composed solely of
members of that group. Thus, both the electorate and the candidate
belong to the same community.
In a reserved seat, by contrast, the candidates must belong to the
particular social group, but the electorate is a mix of all the social
groups that happen to live within the area of the constituency.9 A
number of ordinary laws attempt to strengthen the constitutional
intention of encouraging the political participation of disadvantaged
groups. They do so by, for example, requiring smaller election deposits
from members of these groups. The Constitution makers had envisaged
a time limit of ten years for these reservation policies, but they have
been routinely extended every ten years since the enactment of the
Constitution. Members of these groups can, of course, contest elections
from an unreserved constituency. As we shall see later in this study,
only a small number have actually succeeded in getting so elected. This
underscores the critical importance of the quota in enabling the pres-
ence of the Scheduled Castes in legislative bodies, as does the fact that,
in the absence of any reservation of positions in the ministry or com-
mittees of parliament, the levels of representation are rather low.
Reservations are also provided for – in accordance with their propor-
tion in the population – in government employment at all levels, and
in State-funded educational institutions, especially in admission to
medical and engineering colleges. Quotas are sometimes provided for
in housing, allotment of land, and other such coveted but scarce
goods.
Since the passage of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments in
1992, one-third of seats in the bodies of local governance – both urban
and rural – are reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. This
encompasses three levels of panchayats – the village or gram panchayat,
the intermediate block or mandal panchayat, and the district-level Zilla
Parishad. The significance of these quotas is to be understood in the
context of the revitalization, by constitutional amendment, of institu-
tions of local governance by devolving powers to them that they did
not formerly possess. It is another matter that the experience has not
everywhere added up to effective decentralization.
These constitutional provisions are buttressed by a wealth of statu-
tory provisions that are not, like the ones mentioned above, of the
‘compensatory discrimination’ type, but rather intended to secure
equal – as opposed to preferential – treatment of citizens. Most promi-
nent among these are the Protection of Civil Rights Act and the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,
designed to protect members of these groups from violence and the
indignity of untouchability. There are also a host of other laws seeking
to regulate money lending, prevent the transfer of land from tribals to
others, and to protect these groups from economic exploitation.
While there was no constitutional provision of reservations of any
kind for the OBCs, two articles of the Constitution make a mention of
the term ‘backward classes’. The first is Article 16(4) which mandates
the State to make ‘special provision for the advancement of any
socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.’ This makes it quite clear that
the two were not interchangeable terms. However, no further specifica-
tion of ‘backward classes’ was made, except for the qualifiers of social
and educational backwardness. The Constitution also envisaged the
establishment of a Backward Classes Commission, to ‘investigate the
conditions of backward classes’ (Article 340).
In 1953, the GOI appointed an 11-member Commission, headed by
Kaka Kalelkar (and therefore better known as the Kaka Kalelkar Report)
which laboured for two years to produce an exhaustive ‘master list’ of
all those groups which were neither untouchables nor tribals. It was
then estimated that such groups (mainly backward castes) comprised
31.81% of India’s population. (GOI, 1955: 14–15) If, to this figure, were
added the approximately 14% Scheduled Castes and 6% Scheduled
Tribes (the percentages estimated at the time) already entitled to reser-
vations, it seemed that over half the Indian population would be eligi-
ble for reservations. Everyone who did not belong to any of these three
groups – for whom an argument of preferential treatment could be
made – belonged, by default, to a Forward community.
The decades of the 1970s and 1980s witnessed an increasing political
assertiveness on the part of the backward castes in rural India, partly
due to their increasing economic power. The programme of land
reform, though far from adequate, did have the effect of breaking
down the large landholdings of the upper castes, and so benefiting the
tenant-cultivators, many of whom belonged to the middle castes
(sometimes also referred to as ‘middle peasants’, but broadly, back-
wards). Most of these were farming communities, whose economic
interests included the continuation of the subsidies – especially free
electricity and the non-taxation of the agricultural sector – that had
been provided to create an agricultural surplus. The Green Revolution
increased not only their prosperity, but also their political stakes.
The exact content and meaning of the term OBC has been differently
specified in different states, and is partly a product of the particular cir-
cumstances of the competition for recognition. The term OBC does not
therefore signify a homogeneous social group. Splits between upper and
lower backward castes have occurred in many states historically, and
new categories – such as, most recently, the Most Backward Castes
(MBCs) in Uttar Pradesh – continue to emerge. Even in Karnataka, in
the 1970s, there was intense competition between the two dominant
castes (both backwards) for the inclusion of their own, and the exclu-
sion of the other, from the list of OBCs. In some cases, such groups
would emphasize economic backwardness as a criterion in order to
exclude rivals; but, where convenient, common culture and social
customs would be highlighted.10 In Tamil Nadu, the Dravid Munnetra
Kazhagam, which led backward caste politics in the 1950s, initially
emphasized ‘race’. But when it realized that this may entail alliances
with the former untouchable castes, it shifted the emphasis to language,
which created the possibilities of a common culture – and therefore
political accommodation – between the party and upper caste Tamils,
including Brahmans. (Shah, 2002b: 398)
In what was clearly a reflection of the new political importance of
these groups, several state governments set up Backward Classes
Commissions (in the southern states, this had occurred as early as
the 1960s) which collected a mass of data on such communities. The
Backward Classes Commission of 1978–80 – better known by the
name of its Chairman, B.P. Mandal, as the Mandal Commission –
raised the banner of reserved quotas for the OBCs. In several states in
southern India, as we earlier remarked, these were already in place.
Here, state politics also reflected the importance of the caste
configuration in electoral arithmetic. In states where such quotas were
implemented in the 1980s, such as Gujarat, caste violence had
erupted, and through the 1980s, the recommendations of the Mandal
Commission were not acted upon by the Central Government. It was
only in 1990 that the government of V.P. Singh – an erstwhile Con-
gress politician who had quit a Cabinet Ministership in Rajiv Gandhi’s
government on the issue of corruption – officially accepted the
Mandal report. Apart from triggering off controversy and even vio-
lence (including the self-immolation of some upper caste students
who feared that their prospects of acquiring an education or a job
were endangered by such reservations), the Mandal reform also facili-
tated the emergence of new political parties claiming to represent the
backward castes, such as the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the
Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. India has, in the 1990s, witnessed a

greater regionalization of politics, in which the salience of backward
caste parties in the states has been notable. In the era of coalition gov-
ernments, this has also meant a greater voice for these parties in the
formation of ministries at the Central level.
The Mandal Commission’s operative definition of the term ‘back-
ward classes’ was in terms of backward castes. Concluding a discussion
of the inequalities and oppressions contained in the hierarchical
structure of Hindu society, the Commission asked in anguish,
Will it be too much to say that in the traditional Indian society

social backwardness was a direct consequence of caste status and,
further, that various other types of backwardness flowed directly
from this crippling handicap?
(Government of India, 1980a:17)
The Mandal Commission laid down 11 indicators or criteria for deter-

mining social and educational backwardness, grouped according to
three broad categories of social, educational and economic. In each of
these, the term used was ‘castes/classes’. (ibid.:52) It was now clear
that – as in all the provincial usages for the past several decades – the
term backward class was merely a euphemism for caste, and indeed the
Commission stated that ‘the classes, castes or communities identified
as backward as a result of this survey belong to Hindu religion only.’
(ibid.:54) It did nevertheless examine the question of OBCs among
non-Hindu communities, especially Muslims, Christians and Sikhs,
and – because these religions were, in its words, ‘totally egalitarian’ –
decided to evolve other criteria for identifying non-Hindu OBCs. In all,
the Mandal Commission argued that the OBCs – 43.70% Hindu, and
the remaining Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists, excluding
scheduled castes and tribes among them – constituted approximately
52% of India’s population.
In terms of quotas, the Mandal Commission recommended a reser-
vation of 27% of positions in public employment and educational
institutions for the OBCs, in addition to the 22% already designated
for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes together (15% + 7%
respectively). This takes the total reservation to 49%. In 1992, the
Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement (Indra Sawhney vs. Union of
India), held that ‘caste can be and quite often is a class in India’, and
if the caste in question happens to be socially backward, it is a back-
ward class. (Frontline, December 18, 1992) However, the judgement
held that reservations could not exceed the ‘reasonable limit’ of 50%,
and therefore the Mandal Commission’s recommendation of 27%
reservation was endorsed, as it kept the total proportion of reserved
seats at 49%. The implications of this judgement for the states has
been a central issue in state politics, since Karnataka has had 68%,
Tamil Nadu 69%, and Bihar was clamouring for reservation to the
extent of 80%. These developments have substantially recast politics
in the states, with the occasional joining of forces between the
parties claiming to represent the backwards and the dalits, especially
when ranged against the forces of Hindu nationalism represented by
the upper-caste BJP.
Reservations have indeed become the stuff of political mobilization
and competitive electoral politics.11 In the state of Uttar Pradesh, for
instance, the 1990s saw electoral alliances being forged and broken
between the BSP, claiming to represent the dalits, and the Samajwadi
Party, claiming to represent the backwards. These two parties have
been seen as rivals and competitors rather than allies and collabora-
tors, given the difference in their social base. Hence, their alliance
was always a matter of some surprise. And yet, the fact that in the
past few years, the BSP has made common electoral cause with the
upper-caste BJP is even more astonishing. The realpolitik explanation
is probably the most credible, as the objective of democratic politics
becomes not so much representation as the seizing of state power,
whatever mode of opportunistic politics that may entail. The most
recent example of this is the current promise by the Central
Government to provide reservations for economically backward
members of the upper castes. A decision to this effect was taken by
the Union Cabinet on June 5, 2003, which has been advised that this
would require a constitutional amendment. This announcement
came in response to a promise made by the Congress government in
the state of Rajasthan to include upper castes within the purview of
state-level reservations. Some important states, including Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and Delhi were, at the time, on the verge of going to
the polls, and the move was clearly a sign of the competitive pop-
ulism that has marked the politics of reservations. Subsequently, after
the national election of 2004, the demand for extending reservations
to the private sector was also made, and there is currently some
debate about whether corporations should be obliged to follow the
path of reservations (which some criticize as undesirable and others
as unimplementable) or the North American path of encouraging
diversity.
Meanwhile, a number of Muslim OBC organizations have also

emerged in the course of the last decade, some of which are confined
to the state of Bihar. They are also broadly ‘Mandalist’ in their orienta-
tion, and have been demanding that all backward communities among
the Muslims be included in the state and central lists of OBCs and SCs.
Some of these organizations are also seeking to forge alliances across
the religious divide, as between dalit and OBC groups belonging to
both the Muslim and Hindu communities. (Alam, 2003:4885) These
are trends, it must be said, that are only just beginning to be noted in
scholarly circles, and have not yet entered public discourse.
The politicization of caste, thus, has given this ritual category a
secular orientation first noticed in the work of Susanne and Lloyd
Rudolph (1967) as well as that of Rajni Kothari and others in 1970.
(Kothari, 1970) The assumption that castes vote en bloc for the particu-
lar political party they see as their authentic representative has
however been empirically interrogated. Sometimes, castes identify with
a particular political party not only because its leaders are caste-fellows,
but also because it raises issues that they perceive as important. One
such example of a party identification that fuses interest and identity is
the support base of the Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, widely perceived to
be a party of the Jat community (a backward caste). However, the fact
that Jats vote for the Lok Dal is not solely attributable to the fact that
its leaders are Jats, but also to the fact that the Lok Dal has been repre-
senting the interests of farmers, which is what most Jats in Uttar
Pradesh happen to be. Likewise, middle-class voters from the
Scheduled Castes have been known to vote for the BJP, while the
poorer voters from these castes invariably vote for the BSP. (Shah,
2002a:24)
Tribe
The policy debate on tribals in India after independence centred around

the core question of whether they ought to be left in their state of isola-
tion or assimilated. The anthropologist Verrier Elwin was seen to be asso-
ciated with the isolationist camp,12 while the sociologist G.S. Ghurye was
an assimilationist who believed that to redress the backwardness of the
tribes they had to be brought into the mainstream. The earliest policy
statement on the subject was arguably Nehru’s enunciation of the
pancha shila (or five principles) doctrine, in which he argued that people
should be allowed to develop along the lines of their own genius
without any imposition from the outside; organize their own adminis-
tration and development; and, above all, that their land and forest rights
must be respected. (Furer-Haimendorf, 1967:217) Despite Nehru’s princi-
ples, however, a two-fold policy was followed towards the tribes. On the
one hand, the policy envisaged protective measures for tribal culture, but
on the other, tribal areas became subjects of official development, some-
times in the name of the national interest, and at other times in the
name of tribal development itself.
The pursuit of development in independent India has entailed con-
sequences for tribal society that express a striking continuity with colo-
nial practices of undermining the tribal dependence on the forest,
which had customarily taken the form of usufructuary rights or collec-
tive ownership. British rule in India witnessed the process of large-scale
alienation of tribal land (often through deceitful methods) and the
introduction of the alien institution of private property. Though the
state in independent India officially disallowed the alienation and sale
of tribal land, it nevertheless continued this process, by the takeover of
land ostensibly for public purposes, e.g. development projects. As a
result, tribal areas have witnessed intensely extractive exploitation for
mineral resources; and the construction of infrastructural projects such
as dams and power projects, displacing large numbers of tribals. This
has contributed to the uprooting and consequent impoverishment of
tribal communities as they are thrown at the mercy of a highly
exploitative labour market which they are compelled to enter as
unskilled labour.
Tribal movements have also emerged, to which the attitude of the
state has been sometimes appropriative, and at other times repressive.
On the whole, however, there has been a tendency for the central polit-
ical leadership to either divide such movements, or to try and co-opt
tribal leadership through the politics of patronage. (Brass, 1992:183) In
recent times, tribal movements for autonomy have actually succeeded
in their demand for separate statehood – the creation of Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh states – and therefore control over the rich mineral
resources of their regions.
Policy measures for the Scheduled Tribes can be divided into broadly
four categories.
(i) The first of these are frequently called ‘protective’ measures, but
are perhaps more accurately described as developmental measures,
as they seek to address the problem of the material development
of these groups. Until the mid-1970s, the state approach towards
the protection of tribal interests took the form of welfare mea-
sures, in the areas of the economy, education, health and com-

munication. From the Fifth Five Year Plan onwards, there was a
discernible shift in emphasis towards development. This shift from
the language of welfare to that of development ushered in a
phase of development projects located in specific areas identified
for the purpose, with a large amount of money being poured into
these. In real terms, however, studies show that the development
outcomes have been poor, as much of the spending has been
concentrated on infrastructure. The exposure to modern educa-
tion – especially due to the efforts of Christian missionaries in
north-east India – has however facilitated some social mobility,
and the creation of a small tribal middle-class. Most of this is
accounted for by jobs in the government and public sector, as
tribal people are much less visible in the field of business.
(ii) This brings us then to the second component of the policy strat-
egy for tribals, which consisted of provisions for compensatory
discrimination or reservation – mandated by the Constitution – of
places in legislatures (both Parliament and the State assemblies),
state-funded institutions of higher education and public employ-
ment at all levels. They enjoy a quota in accordance with their
proportion in the population. This is in a sense the most impor-
tant component of the policy approach to the tribal question,
and its outcomes will be assessed later.
(iii) Thirdly, there are the macro-institutional structures designed to
manage the specificity of the tribal situation. Six states together
account for 70.83% of India’s tribal population: Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa, Gujarat and Rajasthan.
These figures are from the 1991 census, and would doubtless
undergo a change when the figures of the 2001 census are
released, as two states in central India based on tribal identity –
Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand – were carved out of Madhya
Pradesh and Bihar respectively in the intervening years. The
states of the north-east, including Assam, account for just
12.01% of India’s tribal population, and without Assam for just
7.7%. The significance of these states is not that the majority of
tribes in India live here, but that the populations of these states
are overwhelmingly tribal. Thus, tribes constitute 94.75%
of the population of Mizoram; 83.53% of the population of
Meghalaya; and 87.70% of the population of Nagaland. Some of
these states – Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh – actu-
ally arose out of the institutional innovation of Autonomous
District Councils, devised to facilitate the participation of the

people in determining developmental priorities. These
Councils, which still exist in parts of West Bengal, Bihar and
Jammu and Kashmir, possess powers of law-making, revenue
extraction, as well as judicial and developmental powers.
(iv) The fourth policy strategy could be described as remedial, as it
seeks to provide avenues by which aggrieved members of these
groups may approach state institutions. The NCSCST was
specifically established for this purpose, and has recently been
bifurcated to create a new Commission exclusively for the
Scheduled Tribes. This has been done primarily in response to the
complaint that the Commission was functioning mainly as a
grievance-redressal mechanism for the Scheduled Castes, and
that the inclusion of the Scheduled Tribes was purely nominal.
The inadequacy of these policy measures can be judged partly by

looking at the socio-economic data on the Scheduled Tribes in
Chapter 2 – which provides clear evidence of persistent deprivation –
and partly by an assessment of the performance of other institutions
created for managing diversity, such as the NCSCST (recently bifur-
cated into two separate commissions for these two groups) and the
new institutions for local self-governance, which provide for quotas
for their representation. It is to an examination and evaluation of
these that we turn in the next chapter.
4
Promoting Diversity and
Protecting the Vulnerable
Apart from the other safeguards intended to protect members of dis-

advantaged groups – such as reservations in legislative bodies, public
employment and public education – which have been discussed in the
previous chapter, the Constitution of India also made provision for a
watchdog institution, originally called the Special Officer for the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, to oversee the implementa-
tion of these safeguards. In 1990, this was redesigned, by constitu-
tional amendment, as the National Commission for Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes, a constitutionally mandated body designed to
protect the interests of these groups. The NCSCST was intended to
monitor, on a regular and ongoing basis, the implementation of the
various provisions – social, economic, educational and political, pro-
vided in the Constitution for members of the scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes. Similar institutions were subsequently set up for reli-
gious minorities and backward castes, the National Commission for
Minorities (1992) and the National Commission for Backward Classes
(1993), respectively. In this chapter, we examine the functioning of
the NCSCST as an institution entrusted with the task of submitting to
Parliament an annual report on the implementation of the safeguards
constitutionally provided for these two groups.
A second institutional innovation was signalled by the 73rd and
74th Constitution Amendment Acts (1993), which launched an ambi-
tious experiment for decentralizing power to the local level (both
rural and urban), combined with its democratization through reserva-
tions for marginalized groups in Indian society, including women. In
rural areas, this was to be achieved through the mandatory creation
of, and regular elections to, a three-tier system1 of local government
from the level of the village to the district. A central feature of these
71
Amendments was the mandatory reservation of one-third of all seats,

at every level, including the position of the Chairperson, for women;
and reservation, in proportion to their presence in the population,
for members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The states were
given the latitude to decide whether they wished to extend the reser-
vation provisions to members of the OBCs, which several states did.
The intention was to provide opportunities for direct and enhanced
representation at the local level, and to especially empower disadvan-
taged social groups, including women, to have a voice in local pol-
itics. This chapter examines the performance of these institutions
over the period of approximately a decade since they came into
existence in this form.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and

Scheduled Tribes2
The creation of this institution was mandated by the Constitution to

‘investigate and monitor all matters relating to the safeguards pro-
vided for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes…’ (Article 338)
in both constitutional and ordinary law. In terms of the distinction
frequently made between the institutional orientations of protection
or promotion, it could be said that the NCSCST is predominantly a
protective institution, albeit one that is supposed to monitor the
progress of, and advise on, promotional policy initiatives emanating
from other state agencies. Of course, it must be noted that neither the
responsibility of promoting the welfare of the scheduled castes and
tribes, nor that of protecting them against a variety of injustices, has
been vested exclusively in this institution. Despite the fact that it
enjoys constitutional status, moreover, the recommendations of the
Commission are advisory rather than mandatory.
This watchdog body to monitor the constitutional safeguards was
arguably an institutional innovation. On November 18, 1950 an office of
the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was
created, and the first appointment to this office was made. By 1965, the
institution had grown substantially, with 17 regional offices across the
country. Two years later, these were reorganized in the form of five zonal
offices, delinked from the Commissioner’s office, and affiliated to the
newly created office of the Directorate General of Backward Classes
Welfare (DGBCW) in the Department of Social Welfare of the GOI. With
the regional organizations reporting to the Department of Social Welfare,
the Commissioner’s office was now deprived of access to the field organ-
Promoting Diversity and Protecting the Vulnerable 73
ization through which it could collect information on the working of the

safeguards. Meanwhile, programmes for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes
remained low on the list of governmental priorities. They were poorly
designed and weakly implemented. The Commissioner’s office was poorly
resourced. In terms of staffing, for instance, it had in 1977, precisely two
Research Officers and two Investigators. As such, it possessed neither
the capacity to generate its own data nor the authority to compel other
government agencies to provide it. (Galanter, 1984:70)
In the meantime, Parliament had set up its own Joint Parliamentary
Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in
1968. This 30-member Committee, with 20 members from the Lok Sabha
and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, was given investigative powers which, at
this stage, the Commissioner’s office did not possess. Unlike the Com-
mission, the Parliamentary Committee has had an uninterrupted record
of functioning since 1968, and has presented to Parliament as many as
479 Reports on a wide range of subjects.3
The Janata Party government that came to power after the Emergency
had, in its election manifesto, made a commitment to bring about a
socio-economic revolution. Barely two months into office, and partly in
response to evidence of rising atrocities against dalits, it announced that
it would set up an umbrella civil rights commission that could protect
the minorities, backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes
against discrimination and inequality. Six months later, there was specu-
lation that the government was planning to set up two commissions –
one for religious minorities and the other for the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes – instead of a single commission on civil rights. The
commission for minorities was appointed in January 1978, while for the
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, a constitutional amendment was proposed
to merge the extant Commissioner’s office with a new, broad-based,
multi-member body that would serve as the main constitutional author-
ity to look into issues concerning the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes.
Before the amendment was introduced, however, the Union Gov-
ernment created, by a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs, a
Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, consisting
of a chairperson and four members, including the Special Officer
appointed under Article 338. The mandate of this body was to inves-
tigate the implementation of safeguards – especially in respect of job
reservations – and the laws pertaining to social disabilities. The first
Commission under this dispensation was set up in August 1978. The
field offices of the erstwhile Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, which had been transferred to the DGBCW in

1967, were brought under this Commission constituted through an
administrative decision. In August 1978,4 the GOI introduced the
Constitution (Forty Sixth Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha. This bill
was debated in May 1979 but it could not get enacted for want of the
requisite two-thirds majority. (Austin, 1999:451) The GOI, however,
did not nullify the 1978 home ministry resolution and the two orga-
nizations – the one brought into being by the Constitution and other
through the resolution – co-existed till 1992.
The functions of these two organizations overlapped considerably,
and so in July 1987 the Government of India began the task of demar-
cating more precisely their operational domains. As part of this move,
the office of the Commission was reinvented as the NCSCST-87
through a resolution of the Ministry of Social Welfare. In this new
version, the Commission’s office became more of a think tank for
welfare policy, while the Commissioner’s office retained exclusive
rights over its original domain, namely, the monitoring of the working
of the safeguards provided for SCs and STs in the Constitution. While
it is difficult to prove that it was the radical nature of the 28th and 29th
Reports of the Commissioner (B.D. Sharma) that provoked yet another
reorganization, it is the case that these reports were highly critical of
government policy – including the issue of the displacement of tribals
in the Narmada Valley, and the impact of forest laws on the relation-
ship of tribals to the forest – and as such extremely inconvenient.
Thus, this arrangement was once again revised, paving the way for
the creation – this time by constitutional amendment – of the NCSCST
in its present incarnation. The Commission was constituted to give
effect to the Constitution (Sixty Fifth Amendment) Act, 1990 and came
into being on 12 March 1992, in the process merging the old
Commissioner’s office and the old National Commission’s office. In
this post-1992 form, there have been three Commissions so far, with
the fourth having been recently appointed.
In 2002, the Government announced its decision to have two sepa-
rate Commissions for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. As we
have seen, the administrative rationale of establishing a single commis-
sion for both groups was not premised on any presumption of likeness
between them, but simply by virtue of their being the two categories of
groups – as distinct from religious minorities – that were eligible for
compensatory discrimination. The administrative rationale for separa-
tion is equally mysterious, but far from likely to be a belated recogni-
tion of sociological difference. The politics of bifurcation are less
difficult to decipher. In a democracy, the pressure to homogenize and

consolidate votes creates the imperative – for, say, the BSP – to link the
Dalit-Bahujan samaj, in an inclusive conception of the SCs, STs, OBCs
and Minorities. For others, who stand to gain from a separate electoral
constituency of tribals, it makes good political sense to oppose such a
move. The Scheduled Tribes themselves have been arguing that their
problems are distinct, and that their relative isolation has prevented
them from availing of the opportunities available, allowing the SCs to
march ahead of them in education and employment.
In organizational terms, the Commission’s headquarters are located
in New Delhi, and its field organization of 16 state offices is spread
across the country. At headquarters, the Commission is organized into
four departments: (a) personnel and administration, (b) the atrocities
and protection of civil rights wing, (c) the service safeguards wing, and
(d) the economic and social development wing (see Table 4.1). While
each of these departments has assistant directors, deputy directors and
research officers, the largest number of staff at headquarters is engaged
in the personnel and administration wing. Of the more functional
wings, it is the services safeguards wing that is substantially better
staffed, while the atrocities and protection of civil rights wing has the
smallest number of personnel. This clearly indicates both the priority
given to these issues within the Commission, as well as its institutional
capacity for handling them.
Turning to the mandate of the Commission, we find that its animat-
ing spirit is contained in the Preamble to the Indian Constitution, and
the articles in Parts III and IV providing for social safeguards (abolition
of untouchability, child labour, traffic in human beings, and temple
entry); economic safeguards (preventing the alienation of land in the
Scheduled Areas); educational and cultural safeguards (reservations,
and the right to preserve distinct cultures); political safeguards (reserva-
tion in legislatures); and service safeguards (reservations in public
employment and for purposes of promotion).
Table 4.1 Departmental distribution of staff in the NCSCST
Personnel and Atrocities and Service Economic Total

Administration Protection of Safeguards and Social
Civil Rights Wing Wing (SSW) Development
(APCR) Wing
(ESDW)
29 8 19 11 67
The Constitution further specifies the duties of the Commission, and

gives it both the responsibility and the mandate to act on particular
issues. According to these provisions, it is the responsibility of the
Commission to
• investigate and monitor all matters relating to the safeguards pro-

vided for the SCs and STs in the constitution and any other law in
force at the moment;
• evaluate the working of such safeguards;
• inquire into specific complaints pertaining to the deprivation of
rights and safeguards to these sections;
• participate and advise in the planning process and evaluate the
progress of development of these communities;
• submit reports ‘annually and at such times as the commission may
deem fit’ to the President on the working of safeguards, with appro-
priate and specific recommendations addressed to the various state
governments and the Union government.
This listing of the Commission’s duties is thus quite specific about its
role, even as it gives the Commission a fair degree of autonomy as well
as space for interpreting its field of action. It indicates the proactive
role envisaged for the Commission in the amendment, combining the
investigative, monitoring, evaluative, advisory and remedial roles of
the Commission in matters relating to the SCs and STs.
In its investigative role, the Commission has unlimited power to
investigate any matter relating to the safeguards, protection, welfare
and development of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, as also
specific complaints. The Commission possesses the powers of a civil
court to summon and enforce attendance of any individual, including
officials, and to ask for testimony on oath, documents, public records,
and evidence on affidavits. Only matters that are already sub judice
cannot be investigated. These provisions do sometimes lead to turf
wars between the Commission’s central team/field offices and the local
administration, on which the former depend for administrative and
logistical support.
In its advisory capacity, the NCSCST is supposed to interact with
state governments as well as with the Planning Commission. Though it
is mandatory for the state governments to consult the Commission,
this does not in fact happen on a routine basis. The Commission’s
interface with the Planning Commission generally takes place through
a variety of committees and working groups on matters relating to the
SCs and STs. The Commission is empowered to undertake research and

commission studies to evaluate the implementation and impact of
various government projects for the SCs and STs. The Commission has
so far prepared four such ‘Special Reports’, three of which are state-
specific (and therefore sent to the respective state governments), while
one is the report on Services Safeguards, submitted in January 1998,
and tabled in Parliament in the same year. (NCSCST, 1998)
In its monitoring role, the Commission is supposed to ensure that all
the provisions are being followed everywhere and at all times. It can
ask any public authority for a report, or ask state offices to collect data
on specific subjects. This is an extremely important activity, especially
as it relates to atrocities against dalits, and enables intervention in
such cases outside of the sluggish legal process. When an atrocity is
reported, or even taking suo moto cognizance of an atrocity, the
Commission contacts the law enforcement and administrative machin-
ery of the state to ensure that the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 is
adhered to. It monitors every stage of this process, from the mandatory
visit of the District Magistrate to the scene of the crime, through the
appointment of special public prosecutors, to the last details of the
handling of the case. It also determines whether adequate medical
assistance and the mandatory compensation have been provided.
Monitoring thus is not just about collecting data, but is actually
intended to be a potent instrument of intervention. In some special
cases, which are not strictly covered by the law, the Commission can
resort to non-formal action in its capacity as the ‘protector’ of the
interests of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This provision
is sometimes used to, for instance, protect couples entering into an
inter-caste marriage, from social hostility and threats of violence.
Finally, the Commission is supposed to prepare an Annual Report,
which is submitted to the President of India, and then placed before
both Houses of Parliament, along with an Action Taken Report on the
Commission’s recommendations, or – in the case of non-compliance –
reasons for not accepting its recommendations.
In sum, therefore, the Commission is designed to function as a
watchdog institution that monitors the executive wing on behalf of
the legislative wing of the state, while remaining autonomous of both.
The Government is technically responsible to Parliament regarding its
actions/inaction on the recommendations of the NCSCST. In design,
the NCSCST was intended to be rather like the Comptroller and
Auditor-General (CAG) of India or the Election Commission, similarly
appointed by the President of India. The Election Commission enjoys
considerable autonomy within its own area of functioning, while the

CAG has power over the various departments of the executive, which it
can hold accountable in certain respects. The Commission lacks the
autonomy enjoyed by the former, as well as the control exercised by
the latter. As an institution which monitors the functioning of state
agencies with respect to the interests of certain disadvantaged social
groups, the NCSCST was designed to be roughly analogous to the CAG,
though in a somewhat more limited sphere. In its actual performance
of this role, the Commission has been circumscribed not merely as a
result of institutional design, but also by its own predisposition to be
self-limiting.
Of the four core areas of the Commission’s functioning – viz. service
safeguards, education, economic development and atrocities – the SSW
is arguably the most active. In the first year (1992–93), a total of 8858
petitions were received by the Commission; followed by 5220 in
1994–96 and 3388 in 1996–97 (Table 4.2). These complaints relate
mostly to promotions, transfers to insignificant positions or distant
places, harassment or discrimination at work, the institution of disci-
plinary proceedings on flimsy grounds, unfair departmental inquiries,
adverse entries in annual confidential reports, delayed retirement
benefits, and so forth.
The SSW has the largest workload and, as we have seen, the largest
workforce of all the functional departments of the Commission. In this
area of its functioning, the Commission’s inquiries into complaints are
on the whole effective, and its recommendations specific, pointing out
exactly where the violations are occurring and the measures that
should be taken to improve the situation. As such, it functions as a
fairly effective mechanism for the redressal of grievances, and almost a
Table 4.2 Service related petitions processed by the NCSCST (1994–97)
S.No. Nature of complaint 1994–96 1996–97
1. Appointments 1375 723

2. Promotion 1480 873
3. Transfer 485 292
4. Harassment and discrimination 940 606
5. Others (disciplinary cases, cases relating to
adverse confidential reports, appointments on
companionate grounds etc.) 940 894
Total 5220 3388
Source: National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes: Fourth Report
(1998):186
form of endorsed unionization. Of course, this means that the wing

caters primarily to the needs of the new elites of the SC and ST groups,
created as a result of policies of compensatory discrimination, and
hence works for those who have already overcome certain barriers and
gained access.
In the bureaucracy, there is a stark shortfall of 5% and 2.5% at the
Class I and II level positions, while an overwhelming 44.34% of the
sweepers in government service are still from among the SCs. Any
temptation to conclude that the NCSCST may be pre-occupied with
redressing service-related grievances for this group of employees is
however not sustained, because in 1994, the Central Government set
up a separate National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (cleaning
personnel).
While the Commission is reasonably active in redressing complaints
on reservations in educational institutions, curiously enough, eco-
nomic development is the least contentious area of the Commission’s
functioning. The Commission routinely chronicles the tribal sub-plans,
and monitors the various poverty alleviation programmes being
administered by the central and state governments. More recently, it
has turned its attention to the question of rehabilitation for the tribes,
in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, displaced by large irrigation
projects. However, the Commission’s recommendations for the regu-
larization and rationalization of land records, the streamlining of land
revenue administration, the enforcement of ceiling legislations and
tenancy reforms, are neither heeded nor translated into policy.
One of the most important areas of the Commission’s functioning is
that of atrocities against dalits. The NCSCST collects and comments on
data relating to cases under the Civil Rights Act and the Prevention of
Atrocities Act, and its reports suggest a rising graph of atrocities and
violence against these groups in the 1990s. When an atrocity comes to
its notice, whether through a petition or through a media report, the
Commission can ask the relevant state office to pursue it; or Com-
mission member(s) may hold an on-the-spot inquiry, and remain in
the area where it was committed to pressurize the district administra-
tion to act effectively. However, even though the Commission has
extensive powers of investigation and inquiry in this area and can fix
responsibility and recommend action, these recommendations are not
binding.
In the fairly extensive constellation of laws, policies and institutions
relating to the Scheduled Castes (and, until recently, the Scheduled
Tribes), the NCSCST appears to have been a marginal presence so far.
Of all its ancestors and relatives since 1950, the NCSCST possesses the
most wide-ranging set of powers. As a consultative body, it enjoys
the status of the pre-eminent agency that advises the President,
Parliament, the Union Government, the State governments and the
Planning Commission on all matters relating to the Scheduled Castes
and, until recently, the Scheduled Tribes.
However, several factors diminish its effectiveness. Beginning with
the internal factors, the Commission has, by choosing to interpret its
constitutional mandate narrowly, laid itself open to the charge of elite
bias. The fact that it is both most energetic and most effective in
the area of service-related safeguards speaks for itself. Since the
Commission, for the most part, acts on complaints, and it is the more
upwardly mobile sections within these groups that are articulate and
capable of mounting claims, it could be said to have been less than
sensitive to the exclusions engendered by the lack of education or
information, and has not used its powers of suo moto cognizance
actively enough. The Commission’s competence in settling service-
related grievances is clouded over by its inability to reduce the inci-
dence of atrocities and violence against dalits, or to effectively fight the
persistent scourge of untouchability.
This predisposition to confront only the lesser challenge is appar-
ent also in the readiness of the Commission to suggest ways of
streamlining procedures or ensuring fairness in the implementation
of reservations and development schemes, or even statutory changes.
It appears reluctant, however, to play a role in making a stronger nor-
matively informed case for fundamental change, or even a frank and
sharp analysis of social realities. The Commission’s stand on the land
question is perhaps the only exception to this. In its reports, the
Commission has systematically presented statistics to show that the
Scheduled Castes constitute the vast majority of wage labourers in
the agricultural workforce. It has repeatedly highlighted questions of
land reform, land records, the alienation of tribal land, and the need
for streamlining land revenue administration. In all this, the
Commission has clearly sought to go beyond its role as protector, to
advance the welfare of disadvantaged social groups. It has, however,
failed to bring about any concrete change in these areas, if only
because the ostensible – and weakly articulated – consensus on such
issues results in politically correct homilies rather than in concrete
policy.
An important constraint is the underlying tension between the
Commission’s constitutional obligation of monitoring the working of
safeguards, on the one hand, and its functioning as a body that

redresses complaints of violations of safeguards, on the other. It is
sometimes argued that the Commission is a paper tiger and should be
given more teeth. However, to give the Commission additional powers,
in criminal investigation for instance, would require it to follow the
prevailing rules regarding evidence and procedures. Quite apart from
the dubious consequences of creating a parallel judicial system, these
may actually retard the effectiveness of the Commission, by rendering
it vulnerable to litigation in the form of appeals to higher judicial
bodies, thereby nullifying its operational effectiveness and, what is
more, diluting its moral authority and stature. Indeed, such a Com-
mission would be so inundated with legislation that it may be unable
to perform its monitoring role.
The Commission – as constituted in 1992 – is supposed to prepare an
Annual Report for presentation to Parliament. The last such report
tabled in Parliament was the Fourth Report of 1998. The Fifth and
Sixth Reports were prepared and submitted to the President two years
ago, but have not yet been tabled in Parliament. Such delays are
usually on account of the requirement that the Action Taken Report be
submitted along with the main report. This means that the President
circulates the Report to all the Ministries and Departments which are
mentioned in it, and it is only when they have all explained their
actions, or justified their inaction, that the Report can be presented in
Parliament. The Constitution does not fix any period within which
the Report must be discussed in Parliament. There is usually a gap of
two years between the Report being submitted to the President, and
it being tabled in Parliament. Even when Reports are tabled in
Parliament, they are frequently not discussed.
Perhaps the most singular handicap that afflicts the Commission is,
however, the fact that its decisions are not binding, but recommenda-
tory. Though this is not explicitly stated in the Constitution (as
amended), Article 338, with all its sub-clauses, is deeply ambiguous on
this issue. It gives the Commission quasi-judicial powers of investiga-
tion, but does not mention the form in which the Commission’s
judgement of a particular issue would be delivered and implemented. It
makes it incumbent upon the Central and state governments to
consult the Commission, but does not state that its advice would be
binding. In practice, it appears that as and when the Commission is
effective, it is its moral authority that is important, if not decisive. The
Commission itself has registered this frustration in its Reports (Fourth
Report, 1998:247).
Democratic decentralization: the new Panchayati Raj

Institutions5
In 1992, the Government of India enacted the 73rd and 74th Con-
stitutional Amendments, reviving and re-inventing the Panchayati Raj
Institutions (PRIs) which had languished for neglect, ceasing to exist in
some parts of the country, and becoming captives of dominant local
interests in others. The enactment of these amendments was not,
however, the result of a popular struggle for democratization. It was
substantially inspired by the disappointment over the failure of devel-
opment programmes, and the perception that these would be able to
perform better with local participation which would help to better
identify local needs as well as deserving beneficiaries.
The 73rd and 74th amendments gave constitutional status to the PRIs
and to the urban local bodies respectively. A panchayat was defined as
‘an institution of self-government…for the rural areas’. A new Schedule
was added to the constitution, which lists the subjects on which
powers may be devolved to the panchayats. The Act required that the
states should pass conformity legislations within a specified time-
period, and made some provisions mandatory and binding on the
states.
The mandatory provisions pertained primarily to the structure of the
PRIs and the reservation quotas within them. Depending on size, every
state would – according to these provisions – have a two- or three-tier
system of panchayats, at the base of which would be the Gram Sabha
(or Village Assembly), consisting of all members of the community
above the age of 18. The lowest tier is the Gram Panchayat (Village
Panchayat), above it is the Block or Mandal Panchayat (known by dif-
ferent names in different parts of the country), and above that the Zilla
Parishad (or District Panchayat). Elections to the panchayats at every
level are filled by direct election from territorial constituencies in the
panchayat area, and the panchayat has a five year term.
In the directly elected seats of members in all panchayats, there is
reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in pro-
portion to their total population in a panchayat area, and one-third of
these seats are reserved for women belonging to these groups. All pan-
chayats have to have not less than one-third of their seats reserved for
women. Again, the offices of Chairpersons in the panchayats at all
levels are also reserved for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and
women (as decided by the state legislature), so long as not less than
one-third of the chairpersonships are reserved for women. Similarly,
there is a reservation in the offices of the Chairperson in panchayats at

all levels for members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in
proportion to their population in a state.
The provisions left to the discretion of the state legislatures were
concerned with the question of additional reservation for the OBCs, as
also with the all-important question of the powers to be devolved to
the panchayats. State legislatures were empowered to reserve seats –
both as members and as chairpersons – for the backward classes. They
were also empowered to give panchayats the authority to levy and
collect taxes, and to furnish them with such powers as would be neces-
sary to enable them to function as institutions of self-government. The
most important aspect of the discretionary provisions is the spec-
ification of the powers and functions of the panchayats, defined in
Article 243-G:
Subject to the provisions of the Constitution, the Legislature of a

State may, by law, endow the Panchayats with such powers and authority
as may be necessary to enable them to function as institutions of self-
government and such law may contain provisions for the devolution
of powers and responsibilities upon Panchayats at the appropriate
level, subject to such conditions as may be specified therein, with
respect to –
(a) the preparation of plans for economic development and social
justice
(b) the implementation of schemes for economic development and
social justice as may be entrusted to them including those in
relation to the matters listed in the Eleventh Schedule.
(emphasis added)
The Eleventh Schedule lists 29 subjects as a reference for the state legis-
latures when deciding the devolution of powers in their conformity
legislations. These relate to agriculture; land improvement, land reform
and land consolidation; minor irrigation, water management and
watershed development; animal husbandry, dairy, poultry, and
fisheries; social forestry and farm forestry; minor forest produce; small-
scale industries; drinking water; fuel and fodder; basic infrastructure
like roads and bridges; rural electrification; education, including
primary and secondary schools, as well as technical training, voca-
tional education, and adult and non-formal education; primary health
centres, dispensaries and hospitals; cultural activities, markets, fairs
and festivals; family welfare and social welfare, including welfare of the
Scheduled Castes and Tribes; poverty alleviation programmes; the

public distribution system; and the maintenance of community assets.
By April 1994, all the states had completed the process of enacting
conformity legislations. All states have, of course, provided for reserva-
tion for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in accordance with
their proportion in the total population of the area. All states have also
provided for reservation of not less than one-third of the seats in the
Gram Panchayat for women. Reservation for the backward classes,
though discretionary, is provided for by Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan,
Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Goa. There are, however,
variations in the percentage of seats reserved for the backward classes:
one-tenth in Gujarat, one-third in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and
27% in Maharashtra.
While structures undoubtedly predispose institutions to evolve in
particular ways, the most stringent test of any exercise in democratic
decentralization is the actual powers and functions that are devolved
to democratic institutions at the local level, which must enjoy auton-
omy in the exercise of these. The relevant article of the Constitution
describes panchayats as institutions of self-government, but if the
scope of self-government is externally defined and circumscribed, the
institutions will be limited in this role. Article 243(G) itself provides
for such circumscription, as it permits the states to endow the pan-
chayats with powers, without actually making it imperative for them
to do so. Democratization of power, unaccompanied by real decentral-
ization of powers and functions, is self-defeating. Moreover, even if
local bodies possess powers and functions, but do not enjoy the
administrative or financial control to give effect to these, the out-
comes will again be less than satisfactory. An examination of the
powers and functions actually devolved makes evident the fact that
the implications of the constitutional amendment were perhaps more
radical in reservation provisions than in the powers and functions
which were left to the states to determine and finance.
In fact, only three conformity acts – those of West Bengal, Bihar
and Tripura – state that they aim to endow panchayats with powers
and functions that can enable them to work as institutions of self-
government. The Haryana Act specifically states that the objective of
the panchayat institutions is to administer rural areas better. With the
maintenance of law and order remaining in the hands of the state gov-
ernment, and with it police and judicial powers (except in a few states
where nyaya panchayats have been constituted), the devolved func-
tions generally include those relating to the planning and implementa-

tion of some selected development programmes. There continues to
exist duality of control in development, with the elected bodies only
paralleling the existing state structures. The absence of adequate
financial provision, moreover, makes difficult the performance of even
the few developmental functions that have been devolved. Most of the
conformity acts in the states give gram panchayats the power to levy
taxes on rural property; non-motorized vehicles; profession, trades and
callings. Another source of revenue for panchayats is the fee for water,
lighting and conservancy services, to provide for public facilities. Some
money is also raised by tax-sharing – most commonly, land revenue
and stamp duty – between the state governments and the panchayats.
However, the main source of income for the panchayats remains the
grants provided by the government, especially through special schemes
like the Integrated Rural Development Scheme or the Jawahar Rozgar
Yojana. These are usually in the nature of tied funds, and are attached
to schemes imposed from above, instead of being made available for
plans evolved at the local level.
These structural limitations notwithstanding, the experience of reser-
vations in these institutions has been mixed. In an early survey of 100
members in seven panchayat bodies in Shahpur block of Muzaffarnagar
district, G.K. Lieten (1996) argued that though the 1995 elections have
brought about a numerical preponderance of agricultural labourers and
small peasants, the new panchayats continued to function rather
like the earlier ones: with large numbers of nominal or ‘namesake’6
members, extensive corruption in development works, rigging of elec-
tions through the ‘capture’ of polling booths, and an agenda that is
devoid of social concerns because it reflects only the interests of the
dominant local elite, represented by the pradhan. Lieten saw in this
confirmation of Ambedkar’s cynicism about panchayats, as inappropri-
ate instruments of rural development or of transforming landed power
relations. Regarding the representation of women, Lieten wrote
Some of the women even did not know that they were a member.
Once or twice the pradhan had dispatched a document for signing,
but they did not know what it was for. Without being derogatory
towards women in general, the impression is that women stand a
better chance of becoming a member of the panchayat if they are illiterate,
frail of body and of mind and rather old. The women who at least
knew that they were panchayat members very rarely went to the
meetings. If they did, then they only did so in order to put their
thumb impression or to sign and then came back. The usual proce-
dure, however, is for the pradhan to send the document to be
signed to their house.
This procedure, as a matter of fact, applies not only to the women, but
to most of the male members as well.
(emphases added) (Lieten, 1996:2701)
Another study by Sudha Pai in the same region provides a more

nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of surrogate representa-
tion, though her survey of three villages in the green revolution area of
Daurala block in Meerut district echoes Lieten’s in some respects. Like
Lieten, she records the changed social composition of the new pan-
chayats, with their predominance of lower castes and shows that the
pradhanis who have been elected to the panchayats after 1995 are
‘namesake’ members. Their perception of the panchayat as a govern-
ment organization does not encourage them to see their participation
as necessary. Indeed, Pai found that ‘interviewing them for under-
standing the working of the panchayat was of little use as they are
ignorant of local affairs’. (Pai, 1998:1009) In each of Pai’s villages, the
1995 election brought a dalit woman to the post of pradhan. Since
these are also Ambedkar villages, their grants for development schemes
were doubled for a two-year period, and channelized through the pan-
chayat. This has enabled a great deal of developmental work to take
place, and vested the pradhans with tremendous powers of patronage.
However, Pai found that it is the husbands of the pradhanis – locally
described as the pradhans – who take all the decisions.
The pradhanis have never attended any meeting or made any deci-
sion about allocation of funds to individuals or schemes. They
merely sign on the papers sent to their house after the decision has
been made.
(Pai, 1998:1010)
Yet, the mere fact of having been elected to the post of pradhan has
provoked the realization, among these women, of the need to acquire
an education or at least literacy skills. Inspired by the example of
Mayawati, the dalit woman who became Chief Minister of Uttar
Pradesh, they are keen that the girls in the village attend school
regularly. This phenomenon may be called proto-empowerment.
Though it is apparent that discrimination is more pronounced in the
case of women, panchayat representatives belonging to the scheduled
castes and tribes are victims of discrimination and exclusion, irrespec-

tive of gender. In 1994, Manulal, a dalit panch in Barbatpur village
(Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh) was beaten up, simply because he did
not provide the whereabouts of his brother who had had a quarrel
with a young thakur (upper caste) while playing dice. In another case,
in Chhatarpur district (Madhya Pradesh), Sarman Ahirbar, a dalit who
won the election to the post of upa-sarpanch (deputy head) against a
rival yadav (backward caste) candidate (though with the support of a
high-caste sarpanch) was tortured thus:
They tied Sarman’s hands with a stick in the cross position and
poured molasses on his head. The sweet molasses attracted black
ants and he was viciously bitten. To add insult to injury, he was
paraded around the village for an hour. Helpless and humiliated,
Sarman thought he would die. No one came to his rescue. Later, an
old man intervened firmly, and he was released.
(Matthew and Nayak, 1996:1768)
P. Sainath’s survey of several of the 104 dalit-led panchayats of

Tikamgarh in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, shows how,
after the first year, dalit sarpanches are regularly ousted by a variety of
methods: rigged suspensions, manipulated votes of no-confidence, or
forcing them into expensive litigation. Where there are two scheduled
caste groups in a village, the upper castes support and prop up the
smaller one, so that they can retain their control over the panchayat.
The fact that all this invariably takes place only after the first twelve
months have elapsed – because the rules disallow no-confidence
motions in the first year – is clearly not a coincidence. (Sainath, 1998)
Thus, despite the reservation of seats for women and members of the
scheduled castes, it is clear that the domination of the upper-castes
endures. In intra-family disputes and similar conflicts, it is the upper-
caste leaders that village folk tend to approach, rather than the gram
panchayat. These castes also tend to influence the choice of candidates
for elections, as well as voting behaviour. Hence, to expect panchayat
institutions to work in a way that is insulated from the inequalities of
local society may be utopian, but is it also utopian to expect that, in
the long run, these institutions will themselves become mechanisms
for assertions by these marginalized groups?
The two cases examined in this chapter – a constitutional body
intended to promote the welfare of the scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes and empowered to inquire into atrocities committed against
people belonging to these groups; and an initiative for the decentral-

ization of political power to the local level which provides for quotas
for members of disadvantaged groups, including in many states the
OBCs – both suggest a wide chasm between the promise of an institu-
tion and its actual performance. The next chapter turns to an exam-
ination of the electoral and political processes which mediate the
representation of such groups.
5
Negotiating Diversity: Parties and
the Electoral System
The management of ethnic diversity and potential ethnic conflict

through democratic institutions is necessarily dependent upon an
appropriate institutional design. The study of the so-called ‘third wave
of democratization’ has made it abundantly clear that the best of con-
stitutional designs can and do go horribly awry. No constitutional
design – least of all the ready-made, off-the-shelf, and one-size-fits-all
type – can be perfect, or even adequately anticipate the needs of a
polity as it evolves.1 Indeed, the recent trend of drawing upon the
expertise of specialists in the tasks of constitution-making,2 premised
on the assumption that the tasks of institutional engineering are formi-
dable and require technical expertise and experience, may be con-
trasted with the alternate view that constitutions are a product of the
evolution of political processes and, as such, reflect the social and
political contract between the state and its citizens. Despite the wide
range of world constitutions closely examined by those who drafted it,
the Indian experience of constitution-making clearly belongs to the
latter category, insofar as the spirit of the constitutional document
reflects the social and political consensus forged, along with national
identity, in the course of the movement for independence from
colonial rule.
Electoral systems are a crucial element of constitutional design,
and the designing of electoral systems for socially heterogeneous soci-
eties has been perceived as particularly challenging. The relationship
between electoral systems and democratic outcomes is thus a much-
theorized one. Its antecedents are most famously traced to the argu-
ment of John Stuart Mill – in his Considerations on Representative
89
Government (1861) – that democracy was virtually impossible in

societies marked by ethnic – especially linguistic – differences.
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of dif-

ferent nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, espe-
cially if they read and speak different languages, the united public
opinion, necessary to the working of representative government,
cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide polit-
ical acts, are different in the different sections of the country.
(Mill, 1971 [1861]:382)
Since the decolonization process in the mid-twentieth century, we

have seen the mushrooming of a huge literature discussing the tenabil-
ity (or otherwise) of democracy in divided societies. Though the elec-
toral system is only one aspect of the institutional design to manage
ethnic diversity in a democratic polity, it is one that has, in recent
years, received some scholarly attention.
The dominant theoretical assumption regarding electoral systems
has long been that ‘majoritarian, winner-takes-all solutions are particu-
larly inappropriate for divided societies, because they typically under-
represent minorities and generate zero-sum competitions.’ (Belmont et
al, 2002:8). In a broader sense, however, the chief virtue of the majori-
tarian formula is believed to be that it leads to the evolution of a two-
party system, generates a cohesive single-party cabinet, and thereby
provides stable and effective democratic rule. The objections to the
majoritarian formula are mainly two: (a) that, in the first-past-the-post
system, the democratic principle itself stands violated when candidates
win with less than a majority of the votes cast; and (b) that it generates
disproportionalities between votes cast and seats won, and that this
tends to work against the representation of minorities. Offsetting these
disadvantages, however, is one perhaps unintended positive conse-
quence of majoritarian systems: that while they increase the distance
between citizen and government, they are more accountable. This is
because – unlike in a coalition government – responsibility can, in
majoritarian institutions, be clearly attributed, and accountability
enforced. (Manin et al, 1999:47)
In contrast to majoritarian systems, PR is credited with greater pro-
portionality and the better representation of minorities, generally in
the form of multi-party systems and multi-party coalition govern-
ments. However, PR is also flawed insofar as (a) it carries the possibil-
ities of impasse and deadlock as a number of smaller players/parties are
Negotiating Diversity: Parties and the Electoral System 91
part of coalitions; (b) it tends to produce political instability, thereby

making governments less decisive, viable and effective; and (c) in the
coalitions so produced, responsibility is diffuse leading to lower levels
of accountability. Despite the existence of a wide variety of voting
system designs, it is between the votaries of majoritarian and PR
systems that the debate has been most heated.
Like many other countries that were part of the British empire, India
too adopted the majoritarian system without much debate on alterna-
tives. In this chapter, we seek to answer the following questions: how
was the relationship between electoral systems and the inclusive polit-
ical project of Indian nationalism envisaged in the making of the
Indian constitution? What have been the consequences of the majori-
tarian electoral system adopted by India for the representation of
minorities and other disadvantaged groups? Would a different electoral
system make a difference to these patterns of representation? What
does recent political discourse on this subject suggest? The chapter
challenges the conventional wisdom of democratic theory by showing
how the FPTP system that was adopted actually encouraged and
accommodated representational aspirations in a way that was respon-
sive to, and reflected with a fair degree of accuracy, the processes of
‘social churning’ that were at work. This protected the political system
from ossification, giving it a certain dynamism as both a catalyst of
change, and a cushioning force against extreme shocks to the founda-
tions of the political community. In the pages that follow, we will
suggest the merits of an approach that, instead of comparing the rela-
tive merits of two systems in the abstract, assesses the way in which a
particular electoral system is worked, and its possibilities realized and
reinvented.
In the making of the Indian Constitution, it is arguable that there
were two main legacies: the institutional and the ideational. The insti-
tutional framework, firstly, was substantially the legacy of the depart-
ing imperial power, as embodied in the Government of India Act of
1935. Even federalism – the chief strategy to negotiate diversity – was
present in an incipient form in that document. Certainly, the GOI Act
of 1935 and more generally the Westminster system of parliamentary
democratic government, was considered by the leadership of the new
nation-state to be the most appropriate and suitable form of govern-
ment for India. The main ideational legacy, secondly, was the social
and political vision contained in the mass movement that was the
struggle for freedom. This was inspired by a vision of social and eco-
nomic justice, political equality, and a respect for diversity, especially
for minority rights. In the sections of the constitution dealing with the
fundamental rights and the directive principles of state policy, the con-
stitution-makers borrowed from many existing constitutions, ranging
from the United States of America to the Republic of Ireland. For their
skill in adapting and modifying this rather eclectic range of borrow-
ings, the Indian constitution-makers have actually been admired as
‘the Assembly successfully played the alchemist, turning foreign metals
into Indian coin.’ (Austin, 1999:321)
It is notable that the Constitution of India has very limited provisions
relating to the conduct of elections. Apart from laying down the principle
of universal adult franchise and the institution of an Election
Commission, the chapter on Elections has only four articles about the
specifics of the electoral process, the most important of which (Article
325) endorses a general electoral roll for every territorial constituency and
stipulates that no person shall be ineligible for inclusion in it on grounds
of religion, race, caste or sex. The significance of this provision lies in its
emphatic negation of the earlier practice of separate or communal elec-
torates (discussed in greater detail below). For the rest, the constitution
gives the lower house of Parliament the power to make laws relating to all
matters concerning elections. It is for this reason that the rules adopted
for the actual conduct of elections are to be found in the Representation
of the People Act 1951, and the subsequent amendments to it. It is also
this that explains why the debates of the Constituent Assembly contain
only scattered references to the issue of electoral systems, and most of
these occur in the context of the provisions for minorities and other dis-
advantaged groups. These silences of the constitutional document are
explained by the animated discussion on issues such as joint electorates
and reservations in the debates of the Constituent Assembly, conducted
against a particular historical backdrop.
In 1909, the British government in India had, in response to a
demand from a section of Muslims led by the Aga Khan, introduced
separate electorates for the Muslims, who would now vote exclusively
in these electorates, while also voting in the general electorates.
Gradually, this principle was extended to the Provinces as well, and
eventually to Muslims, Europeans, Sikhs, Indian Christians and Anglo-
Indians. (Rao, 1968:467) Even before independence, however,
observers had begun to note that communal representation had not
mitigated any of the communal tensions in India. It had also become
apparent that ‘separate electorates penalised parties who could appeal
across communal lines, and that this distorted party competition.’
(McMillan, 2001:9)
Separate electorates had been criticized by a series of documents and

reports of the Indian National Congress, which viewed them as essen-
tially divisive and detrimental to the unity of the Indian nation. It was
therefore an important concern of the nationalist leadership after inde-
pendence to repudiate this legacy of separate, communal electorates –
which in its perception were irrevocably associated with the imperial
British strategy of divide-and-rule – in favour of joint electorates.
Granville Austin, a leading historian of the constitution-making
process, has argued that while the repudiation of communal electorates
was widely shared, there were proposals to consider (a) reservations
and (b) forms of proportional representation for the better protection
of the interests of minorities. The representatives of the Parsi and
Indian Christian communities had turned down the proposal for reser-
vation for their communities, and only the Anglo-Indians asked for
two members of the community to be nominated (the Indian Parlia-
ment still has two Anglo-Indian representatives). (Austin, 1999:150–1)
The Sikhs were undecided and the Muslims divided on this issue.
Ultimately, the Muslims decided to forego reservations, hoping for fair
treatment from the majority community. It is notable that the decision
on reservations was left to the community in question, though Austin
suggests that Sardar Patel, who supported this position, also quietly put
pressure on them to give up claims to special privileges. (ibid:151)
The discussion in the Constituent Assembly came to be cast in the
form of a debate between two alternatives, those of reservations and
proportional representation. Some members argued that reservations
could be abolished if PR was adopted. A few Sikh and Muslim members,
in particular, favoured proportional representation on the grounds that
it would mitigate the ‘tyranny of the majority’ of single member con-
stituencies. The chief objection to this proposal was that it was too com-
plicated a system for the large numbers of unlettered voters to
comprehend. Eventually, though some element of reservation was
adopted, it was restricted to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
It did not apply to religious minorities, in whose case the Constitution
provided for special guarantees of minority rights. It has been com-
mented that the failure, in the Constituent Assembly, to give serious
consideration to alternative voting systems suggests ‘a pronounced ten-
dency to assume as somehow natural the familiar Anglo-Saxon FPTP
system’. (Sridharan, 2002:355)
The details of the electoral system adopted in India are thus only
alluded to in the Constitution, and specified in the Representation of
the People Act of 1950/51, which with all subsequent amendments,
continues to form the basis of the Indian electoral system today. The
Lok Sabha, or the House of the People, is the lower chamber of
Parliament. It has 543 members who are elected from single-member
constituencies, in which voters (citizens above the age of 18) cast a
single vote to choose their representative. The candidate getting
the highest number of votes wins by the rule of simple plurality, or the
FPTP system. Separate electorates are precluded by Article 325 of the
Constitution which provides that there shall be one general electoral
roll for every territorial constituency, and ‘no person shall be ineligible
for inclusion in any such roll or claim to be included in any special
electoral roll for any such constituency on grounds only of religion,
race, caste, sex or any of them’. (Constitution of India)
Till 1961, there were some multi-member constituencies, in which
the extra one or two seats were reserved for candidates belonging to
the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The same simple-plurality
rule applied in these constituencies as well. However, in 1961, multi-
member constituencies were abolished, and some constituencies in
areas predominantly populated by scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes are now reserved for candidates belonging to these social groups.
These constituencies are demarcated and designated by a Delimitation
Commission, the law courts being debarred from interfering with this
process. While the delimitation for the Scheduled Tribes is relatively
easy due to the concentrated nature of the tribal population, the
method adopted for the Scheduled Castes has to take their dispersal
into account. In most reserved constituencies, the proportion of the
Scheduled Caste population is between 10% and 30%. This does, of
course, make the task of the legislator from a reserved seat compli-
cated. On the one hand, this legislator is responsible to an overwhelm-
ingly non-SC electorate while, on the other, s/he is also charged with
the task of representing the special interests of the community that
s/he represents.
The adoption of the majoritarian FPTP system has had some
expected, and many unanticipated, consequences. Contrary to some
theories which believe that it helps a two-party system to evolve, it sus-
tained for several decades a one-party dominant system, which has in
more recent times given way to a highly fragmented party system. As
expected, however, it has manifested a considerable disproportionality
between votes and seats. Thus, in all the parliamentary elections
between 1952 and 1998, the Congress Party never once managed to get
a simple majority of the national vote, the highest it ever attained
being 48.1% of the national vote in 1984, which gave it an incredible
Table 5.1 Vote share and seats: Congress and BJP (1952–2004)3
S.No. Year of election Total seats INC BJS/BJP
Seats % of vote Seats % of vote
1. 1952 489 364 45.0 3 3.1

2. 1957 494 371 47.8 4 5.9
3. 1962 494 361 44.7 14 6.4
4. 1967 520 283 40.8 35 9.4
5. 1971 518 352 43.7 22 7.4
6. 1977 542 154 34.5 – –
7. 1980 542 353 42.7 – –
8. 1984 542 415 48.1 2 7.4
9. 1989 543 197 39.5 86 11.5
10. 1991 543 232 36.5 120 20.1
11. 1996 543 140 28.8 161 20.3
12. 1998 543 141 25.8 182 25.6
13. 1999 543 111 28.3 182 23.8
14. 2004 543 145 26.69 138 22.16
three-fourths majority of the seats, with 415 out of the 542 seats con-
tested. In 1998, the Congress Party won 25.8% of the national vote,
with just 141 seats, while the BJP won 25.6% (0.2% less than the
Congress) of the national vote but won 182 seats. This disproportional-
ity has generated some dissatisfaction with the electoral system, not
merely because a party can win a huge majority of parliamentary seats
while obtaining less than 50% of the popular vote, but also because the
FPTP system leads to the election of candidates who may represent
barely 30% of the electorate but win only because they have the largest
number of votes among all competitors. This means that the vote of
70% of the electorate in a constituency is wasted, and that the elected
candidate is in effect the choice of a minority of the voters and, as
such, hardly representative of the constituency as a whole.
As Table 5.1 shows, in the parliamentary election of 2004, the
Congress Party won 145 seats with 26.69% of the popular vote. The BJP
won 138 seats with a vote share of 22.16%. Together, these two parties
account for approximately half the seats and half the vote share, the
remainder being distributed across the other political parties.
Not only has the FPTP system belied the traditional expectation that,
by encouraging single-party majority governments, it conduces to stabil-
ity in governance, it has also proved that it cannot keep the party system
from splitting, including along ethnic lines. (Sridharan, 2002:348–9)
India has deviated from the expectation of a one- or two-party system

that the majoritarian formula is traditionally supposed to produce. Since
1989, it has seen frequent elections, hung parliaments and minority or
coalition governments with as many as 23 parties in the governing coali-
tion. It is this inherent instability of coalition governments that has pro-
voked some limited comment, in political discourse, about the need to
rethink electoral systems. It is important to emphasize that proposals for
reforming the electoral system are invariably motivated not by a concern
for the less than representative character of the legislature, but rather by
governance concerns about the instability of coalition governments.
What is interesting is that, with its majoritarian system, India has
already experienced, several times, the sort of impasse that is assumed to
be a consequence of the PR system. This is the result of the fragmenta-
tion of the party system, which has to a considerable extent followed
social cleavages such as language or caste.
The political system in India was, in Rajni Kothari’s famous phrase,
‘the Congress system’, and a party system – properly speaking – only
began to evolve after 1967, which signalled the end of Congress hege-
mony, at least in several states, where regional parties came to power
in the state assembly elections. Initially, the regional parties were based
on language, and their demands were essentially for greater cultural
autonomy for the region. Such, for example, were the DMK, which
appealed to the cultural specificity of language and caste in Tamil
Nadu, and the Akali Dal which appealed to language and religion to
mount its claim for separate statehood for Punjab. The only exceptions
to this trend have been the two Communist Parties, which have been
frequently voted to power in Kerala and West Bengal. The increase in
the number of parties in the 1990s is associated with the rise of the so-
called backward castes and the dalits, though the parties that represent
them – the Samajwadi Party (along with its Bihar counterpart, the
Rashtriya Janata Dal) and the BSP respectively – are still limited in their
regional spread, and have also been trying to broaden their appeal to
other excluded groups such as minorities. This has meant, above all,
that the broadly inclusive social base of the Congress has got eroded, as
the Scheduled Castes and Muslims do not necessarily perceive the
Congress as the party which represents them and, in the states where
they have other options, may prefer to vote for the latter.
Two questions are relevant here. Firstly, what does the evidence
suggest about whether or not the Indian electorate has used its vote
to express a preference for ‘national’ parties over ‘ethnic’ parties?
Secondly, what does the evidence suggest about who votes for which
party? The first of these questions is more easily answered than the
second. Table 5.2 suggests that from 1952–1996, the vote share of the
Congress – as the national party par excellence – has declined substan-
tially. However, if we look at the combined vote share of the Congress
and other pan-Indian parties, the decline is much less dramatic. What
is much more striking is the data regarding Hindu revivalist parties and
other ethnic parties, which suggests that their share of the vote has
increased quite dramatically, trebling between 1952 and 1996.
The second question, viz. which social groups vote for which party,
can only be answered by turning to sample surveys. The first all-India
election survey to have been attempted was conducted by the Centre
for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi in the 1967 elec-
tions.4 The next comprehensive survey to be attempted was when the
Table 5.2 Electoral performance of pan-Indian, Hindu revivalist and other

ethnic parties: share of valid vote (percentage wise) election year
Party 1952 1957 1962 1967 1971 1977 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996
Congress 45.0 47.8 44.7 40.8 43.7 34.5 42.7 48.1 39.5 36.4 28.5
Other
Pan-
Indian 22.1 23.0 29.7 28.2 32.0 – – 26.3 30.8 26.5 25.9
Pan
Indian
Parties 67.1 70.7 74.5 69.0 75.7 – – 74.4 70.3 62.9 54.4
Hindu
Revivalist
Parties 5.9 7.2 7.7 9.4 7.4 – – 7.5 11.6 21.0 21.4
Other
Ethnic 5.6 4.2 6.6 7.8 7.0 8.1 6.5 10.0 12.9 12.6 13.5
Ethnic
Parties 11.5 11.3 14.3 17.1 14.4 – – 17.5 24.5 33.6 34.9
Note:
(a) The Congress denotes the Indian National Congress for 1952–69, Congress (R) in 1971
and 1977, and Congress (I) thereafter.
(b) The main Hindu revivalist party, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, merged with some Congress
offshoots to form the Janata Party in 1977 and remained part of it until after the 1980
elections. The Bharatiya Jan Sangh polled about as many votes as all other ethnic parties
combined from 1957 to 1971, the Janata party won in 1977 and was the second strongest
party in 1980. So, it is difficult to distinguish the share of the pan-Indian parties from that
of the Hindu revivalists for 1977 and 1980.
Source: Subramanian (1999):6.
CSDS renewed the exercise in the 1996 parliamentary election, fol-

lowed by another in the 1998 elections, and has continued to do so
in subsequent years. It is on the basis of the published survey data of
the 1996 and 1998 elections that we attempt to answer the second
question, supplementing it with an analysis of the shifting vote for
the Congress and the BJP from upper caste, scheduled caste, and
other backward caste groups, over a longer period of time, from
1967–1998.
The following table illustrates the social base of the various politi-
cal parties, on the basis of the CSDS survey. This table confirms the
upper caste image of the BJP, though it also shows that the most sub-
stantial move from the Congress to the BJP has been that of the OBC
groups. Despite having lost support among the OBCs, however, the
Congress remains – albeit to a much-diminished extent – the party
preferred by most sections of disadvantaged people. The fact that
almost 30% of the dalits continue to vote for the Congress (and its
allies) is not necessarily due to the fact that the Congress is seen as a
protector of these vulnerable groups, but simply a signal of the
limited geographical spread of the BSP, and the relative absence of
similar regional parties. Voters must choose between the options on
offer, and in regions where there is no party claiming to represent the
dalits, and the competition is primarily between the Congress and the
BJP, they would naturally continue to support the Congress as the
party less hostile to their interests. The other important fact, illus-
trated by Table 5.3, is that about one-third of the Muslims continue
to vote for the Congress.
In the parliamentary election of 1999, the data from the National
Election Survey of CSDS demonstrated the overwhelming nature of
upper caste support – 50.5% – for the BJP. The data also show that the
OBC vote is fairly evenly split between the Congress and the BJP, while
the vote of the SCs, STs, and Muslims still remains substantially with
the Congress. The Congress and the BJP got a higher share of the SC
vote – 37% and 20.6% respectively – than did the BSP, which got only
11.6% of the vote of the group which it claims to most authentically
represent. Thus, not only did the BJP obtain a substantial portion of
the OBC vote, it actually got a higher proportion of the dalit vote than
the BSP. (Singh and Saxena, 2003:229) This probably accounts for the
new phenomenon of the BJP actively courting OBCs and dalits in
recent elections by giving more tickets to these groups.
Another fact often overlooked is the class basis of voting. An analysis
of the CSDS survey data from State Assembly elections shows that ‘in
Table 5.3 Social bases of political parties (1996 and 1998) in %
Background 1996 BJP + NF LF BSP 1998 BJP + UF BSP

Characteristic INC + INC +
Caste
Scheduled 31.6 14.4 5.6 11.0 12.1 29.6 20.9 22.2 11.2
Caste
Scheduled 39.2 19.0 6.2 6.5 1.0 41.9 25.6 11.6 0.4
Tribe
Other 21.7 23.6 16.3 5.9 2.3 22.5 34.6 21.0 1.6
Backward
Caste
Upper Caste 28.4 33.6 7.1 7.3 0.4 28.1 38.5 17.4 1.1
Religion
Hindu 26.2 28.9 8.4 7.4 3.7 25.6 37.4 17.4 3.0
Muslim 35.3 3.1 25.3 10.1 1.2 35.1 6.8 34.4 1.3
Christian 39.9 3.0 2.0 5.6 – 42.1 9.1 18.6 0.4
Sikh 18.3 14.3 16.7 2.4 5.6 21.9 39.8 18.0 10.2
Other 26.5 6.0 12.0 2.4 4.8 39.5 19.7 3.9 10.5
Note: The plus sign after the party name represents pre-poll alliances.
1996:
INC + Indian National Congress + AIADMK
BJP + Bharatiya Janata Party + Samata Party + Shiv Sena + Haryana Vikas Party
NF Janata Dal + Samajwadi Party
LF Communist Party of India (Marxist) + Communist Party of India + Republican Socialist
Party + Forward Bloc.
1998:
BJP + BJP + Samata + Shiv Sena + Haryana Vikas Party + AIADMK + Akali Dal + Trinamul
Congress + Lok Shakti + Biju jnata Dal + TDP (NTR)
UF Janata Dal + Samajwadi Party (Mulayam) + TDP (N) + AGP + TMC + DMK + MGP +
CPI + CPM + RSP + FBL.
Source: Mitra and Singh, 1999:134–5.
all but three states, the Congress vote goes up as one goes down the
class hierarchy….It is not an accident that the Congress rules in the
top five states…characterized by the sharpest class cleavages.’ (Yadav,
2003:69) The Congress apparently continues to be perceived as ‘the
party of the downtrodden’ in several states, including Delhi (1998),
Karnataka (1999), Assam (2001), Gujarat (2002), Madhya Pradesh
(1998), Uttaranchal (2002), Orissa (2000), Punjab (2002), Haryana
(2000) and Rajasthan (1998). The Congress did not win the state elec-
tions in all these states, but its average vote share here ranged between
34 and 48%. (ibid.:68)
As a majoritarian system that has generated a highly fragmented
multi-party polity, India presents a big challenge to theorists of electoral
systems. However, while the Indian experience has called into question
many of the presumed consequences of the majoritarian formula, it has
conformed to these in one important respect. This is the phenomenon
of candidates – and therefore governments – getting elected on a minor-
ity share of the national vote. The chief party in the governing coalition
today is the Congress whose vote share – nationally – is just 26.7%. On
the one hand, this would appear to be a typical majoritarian system, in
which the disproportionality between seats and votes implies that the
democratic principles of representation and legitimacy are seriously
flawed. On the other hand, however, it would appear that the system has
actually yielded PR-type outcomes in two ways: one, a large number of
parties have emerged, representing ethnic diversity; and two, the frag-
mentation in the party system is unable to sustain stable single-party
governance, and coalition politics has become the rule rather than the
exception.
Arend Lijphart, the well-known theorist of consociationalism, has
argued that, despite being patterned on the majoritarian model, the
Indian political system has, especially in the first two decades after
independence, exemplified a form of power-sharing that partakes of
four important features of the consociational model. Despite being a
single dominant party, the Congress’s broadly representative, inclusive
and umbrella nature made it resemble a grand coalition. The Con-
stitution of India, secondly, provides cultural autonomy for religious
and linguistic groups through federalism, cultural rights and personal
laws. The principle of proportionality, thirdly, is sustained through the
reservation of constituencies for the scheduled castes and tribes, and
through the Congress’s role and behaviour as the party of consensus,
providing representation to all social groups. Finally, the minority veto
has been politically, if not legally, salient, as is evidenced by the issue
of personal laws. India, thus, has been ‘basically consociational’,
despite being formally majoritarian. (Lijphart, 2001:326–57)
Observers of the Indian electoral system have also noted that it is the
majoritarian character of the FPTP system in India that has actually
encouraged ethnic mobilization. This is partly so because FPTP tends to
be exclusionary for minorities who are so distributed across the popula-
tion that they are nowhere in a majority.5 Moreover, contrary to
Duverger’s law, the FPTP system has not led to a two-party system at
the federal level, though it has done so in the states of the union. At
the Centre, a one-party dominated multiparty system has actually
given way to a pluralization – though not polarization – of the party
system; and, further, to the emergence of moderate pluralism which,
despite many social cleavages and parties, has a mainly centripetal ten-
dency. (Sridharan and Varshney, 2001:210–15) At least part of the
explanation for this lies in the cross-cutting, rather than coinciding,
character of social cleavages. (ibid.:234–5)
As mentioned earlier, such rethinking as has occurred on the subject
of electoral reform has been provoked by the yearning for stable gover-
nance rather than the search for a more representative polity. In 1999,
the Law Commission of India produced a Working Paper on electoral
law reform, which advocated the introduction of a mixed FPTP-PR
system. The FPTP system of single-member territorial constituencies
would continue to apply to the existing constituencies, but there
would be an increase of 25% in the total number of seats in the Lok
Sabha, such that the new total would be 688. These additional seats
would be filled on the basis of list PR. The parties would, before the
election, publish a list of nominees, and the seats would be allotted to
them on the basis of their vote shares. Another proposal, mooted by
the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution
(NCRWC), has been for a majority run-off system. This is a variant of
the majoritarian formula in which, if no candidate gets a clear majority
of the votes cast, a run-off election is held in which the contest is
between the two top scorers of the first round, and the candidate who
gets the higher vote in the second round is declared elected. The main
justification offered for this is that it would meet the deficit of demo-
cratic legitimacy, by ensuring that no candidate is elected only on the
basis of 35% of the constituency’s vote, and thus achieving greater pro-
portionality. It has also been assumed that this system would, by
forcing parties to broad-base their appeal, tend to offset the role of
caste in elections. (Sridharan, 2002:351–2)
Political parties and the party system
As we have seen in the previous section, it is frequently assumed that a

first-past-the-post electoral system is unsatisfactory in a multi-ethnic
society as it leads to majoritarian rule and political instability, while PR
systems are superior guarantors of the representation of minority
groups as also of governmental stability. We have noted that the
Indian polity has defied at least part of the received wisdom on elec-
toral systems, and that FPTP has actually achieved the diversity out-
comes generally associated with PR and, for at least part of the time,
also provided reasonable stability. The key to this oddity lies at least
partly in another common assumption about the behaviour of political
parties, that a heterogeneous society compels political parties to

become broad social coalitions in order to succeed. The Indian experi-
ence lends credence to this assumption, even if in a somewhat
qualified form.
For the first four decades of the post-independence period, with very
minor exceptions, the Congress Party dominated the political land-
scape of the nation. As the natural heir to the legacy of the movement
for independence from colonial rule, it was strongly committed to the
ideal of universal citizenship with provisions for minority rights and
for policies of social justice for disadvantaged groups. These ideals
informed the vision that underlay the struggle for independence with
Gandhi’s famously proclaimed aim of ‘wiping every tear from every
eye’, and they were given formal embodiment in the Indian
Constitution which provided, among other things, for policies of com-
pensatory discrimination for historically oppressed and disadvantaged
communities. In the early decades after independence, the Congress
Party enjoyed almost unquestionable dominance – leading Rajni
Kothari to label the Indian party system as ‘the Congress system’.6
Writing in 1964, Kothari pointed to the fact that the party system in
India did not conform to the existing scholarly taxonomies of party
systems, as it was neither a one-party, nor a two-party, nor a multi-
party system. Defying this dichotomous/trichotomous characteriza-
tion, India’s party system, Kothari argued, should be described as a
system of one party dominance, a competitive party system consisting
of ‘a party of consensus and parties of pressure’. (Kothari, 2002:40) The
Congress was ‘an intricate structure of conflict, mediation, bargaining,
and consensus’ (ibid.:42), a functional network of various social groups
including caste and kin, and the various pressures and compromises
were mediated through its political organization, linked vertically from
the central to the district level.
It is indeed the organizational strength of the Congress in the early
post-independence phase that explains its success as a party of con-
sensus. In its pre-independence form, as a party fighting for freedom,
the Congress had struck deep roots in the countryside, even if mainly
among the local notables, i.e. those belonging to the dominant
landowning castes, and their kin and caste groups. These local power
structures were vertically linked, in a pyramidal form, through the dis-
trict and state level units of the party, to the central level. When
democracy arrived on the heels of freedom, the role of the local nota-
bles increased as they became crucial to the task of delivering the
votes from the local factions they controlled. It is important, however,
to note that their authority stemmed from their position in the hierar-
chy of local society, rather than from their party affiliation. Despite
this incongruity – of the national-level leadership depending upon
local elites, and local elites providing vote banks on the basis of
patron-client relationships7 rather than of ideological or partisan
identification – the system worked well enough to pay huge political
dividends, and so keep the Congress in power.
Ideologically, too, the political opposition in the legislature was ren-
dered virtually redundant by the presence of various strands of opposi-
tion within the party, as represented by the several factions that
co-existed in it, competing with each other for influence and control.
For every ideological alternative in the wider polity – e.g., a right-wing
economic platform or a more conservative opinion on the proper place
of women or Hinduism in Indian society – there was invariably a group
within the Congress representing that point of view. Indeed, it has
been argued that opposition parties, instead of trying to displace and
replace the Congress through forming coalitions or merging,
attempted to influence Congress policies by working on like-minded
factions within Congress. (Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987:129) The party
was accommodative in character, and also accommodationist in its
strategies of managing difference.
Above all, the Congress Party represented a broad social coalition
that encompassed the upper caste and upper-class elite, as well as the
poorest and most marginalized sections of the Indian population. The
Congress consistently projected itself as the protector of minorities,
and as the natural party of members of the scheduled castes and sched-
uled tribes. The success of the Congress coalition, it is often argued,
was in fact made possible by the cross-cutting cleavages in Indian
society that prevented polarization along any one cleavage, whether an
ascriptive one such as religion or a secular one such as class. It was this
all-encompassing character of the Congress – famously described as an
‘umbrella party’ – along with its pre-eminent role as the party that had
won India independence, that contributed immeasurably to the
supremacy of the Congress in the early years. It explained both the
party’s commitment to the creation of a more equitable and just
society, as well as its inability to realize this objective. Its failure on
land reform, for instance, was a result of the considerable control over
the Congress enjoyed by dominant land-owning classes.
On account, arguably, of these three factors – its organizational
strength; its ideological accommodativeness; and its ‘umbrella’ charac-
ter as a broad social coalition – the Congress Party won the first three
general elections of 1952, 1957 and 1964 with a huge majority of par-
liamentary seats (between 70 and 75%) and also performed extremely
well in the state assembly elections, winning well over 60% of the seats
in the state legislatures. Its vote share however ranged from 43% to
48% during this period, clearly a distortion of the FPTP system.
Political supremacy at both the centre and in the states obviated
federal tensions, but also gave an impetus to centralization. Given the
multiplicity of factions and interests represented within the Congress
Party, this naturally generated competition in the formation of state
governments, giving the central leadership more opportunities to play
favourites as it arbitrated conflicts within the provincial and district
congress committees. In the parliamentary election of 1967, however,
the Congress suffered an electoral reverse for the first time, winning
just 54% of the seats with a reduced vote share of 40.8%.
The decline of the Congress, beginning with the 1967 election, was
emphatically not a result of a challenge to the idea of diversity that the
party stood for. The explanation for the decline of the Congress Party
has to be couched in secular rather than ascriptive terms. The weaken-
ing of the party organization; the bankruptcy of the party leadership
from which Indira Gandhi wrested control, and the subsequent cen-
tralization under her leadership of the Congress; the complete absence
of inner-party democracy; the rampant factionalism leading to fre-
quent defections; the undermining of the federal principle; the politics
of ‘vote banks’; and endemic corruption, all contributed to the decline
of the Congress. The Congress recovered in the 1971 election, fought
on the rallying cry of ‘Garibi Hatao’ (Abolish Poverty!). The discourse
of welfare however degenerated into populism and while poverty and
the welfare of the poor and disadvantaged social groups remained a
central part of Congress rhetoric, it became rapidly clear that these
were mere slogans designed to keep captive in the Congress bag crucial
sections of the electorate, especially the scheduled castes and tribes,
and religious minorities.
If the parliamentary election of 1967 was one watershed, the declara-
tion of the National Emergency (1975–77) by Mrs. Gandhi was
another. The election of 1977 saw the Congress routed as never before.
It was only the complete ineptitude and infighting amongst the
members of the short-lived coalition Janata government that returned
India to Mrs. Gandhi’s Congress in 1980. After this, the Congress won
only one substantive victory when, following the assassination of
Mrs. Gandhi, her son Rajiv came to power on a sympathy wave in
1984 with the biggest ever parliamentary majority for the Congress,
and its highest ever share of the popular vote. It is arguable that the
landmark victories of 1971 and 1984 were not so much victories of the
party, as of the individuals leading them, viz. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv
Gandhi respectively. In organizational terms, as also in terms of its
linkages with the grassroots, the party remained weak. The authority
structure built up by the party in the early years had declined as local
party units in the districts had become almost defunct.8 Through these
decades, Congress continued to pay lip-service to its commitment to
the poor and marginalized sections of Indian society, but its support
base among these groups gradually began to erode.
Meanwhile, caste-based political mobilization had begun in the late
1960s and gathered momentum through the 1970s, and though today
it is parties like the BSP and the Samajwadi Party that are seen as the
flag-bearers of caste politics, they only took to its logical conclusion a
process that had begun much earlier. The ideological father of back-
ward caste mobilization was Ram Manohar Lohia, the Socialist Party
leader who supported reservation for these castes in the 1950s. Indeed,
Lohia’s claim was that the backward castes, dalits, Muslims, Christians,
tribals and women together constitute 85% of the country’s population
but have barely 10% representation in politics, the armed forces, the
bureaucracy and trade. Lohia’s views were given concrete expression in
the demands of the Socialist Party that these groups should get at least
60% reservation, and this was the campaign platform of a prominent
socialist leader of Bihar, Karpoori Thakur, in the election of 1967.
(Vora, 2003:273)
It could be argued that the congruence between political party and
caste in north India9 became more starkly manifest with the mobiliza-
tion of the middle and backward castes by the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in
Uttar Pradesh, whose leader, Choudhury Charan Singh was himself a
Jat (middle peasant group whose interests converged with those of the
emerging prosperous OBC farmers). The defeat of the Congress in
8 states in the general election of 1967 was viewed as the defeat of the
power of upper castes by the backwards. The Congress itself travelled
down the same road in Gujarat in 1977, with its KHAM alliance (an
acronym for Kshatriya, Harijan (SC), Adivasi (ST) and Muslim), formu-
lated to contain the damage caused by the split in the Congress and
the consequent loss of support among the Patidar caste elites. Indeed,
the reservation for OBCs in Gujarat dates back to this time.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the association between particular
castes/caste clusters and political parties became stronger. The Lok Dal
in Uttar Pradesh was popularly viewed as the party of the Jats; the
Samajwadi Party in the same state was and remains the spokesman of
the backward castes in that state, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal repre-
sents the backwards in Bihar. It is widely acknowledged that this
process of backward caste and middle peasant support moving away
from the Congress to opposition parties in the states was given an
impetus by the land reform programme which converted their tenant
status into ownership. In Uttar Pradesh alone, 84% of the area trans-
ferred benefited the backward castes (Patnaik and Hasan, 1995:286),
and the Green Revolution made them even more powerful politically.
This process manifested itself in the phenomenon of the delinking of
social dominance from state power (Frankel and Rao, 1989), as it went
hand-in-hand with the out-migration of the upper castes from rural
areas, and was politically underscored by the perception of rural dalit
groups of the backward castes as their new oppressors. (Omvedt,
1996:342)
Following the Emergency, the Janata Party – which emerged as the
leader of the oppositional forces – appointed a new Commission on
Backward Classes, under the chairmanship of B.P. Mandal, and clearly
under pressure from its backward caste constituency. It was the Janata
Dal government of V.P. Singh (himself a Rajput), which came to power
briefly in 1989, that accepted the Mandal Report. In his attempt to
bring together the various factions and splinter groups of the erstwhile
Janata Party, V.P. Singh announced the AJGAR alliance – an alliance of
the OBC castes Ahir-Jat-Gujar-Rajput – notably excluding the dalits. On
assuming office, Singh’s government approved 27% reservation for
OBCs in public employment and education, and though this gov-
ernment did not endure, the Janata Dal returned to office as the
leading member of the two rather short-lived coalition governments of
H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral (1996–98). However, various Janata
fragments did manage to win state assembly elections (e.g., in Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Orissa and Karnataka) in the 1990s. Today,
there are at least 10 such Janata offspring in various states. They
include the Samajwadi Party (Uttar Pradesh), the Rashtriya Janata Dal
(Bihar), the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Samajwadi Janata Party, the Indian
National Lok Dal (Haryana), the Samata Party (Bihar), the Biju Janata
Dal (BJD) (Orissa), the Lok Shakti (Karnataka), the JD (United) and the
JD (Secular). Some of them are aligned with the BJP while others are
broadly supportive of the Congress and Left.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the earliest challenges
to Congress dominance did not come from parties that were based on
caste or religious affiliation. The chief political rivals of the Congress
were for the most part single-state parties, only some of which were
strongly identified with any kind of sub-nationalist ideology. This was
certainly true of the DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu; the Telegu Desam Party in
Andhra Pradesh; the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir; the
AGP in Assam; and the Akali Dal in Punjab. However, this cannot be
said to be true of the Communist Party of India or the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) which has held power uninterruptedly
for over two decades in West Bengal, and for many years in the state of
Kerala as well. It was also not true of the various incarnations of the
Janata Party, the Lok Dal, and the erstwhile Jana Sangh which eventu-
ally mutated into the BJP. Today, the number of parties has grown
enormously, and indeed those which are single-state parties have
grown exponentially. Table 5.4 shows the performance of national,
state and other registered parties since 1989.
As Table 5.4 shows, while the number of national parties has grown
very marginally, the number of state parties has almost trebled from
Table 5.4 National, state and registered parties since 198910 (Cumulative
seats and vote percentage)
No Year of election No. Of National No. Of State Registered Total

Parties Parties Parties
1. 9th Lok Sabha 6 8 10 24

1989 (471) (27) (19)
(78.13) (6.24) (4.16)
2. 10th Lok Sabha 7 13 4 24
1991 (470) (52) (4)
(80.67) (9.93) (0.83)
3. 11th Lok Sabha 7 19 4 30
1996 (403) (127) (4)
(68.98) (18.97) (0.73)
4. 12th Lok Sabha 7 20 12 39
1998 (387) (101) (49)
(67.99) (17.76) (8.33)
5. 13th Lok Sabha 7 23 8 38
1999 (369) (158) (10)
(67.10) (25.34) (1.50)
6. 14th Lok Sabha 6 22 9 37
2004 (364) (159) (15)
(62.89%) (28.90%) (3.96%)
8 in 1989 to 23 in 1999. Their share of seats shot up six-fold from 27 in

1989 to 159 in 2004, with a concomitant fourfold increase in their vote
share, from a mere 6.24% in 1989, to a considerable 28.90% in 2004.
The number of national parties remained virtually stable throughout,
but the number of seats they managed to garner dropped by over a
hundred, with a 15% drop in their vote share.
From 1989 to 2004, moreover, just two governments lasted a full
five-year term. Only one of these – the Congress minority government
of P.V. Narasimha Rao – was a single-party government, while the
other (1998–2004) was a coalition led by the BJP. In the pages that
follow, we essay a brief account of the patterns and trends in the Lok
Sabha elections from 1989 to the present. [Detailed tables showing the
relative strength of political parties and alliances for the Ninth to the
Fourteenth Lok Sabhas may be found in the Appendix]
The election to the Ninth Lok Sabha in 1989 brought to office the
minority coalition government of the National Front, led by V.P. Singh,
the dissident Congressman who had resigned his Cabinet position in
Rajiv Gandhi’s government in protest against the charges of corruption
levelled against the Prime Minister in the Bofors scam. The major con-
stituent of this government was the Janata Dal, into which various
earlier splinter groups of the Janata Party had merged. This government
was briefly sustained by ‘outside’ support from the Left parties as well
as the BJP, and lasted barely 11 months, resulting in a fresh general
election in 1990.
The general election of 1991 to the Tenth Lok Sabha saw the
National Front reduced to half its previous strength and, in the shadow
of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination during the election campaign, gener-
ated a minority Congress government (see Table 5b in the Appendix)
that lasted a full five year term, surviving mainly because of the absten-
tions of friendly parties, and by engineering a series of defections and
splits. The BJP gained seats by campaigning on the issue of the Ram
Temple in Ayodhya, but was not yet a serious contender for power.
The 1996 election to the Eleventh Lok Sabha threw up a hung
Parliament. No party enjoyed a decisive majority, the Congress won
140 seats, and the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 161
seats. It was called upon to form the government which, despite a few
allies, could only muster 191 seats in all, and could not survive the no-
confidence motion tabled by the opposition within days of the forma-
tion of the government. This 13-day government was replaced by a
coalition of the old National Front and the Left Parties calling itself the
UF. This was an alliance of approximately 20 parties, of which the
single largest was the Janata Dal. It is interesting to observe that this
party won only 46 seats (less than a tenth of the total strength of the
House) and 8.08% of the votes polled. The remaining members of
the coalition contributed between one and 32 members to the govern-
ment, which was propped up by ‘outside’ support from the Congress.
The UF period saw two prime ministers come to power, first Deve
Gowda, a Janata Dal leader from Karnataka and later – under Congress
pressure – I.K. Gujral, a former Congressman who had served in
Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet. Eventually, the Congress withdrew
support altogether, precipitating a mid-term election in 1998.
In the prelude to the 1998 election to the Twelfth Lok Sabha, the BJP
adopted an aggressive policy of making strategic alliances. The bulk of
its alliances were sealed before the election, with a few more post-poll
alliances, bringing the BJP-led coalition – calling itself the National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) – to power. Many of these allies were
regional parties which, in their particular states, were the main rivals to
the Congress (e.g., the BJD in Orissa) or to other dominant parties
(such as the Trinamool Congress, the main electoral challenge to the
CPM’s dominance in West Bengal, or the National Conference in
Jammu and Kashmir). The BJP’s own strength had increased to its
highest ever: 182 seats and 25.59% of the popular vote. However, this
election kept the NDA government of Atal Behari Vajpayee in power
for only 13 months when it again faced and lost a motion of no-
confidence. This was because of the razor’s edge majority that it
enjoyed, hovering at the half-way mark of 273 in a house of 543.
It was the mid-term poll of 1999 that brought the BJP-led NDA gov-
ernment to power in an enduring and stable alliance in the Thirteenth
Lok Sabha. The BJP’s policy of forging alliances before the polls
resulted in 302 seats for the NDA, of which the BJP contributed 182.
While the BJP’s vote share was 23.75%, that of the alliance as a whole
was 40.47%. This yielded a government of 22 parties that lasted a full
term. The regional parties, many of whom were in the NDA alliance,
together accounted for 37% of the vote share in this election, while the
Congress found itself reduced to a vote share of 28.30% and 114 seats,
totalling up to barely 136 even with its allies. In January 27, 2004, the
NDA called for the dissolution of the Lok Sabha, to schedule an early
election in the spring of 2004, several months before the elections were
technically due.
The election to the Fourteenth Lok Sabha brought to office, in
2004, a Congress-led coalition. The Congress’s 145 seats (just a few
more than the BJP’s 138) made it the single largest party in the Lok
Sabha, and as such it was invited to form the government. There

were two quite historic aspects of this election. The first of these was
the fact that the election campaign of the Congress had been led by
Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi. The BJP had
created a major controversy around her ‘foreign origins’ which
were apparently viewed differently by the electorate. Nevertheless,
Sonia Gandhi decided not to assume the leadership of the govern-
ment, while retaining her leadership of the party, and nominated
Dr. Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister instead. Secondly, this
election showed the Congress – for the first time – entering into
strategic alliances with regional parties, and willing to participate in a
coalition government, and hence implicitly acknowledging the
changed political situation. The Congress victory of 2004 has been
variously interpreted as an endorsement of its pro-poor orientation as
opposed to the over-enthusiastic globalization and economic reforms
programme of the BJP; and as a vote for secularism in contrast to the
BJP’s communal anti-minority programme. Another persuasive expla-
nation credits the Congress with having reaped the fruits of strategic
alliances with regional parties, a lesson – it has been argued – that the
Congress usefully learnt from the BJP. Indeed, the BJP lost consider-
able ground by tying up with undependable allies who were poor
candidates for a win on their home ground.
The BJP in turn had learnt a lesson from the Congress, and this was
manifest in its attempt to broaden its social base. Formerly known as the
‘Brahmin-bania’11 party, it sought to bring on board token dalits, OBCs
and even – curiously and most unconvincingly – Muslims. In 2000, the
leadership chose a dalit, Bangaru Laxman, to lead the party organization
rather than the obvious Brahmin favourite Jana Krishnamurti, a prom-
inent hardliner. In 2004, the party spokesperson was a Muslim, though
he had little credibility when he tried to defend the party position on
sensitive social issues. The party has been giving more tickets to OBC
and dalit candidates since 1996, leading to an increase in the proportion
of OBC MPs in the north, from 15.1% in 1991 to 17.3% in 1996.
Likewise, the percentage of dalit MPs from the BJP went up from 17.4%
in 1991 to 22.3% in 1996. (Vora, 2003:291) This attempt to broaden the
social base of the party may be described as the ‘Congressization’ of the
BJP, a shift from a rigidly cadre-based party to a large and even unwieldy
mass party. Its membership rose from 1.5 million in 1980 to 20 million
in the late 1990s. (Pai, 2002b) Simultaneously, the BJP projected itself as
being less confrontationist and even willing to moderate its policies for
the sake of remaining in office.
In ideology, too, the BJP in the 1990s began to shift from the mili-
tant nationalism of its Ramjanmabhoomi phase to what has been
called ‘a softer policy’. This shift was noted in the context of many
state assembly elections where the party foregrounded corruption
rather than communalism in its campaign. However, Hindutva did
receive a fillip in the 1995 Supreme Court judgement in the Manohar
Joshi case, in which this Chief Minister of Maharashtra was exonerated
of the charge of using corrupt electoral practices, in the form of appeals
to the Hindu religion, to win votes. (Hansen and Jaffrelot, 1998:5) In
2004, its rather cynical attempt to appeal to Muslim voters having
failed, the BJP currently appears to be in a conundrum about how to
position itself, and there is a considerable support for the hardliners
within the party for returning to Hindutva as its main plank. (Jayal,
2004:208)
This moderating or tempering force of Indian democracy has fre-
quently been noted, and it is arguably not unrelated to the way in
which the FPTP electoral system works. From the constituency-level
election to the formation of governments at the centre, FPTP tends to
discourage the taking of extreme ideological positions. It could be
argued that the limited appeal of unequivocally religion-based parties
can be explained in these terms. Indian democracy (and its electoral
system) exemplifies the importance of the tendency to temperance
and the relatively higher prospects of success at the political and
ideological ‘centre’.
Let us return then to the hypothesis that in multi-ethnic societies,
parties have to be broad social coalitions. It is apparent that the Indian
polity has witnessed wide-ranging and deep-seated change in the party
system. In the early decades after independence, the Congress as the
single dominant party could claim to represent diversity, though within
itself. Today, a multiplicity of parties has emerged to perform this rep-
resentational function. Only the Congress and the BJP appear to have
pretensions to being aggregative parties seeking a broad social base. For
the rest, the approach of smaller parties is more narrowly focused on
the particular social constituency they represent.12 These parties are
generally content with exercising power at the state-level rather than
becoming national parties. However, they are happy to play a prom-
inent role in delivering the vote of their particular social constituency
through a coalition with a national party, and so obtaining the odd
ministerial portfolio at the centre which gives them a certain leverage
in national politics. The so-called national parties are in turn no longer
capable of being all things to all voters. The Congress has lost much of
its traditional constituency of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes,

minorities and the poor. Transcending its earlier identification with
only the upper-caste, merchants and traders, the BJP has been acceler-
ating its efforts in tribal areas, a strategy that delivered considerable
success in the assembly elections of December 2003 in Madhya Pradesh
and Chhattisgarh.
The cumulative result of this process is that India today has a multi-
party system, which is rather sui generis, manifesting important differ-
ences at the state and national levels. At the state level, what prevails is
essentially a bipolar system. Table 5.5 shows the Congress and the BJP
are pitted against each other as the two major political forces in only
seven states. For the rest, it is a case of either the Congress or the BJP
being one of the principal contenders, with a state party representing
the other pole.
At the national level, then, this is nominally a multi-party system in
which there are however only two serious contenders, neither of which
Table 5.5 14th Lok Sabha: principal contenders in various states
S.No. States & Union No. of Principal Opponents

Territories Seats
1. Andhra Pradesh 42 INC + TRS + CPI + CPM Vs. TDP + BJP

2. Assam 14 INC Vs. AGP Vs. BJP
3. Bihar 40 INC + RJD + LJNSP Vs. JD(U) + SAP + BJP
4. Chattisgarh 11 INC Vs. BJP
5. Delhi 7 INC Vs. BJP
6. Gujarat 26 INC Vs. BJP
7. Haryana 10 INC Vs. INLD Vs. BJP Vs. HVP
8. Himachal Pradesh 4 INC Vs. BJP
9. Jammu & Kashmir 6 INC + JKPDP Vs. JKN Vs. BJP
10. Jharkhand 14 INC + JMM + RJD + CPI Vs. BJP
11. Karnataka 28 INC Vs. BJP Vs. JD(S)
12. Kerala 20 UDF Vs. LDF
13. Madhya Pradesh 29 INC Vs. BJP
14. Maharashtra 48 INC + NCP + RPI(A) Vs. BJP + SHS
15. Orissa 21 INC Vs. BJP + BJD
16. Punjab 13 INC Vs. BJP + SAD
17. Rajasthan 25 INC Vs. BJP
18. Tamil Nadu 39 INC + DMK + MDMK + PMK Vs. BJP + ADMK
19. Uttar Pradesh 80 INC Vs. BJP Vs. SP Vs. BSP
20. Uttaranchal 5 INC Vs. BJP
21. West Bengal 42 INC Vs. LF Vs. BJP + AITMC
Total 524
is at the present capable of coming to office on its own, and therefore

needs to ally with several state parties to form the government. Indeed,
it is important to remember that the vote share of the Congress and
the BJP combined adds up to just over 50%, arguably insufficient to
consider this a two-party system. It is a curious mix of an evolving
multi-party system and a weak bipolar system in which the leadership
of alliances belongs to one of two major parties, the Congress and the
BJP. Each of these parties requires support from state parties willing
to accept a subsidiary position and in themselves incapable of being
competitors to the two major parties.
What does this imply in representational terms? It appears to
confirm the hypothesis that, in multi-ethnic societies, national parties
are forced to broad-base their appeal. However, there is an important
caveat suggested by the Indian case. Historically, the Congress was an
inclusive party, which over time lost the ability to decisively capture
the vote of the disadvantaged groups, of whom it projected itself as the
singular protector. By contrast, the BJP was traditionally a party with a
very narrow social base, but has increasingly sought to appeal to sec-
tions of the electorate previously outside its ken. Its recent electoral
successes in the tribal areas of central India have, however, not been
the result of its political appeal alone, but been facilitated quite sub-
stantively by the work done by the cadres of its affiliate organizations –
such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other members of
what is called the Sangh Parivar (family) – in these areas. This strategy
of recruiting dalits and tribals has been pursued for several years now,
though it remains ‘a condescending view of “sanskritization” of the
“uncultured”’. (Hansen, 1999:121) The remaining deficit has been
made good by electoral alliances with parties that have a strong social
base in lower caste groups. Such an approach is clearly not under-
written by the desire to create a social coalition of diverse groups, but
rather by the aspiration to homogenize and create a unity by submerg-
ing diversity. This is therefore in sharp contrast to the role played by
the Congress in the early decades after independence, which at least in
rhetoric celebrated diversity.
6
Representing Diversity in
Institutions of Governance
Actual representational outcomes defy any presumption that institu-

tional design, party political processes and electoral systems collectively
contribute to making the institutions and structures of governance more
representative. In this chapter, we examine – in common with the other
country-studies in this research project – the representational outcomes
in three such institutions, the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian
Parliament; the Union Cabinet; and the central bureaucracy. In the first
and last of these, as has been noted, there is quota-based representation
for members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, while in the
second such representation remains a matter of convention. What does
institutional design tell us about the actual representational patterns that
result?
Patterns of representation in the Indian Parliament
The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are the only social
groups (other than the Anglo-Indians who have a fixed number of two
seats) that are eligible for reservation in the legislatures, both central
and state. This gives to these groups a guaranteed place in the lower
house of the Parliament, as also of the state legislatures. As such, the
representational outcomes in the case of these groups, in the particu-
lar case of the legislature, can hardly yield any surprising results.
Hence, the outcomes in the case of these groups must be assessed in
somewhat different terms, in terms of policy outcomes. Five decades
after independence, however, it has become abundantly clear that
despite representation in the legislatures, the policy outcomes for
these groups have been woefully inadequate. (Weiner, 2001:211ff.)
What Anne Phillips has called ‘the politics of presence’1 have not
114
Representing Diversity in Institutions of Governance 115
translated into effective representation such as would enable the

empowerment of these groups. While some of the early studies on the
impact of dalit legislators suggested that they were more likely than
others to support agenda of equity, and were active in pushing for
reservations (Galanter, 1984:53), more recent evidence suggests a less
optimistic conclusion. Dalit legislators have not been particularly
effective on issues like atrocities against these communities, or the
effective implementation of the law against untouchability. It is
mostly dalits who participate in debates on dalit issues, and even those
MPs belonging to the BSP (which claims to represent them, and whose
leadership is dalit) have not been particularly active in parliamentary
debates. Their concerns have tended to be short-term in nature,
mostly confined to questions regarding funds for welfare activities,
unfilled vacancies in government departments and public sector jobs.
They have been much less concerned with more long-term capability
enhancing policy initiatives such as in the areas of health and educa-
tion, or – most crucially – land reform. Few dalits, it is observed, have
competed for power within the parliamentary party and the legisla-
ture. They are on the whole less likely to hold party offices or minis-
terships, to talk to ministers or serve on parliamentary committees.
(Kumar, 2004)
Muslims have been consistently under-represented in Parliament, if
their proportion in the population is taken as the decisive criterion. In
the first Lok Sabha, elected in 1952, they constituted 4.4% of the
house, and in the current Lok Sabha they stand at 6.44%. The highest
representation achieved by Muslims was in 1980, when they consti-
tuted 9.2% of Lok Sabha members. Table 6.1 details Muslim representa-
tion in the Lok Sabha for the period preceding that for which data
have been generated in this paper.
This under-representation may be explained by inferring from
Lijphart’s argument (that the FPTP system does not disfavour minori-
ties that are geographically concentrated), that FPTP disfavours minori-
ties that are not geographically concentrated. This is borne out by a
disaggregation of the results of the 2004 election, in which 35 Muslims
were elected to the Lok Sabha. Approximately one-third (11) of these
were elected from constituencies where the Muslim population is
over 40%; another one-third were elected from constituencies where
Muslims account for 20% to 30% of the population; and the remaining
12 from constituencies where the Muslim population is below 20%.
(Jayal, 2004) The geographical concentration of the Muslim population
is thus clearly a factor of some importance in winning seats, and its
Table 6.1 Muslims in the Lok Sabha (1952–1999)
Year Total no. No. of Muslims Muslims expected Deprivation

of seats in Lok Sabha on the basis of %
population
1952 489 21 49 57.14%

1957 494 24 49 51.02%
1962 494 23 53 56.60%
1967 520 29 56 48.21%
1971 518 30 58 48.28%
1977 542 34 61 44.26%
1980 542 49 59 16.95%
1984 543 46 62 25.81%
1989 543 33 60 45.00%
1991 543 28 65 56.92%
1996 543 28 66 57.56%
1998 543 28 66 57.56%
1999 543 32 66 51.52%
Total 405 770 47.45%
Source: Ansari, 2003:24.
obverse also seems to be true. Despite their low representation,

however, Muslims have not demanded reservation in the legislature,
though arguments for proportional representation are sometimes
advanced.2
Given the manifest under-representation of Muslims in parliament as
well as the state assemblies, a proposal has been mooted, in an unpub-
lished report, for adopting a form of Proportional Representation. This
proposal envisages a transitional stage in which a system akin to that
followed in Mauritius may be instituted. It recommends
the Mauritius model of allocation of a number of uncontested addi-

tional seats and their allotment to the best losers from among
women, minorities and most backwards according to a formula
laying down number of total additional seats and manner according
to which these seats would be distributed to ensure fair gender, class
and regional representation within these categories.
(Ansari, 2003:136)
In addition to calling upon political parties to give fair representation

to these disadvantaged groups in their party organization as well as in
nominations for elections, the report also suggests that a redrawing of
constituencies should be undertaken, and that constituencies presently
reserved for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, in which the
Muslim population exceeds their percentage in the country or the
concerned state, should be dereserved. (ibid.)
More prominent than the demand for proportional representation
has been that for greater access to public employment, as Muslims
are beginning to feel that this may not be possible without reserva-
tions. Some community leaders, in fact, argue for a separate quota on
grounds of educational and social backwardness, which could mean
sharing the Mandal quota of 27% with Muslim OBCs.
In the following pages, we examine data from the last five Parlia-
ments, spanning a period of over a decade. This data show the compo-
sition of Parliament in terms of caste, tribe and religion. The first table
(Table 6.2) provides a sampler of the reservation policy. As mentioned
earlier, the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament, has 15% of its
Table 6.2 Reserved seats in Lok Sabha: state and regional summaries
S.No. Names of the states No. Of Seats
Total Open SC ST
South India
1. Andhra Pradesh 42 34 6 2
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52)
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5
8. Haryana 10 8 2 –
9. Himachal Pradesh 4 3 1 –
10. Madhya Pradesh 40 25 6 9
11. Punjab 13 10 3 –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11)
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2
Table 6.2 Reserved seats in Lok Sabha: state and regional summaries –
continued
S.No. Names of the states No. Of Seats
Total Open SC ST
18. Andaman and 1 1 – –

Nicobar Islands
R. Totals 64 46 11 7
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93)
North East
19. Arunachal Pradesh 2 2 – –
20. Assam 14 11 1 2
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1
24. Nagaland 1 1 – –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – –
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1
R. Totals 25 19 1 5
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00)
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4
30. Dadra and Nagar Havali 1 – – 1
31. Daman and Diu 1 1 – –
R. Totals 78 64 5 9
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53)
32. Jammu and Kashmir3 6 6 – –
TOTAL 543 424 79 40
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%)
seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes and 7.5% for the Scheduled
Tribes. Apart from these, and two seats for the Anglo-Indian commu-
nity (which are filled by community nomination), there are no other
reserved seats in Parliament. The table illustrates how, while the per-
centage at the all-India level is kept constant, the way in which the
reservation is operationalized is sensitive to the fact that the distribu-
tion of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is uneven across the
country. Thus, in any particular state, the percentage of reservation
may exceed or fall short of the prescribed levels, depending upon the
numerical presence of that particular group in the territory of that
state. Thus, for instance, Uttar Pradesh has – prior to the carving out of
the separate state of Uttaranchal from it in November 2000 – 85 seats
in the Lok Sabha. The proportion of seats reserved for the Scheduled
Castes here is 21.2%, which reflects the higher proportion of these
groups in the population of the state. For similar reasons, there is 0%
reservation for STs. On the other hand, Madhya Pradesh, with 40 seats
in the Lok Sabha, has 15% reserved for SCs and 22.5% reserved for STs.
At a combined total of 37.5%, the quantum of reservation in Madhya
Pradesh far exceeds the national limit, but that is on account of the
social demography of the state. The formal structures of political reser-
vations in the country are therefore sensitive to the distribution of
diversities, even if not to the numbers involved. This latter is of course
taken care of by the less structured, and more political and contingent,
processes of the polity.
The following tables provide a disaggregated picture of these seats in
terms of caste, class (used here in the very specific sense in which polit-
ical discourse has latterly interpreted it, i.e. in terms of Backward
Classes) and tribe for five Lok Sabhas, from the 10th Lok Sabha elected
in 1991, to the current 14th Lok Sabha, elected in 2004. In all, there-
fore, the data provide a detailed account of over a decade of representa-
tion to the directly elected lower House (the House of the People) of
Parliament. The data have also been organized according to region, so
as to more easily track changes, especially regarding caste, that are
more significant for north India than for any other region of the
country.
Since the data regarding a Member of Parliament’s caste or commu-
nity affiliation is not officially provided, the methodology adopted for
analyzing the list of Members of Parliament must be explained. As we
have seen in earlier sections of this book, identities in India are notori-
ously non-unitary and perennially unstable. The officially sanctified
taxonomies of constitutional discourse are unequal to the task of
mapping these diversities. Here, we attempt to capture this complex
picture by using categories that can, at one time, mop up one bunch of
identities without a residue, and so altogether exhaust the entire uni-
verse of our sample. In the first instance, the total number of seats
(Column 3) is divided up into those that are Open (column 3a), and
those that are reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
(Columns 3b and 3c respectively). Thus, the category ‘Open’ indicates
the number of seats in the House after reservation provisions are
accounted for. However, it must be kept in mind that a person who
belongs to an SC or ST community is still eligible to contest for an
open seat. Thus, Column 3a represents the seats available for contest
by all or particular categories of people. Column 4, by contrast, speaks
to the citizenry, rather than the seats. This is why the terminology
used in column 4 is not of open/reserved (as for seats) but of general/
protected groups of citizens. The appellation ‘General’ in column (4a)
thus indicates the actual seats held by people from groups that are not
entitled to reservations. In sociological terms, the classification here
corresponds to forward classes and backward classes which, as we have
seen, are political euphemisms for the forward and backward castes
respectively. Now, the Forward Classes in these tables consist not only
of upper caste Hindus – who undoubtedly comprise the majority of
this category – but also of Muslims, Christians (such as the Brahmin
Christians of western India, or the Syrian Christians of Kerala), Sikhs
and upper class tribes (such as the tea tribes of Assam). In a sense, the
category of forward classes is negatively constituted, and represents
the residue that remains when all others, viz. SCs, STs and BCs, are
removed from the total. The SCs and STs, as we have seen, enjoy reser-
vations in the legislature, while the BCs do not, despite the fact that
they have a significant political presence. The BCs here have been soci-
ologically identified through their (caste) names, wherever possible,
and through expert information where not. As a group, the BCs here
comprise of backward caste Hindus, Muslims, Christians (as Scheduled
Caste converts to Christianity, such as the Latin Christians of Kerala,
are recognized as BCs) and Sikhs. Finally, it bears repetition that, while
SCs are by official definition only from the Hindu or Sikh religious
communities (and so entitled to reservation, which entitlement would
be lost if they converted to Buddhism or Christianity or Islam), STs
have a wide variety of religious affiliation. They could be Christians or
Muslims (as is the case with P.M. Sayeed, frequently re-elected from the
Muslim-majority Union Territory of Lakshadweep)
As the Tables 6.3–6.7 clearly demonstrate, the proportion of Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Parliament remains approximately at the
level of the reservation, though in the case of the Scheduled Tribes it has
consistently exceeded it by about 2% over the last decade, hovering in
the region of 9% as opposed to the reservation of 7.5%. In the case of the
Scheduled Castes, this excess is a marginal phenomenon of barely 0.5%.
The 10–13 members of the STs who got elected on general seats compares
with only 2 or 3 members of the SCs being so elected. The explanation
for this is fairly straightforward, and clearly related to the demographic
distribution of these groups. As the next two tables indicate, the STs
managed to win seats in excess of their statutory allotment in all regions
Table 6.3 Caste, class and tribe in the 10th Lok Sabha (1991–1996)
Total Open SC ST Diversity In Representation Unknown

(3) (3a) (3b) (3c) (Caste, Class & Tribe) +
Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 30 4 6 2 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 15 8 4 1 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 14 4 2 – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 4 26 7 1 1
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2 64 42 19 5 1
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (48.85) (32.06) (14.50) (3.81) (0.76)
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 23 12 8 8 3
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 4 3 2 – 1
9. Himachal
Pradesh 4 3 1 – 3 0 1 0 –
10. Madhya 40 25 6 9 19 5 6 10 –
Pradesh
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 8 1 3 – 1
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 13 5 4 3 –
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 53 12 20 – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 5 1 1 – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 129 39 45 21 5
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (53.97) (16.31) (18.82) (8.78) (2.09)
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 9 4 3 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 26 1 8 3 4
18. Andaman and 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
Nicobar
Islands
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 36 5 11 8 4
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (56.25) (7.81) (17.18) (12.50) (6.25)
North East
19. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – – 2
Pradesh
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 7 4 1 2 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 10 4 1 8 2
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (40.00) (16.00) (4.00) (32.00) (8.00)
Table 6.3 Caste, class and tribe in the 10th Lok Sabha (1991–1996) – continued

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 2 0 – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 14 6 2 4 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 26 7 4 5 6
30. Dadra and
Nagar Havali 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
31. Daman and 1 1 – – – – – – 1
Diu
R. Totals 78 64 5 9 42 13 6 10 7
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (53.84) (16.66) (7.69) (12.82) (8.97)
32. Jammu and 6 6 – – – – – – 6
Kashmir
Grand Total 543 424 79 40 281 103 82 52 25
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (51.74) (18.96) (15.10) (9.57) (4.60)

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 27 6 6 3 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 14 9 4 1 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 10 3 2 – 5
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 2 30 7 – –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
Totals 131 110 19 2 54 48 19 5 5
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (36.64) (14.50) (3.81) (3.81)
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 24 17 8 5 –
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 6 2 2 –
9. Himachal 4 3 1 – 3 0 1 – –
Pradesh

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
10. Madhya 40 25 6 9 16 7 6 11 –
Pradesh
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 9 1 3 – –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 12 6 4 3 –
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 46 21 18 – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 6 – 1 – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 123 54 43 19 –
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (51.46) (22.59) (17.99) (7.94)
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 9 4 3 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 26 1 9 3 3
18. Andaman 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
and Nicobar
Islands
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 36 5 12 8 3
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (56.25) (7.81) (18.75) (12.50) (4.68)
North East
19. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – – 2
Pradesh
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 8 2 2 2 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 11 2 2 8 2
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (8.00) (32.00) (8.00)
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 2 – – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 12 8 2 4 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 23 6 3 5 11
30. Dadra and 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
Nagar Haveli
31. Daman and 1 1 – – – – – – 1
Diu
R. Totals 78 64 5 9 37 14 5 10 12
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (47.43) (17.94) (6.41) (12.82) (15.38)
32. Jammu and 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Kashmir
Grand Total 543 424 79 40 267 123 81 50 22
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (49.17) (22.65) (14.91) (9.20) (4.05)

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
South India
1. Andhra
Pradesh 42 34 6 2 27 6 6 3 –
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 14 6 4 1 3
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 11 3 2 – 4
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 2 30 7 – –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – 1 – – –
Totals 131 110 19 2 54 46 19 5 7
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (35.11) (14.50) (3.81) (5.34)
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 26 14 8 6 –
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 2 4 2 – 2
9. Himachal
Pradesh 4 3 1 – 3 – 1 – –
10. Madhya
Pradesh 40 25 6 9 12 8 6 10 4
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 10 – 3 – –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 10 5 4 4 2
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 49 18 18 – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 6 – 1 – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 119 49 43 20 8
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (49.78) (20.50) (17.99) (8.36) (3.34)
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 11 2 3 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 30 – 9 2 1
18. Andaman and
Nicobar Islands 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 42 2 12 7 1
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (65.62) (3.12) (18.75) (10.93) (1.56)
North East
19. Arunachal
Pradesh 2 2 – – – – – – 2
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 8 2 1 3 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 11 2 1 9 2
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (1.00) (36.00) (8.00)

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 2 – – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 14 7 2 3 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 25 6 8 5 4
30. Dadra and
Nagar Haveli 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
31. Daman and
Diu 1 1 – – – – – – 1
R. Totals 78 64 5 9 41 13 10 9 5
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (52.56) (16.66) (12.82) (11.53) (6.41)
32. Jammu and
Kashmir 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Grand Total 543 424 79 40 273 112 85 50 23
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (50.27) (20.62) (15.65) (9.20) (4.23)

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 27 7 6 2 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 13 8 4 2 1
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 11 3 2 – 4
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 1 29 7 1 1
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
Totals 131 110 19 2 53 47 19 6 6
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (40.45) (35.47) (14.50) (4.58)
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 28 10 8 7 1
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 3 4 2 – 1

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
9. Himachal 4 3 1 – 3 – 1 – –
Pradesh
10. Madhya 40 25 6 9 15 6 6 9 4
Pradesh
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 10 – 3 – –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 10 6 4 3 2
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 44 22 18 – 1
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 6 – 1 – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 120 48 43 19 9
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (50.20) (20.08) (17.99) (7.94) (3.76)
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 11 2 3 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 29 1 8 4 –
18. Andaman and 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
Nicobar Islands
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 41 3 11 9 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (64.06) (4.60) (17.18) (14.06)
North East
19. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – – 2
Pradesh
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 7 3 1 3 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 10 3 1 9 2
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (40.00) (12.00) (4.00) (36.00) (8.00 )
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 2 – – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 12 7 2 5 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 26 6 6 4 6
30. Dadra and
Nagar Haveli 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
31. Daman and
Diu 1 1 – – – – – – 1
R. Totals 78 64 5 9 40 13 8 10 7
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (51.28) (16.66) (10.25) (12.82) (8.97)
32. Jammu and 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Kashmir
Grand Total 543 424 79 40 270 114 82 53 24
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (49.72) (20.99) (15.10) (9.75) (4.41)
Table 6.7 Caste, class and tribe in the 14th Lok Sabha (2004)

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 26 8 6 2 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 12 10 4 2 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 10 8 2 – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 6 25 7 1 –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – 1 – – –
Totals 131 110 19 2 54 52 19 6 –
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (39.69) (14.50) (4.58)
North India
7. Bihar 40 33 7 – 20 12 7 – 1
8. Jharkhand 14 8 1 5 5 – 1 8 –
9. Haryana 10 8 2 – 5 3 2 – –
10. Himachal 4 3 1 – 2 1 1 – –
Pradesh
11. Madhya 29 20 4 5 14 5 4 5 1
Pradesh
12. Chhattisgarh 11 5 2 4 2 2 2 5 –
13. Punjab 13 10 3 – 10 – 3 – –
14. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 11 6 5 3 –
15. Uttar Pradesh 80 63 17 – 39 23 18 – –
16. Uttaranchal 5 4 1 – 4 – 1 – –
17. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
18. Delhi 7 6 1 – 5 1 1 – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 118 53 45 21 2
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (49.37) (22.17) (18.82) (8.78) (0.83)
East India
19. Orissa 21 13 3 5 12 1 3 5 –
20. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 28 – 8 4 2
21. Andaman and 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
Nicobar Islands
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 41 1 11 9 2
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (64.06) (1.56) (17.18) (14.06) (3.12)
North East
22. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – 2 –
Pradesh
23. Assam 14 11 1 2 6 3 1 3 1
24. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
25. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – 2 –
26. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
27. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – 1 –
28. Sikkim 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
29. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 9 3 1 11 1
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00) (4.00) (44.00) (4.00)
Table 6.7 Caste, class and tribe in the 14th Lok Sabha (2004) – continued

Vacant
General Protected
(4a) (4b)
classes (4aii)
classes (4ai)
Backward
STs (4bii)
SCs (4bi)
Forward
West India
30. Goa 2 2 – – 2 – – – –
31. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 15 5 2 4 –
Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 29 5 5 4 5
32. Dadra and 1 – – 1 – – – 1 –
Nagar Havali
33. Daman and 1 1 – – 1 – – – –
Diu
34. R. Totals 78 64 5 9 47 10 7 9 5
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (60.25) (12.82) (8.97) (11.53) (6.41)
35. Jammu and 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Kashmir
Grand Total 5431 424 79 40 275 119 83 56 10
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (50.64) (21.91) (15.28) (10.31) (1.84)
of India in all the 4 Lok Sabhas, clearly due to the concentrated character
of the ST population in the states in which they are present in larger
numbers. Thus, for instance, in Lakshadweep, where the STs constitute
93.14% of the population, this is a general – rather than reserved –
constituency. Similarly, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and all the north-
eastern states have a heavy concentration of STs. In all, STs constitute
more than 20% of the population in 11 states.
The SC population, by contrast, is more evenly distributed across the
country. In the northeastern region – with the exception of Assam – the SC
population is negligible. SCs constitute more than 20% of the population in
only four states, and even in these states they are spread across the state’s ter-
ritory. The pattern that we see in the 10th to 14th Lok Sabhas is not markedly
different from that observed for the first six Lok Sabhas, in which only a
handful of candidates from the SCs were elected on general seats, e.g., five in
1971 and three in 1977. In the 10th Lok Sabha, we observe that three such
candidates were elected, of whom two were from Uttar Pradesh. One was
Kanshi Ram, the founder of the BSP (elected from Etawah), and the other
was Balraj Passi (an RSS loyalist and a plainsman elected from the hill con-
stituency of Nainital, now in the new state of Uttaranchal) who contested
the election on a BJP nomination. The third SC candidate to come in on a
general seat was R.M. Ghanghare of the CPM, who won from Wardha in
Maharashtra. Each of these three candidates belongs to a party with a strong
cadre-based organization. In the 11th Lok Sabha, only two SCs were elected
in excess of the reserved quota, one from the Congress in Assam, and the
other from the CPM in West Bengal.
The most striking result, however, is reported in the 12th Lok Sabha, in
which six SCs got elected in excess of the reserved seats. Five of these were
from Maharashtra (where SCs constitute only 11.1% of the population),
and of these four belonged to the Republican Party of India (RPI) (a radical
dalit party), while the fifth was Sushil Kumar Shinde, a Congressman who
is currently Chief Minister of that state. In the 13th Lok Sabha, there were
only three extra SCs. As a result of an electoral understanding between the
Congress and the RPI in this election, two – Prakash Ambedkar and Sushil
Shinde – were carryovers from the 12th Lok Sabha, while the third won
from the Shiv Sena. The fact that a state like Maharashtra – which ranks
17th among the states (in descending order of percentage of SC popula-
tion) could, in one election, return to Parliament four SC candidates on
general seats, while Punjab (with 28% SCs in its population) and Uttar
Pradesh (with 21%, and at least two parties claiming to represent caste dis-
advantage) could not, is striking. It is explained primarily by reference to
the policy of the RPI which, of course, could scarcely entertain the ambi-
tion of forming an independent government in Maharashtra, as the BSP
could in Uttar Pradesh. Since the RPI could not hope to control political
power itself, its preferred strategy apparently was to obtain representation
in excess of reserved seats and so gain some political leverage through a
strategic pre-poll alliance. The BSP, by contrast, has always sought to be a
party of government in Uttar Pradesh and with the exception of its
founder and patron-saint Kanshi Ram getting elected to the 10th Lok
Sabha, has never, until the 2004 election, returned an SC to a non-reserved
seat. It has, however, been successful in getting non-SCs elected by trans-
ferring its vote base of SCs to such candidates.
In the current 14th Lok Sabha, there are four SC MPs over and above
the quota: two are again from Maharashtra (though from altogether dif-
ferent constituencies than those in the 13th Lok Sabha), and one each
from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. For the first time, in the current
house, there is a scheduled caste member supported by the BSP, in an
unreserved seat. What is striking is that, while the three such members
of the 13th Lok Sabha belonged to three different parties – the Congress,
the BJP and the Bharipa Bahuja Mahasangha (BBM) (a splinter group of
the RPI) – in the current Lok Sabha, two of the four MPs belong to
the BJP and one to the Shiv Sena, neither of these parties being easy to
associate with the dalit cause.
In the tables that follow, we examine the data already presented in

terms of regional comparisons as also comparisons across the five Lok
Sabhas under study.
Table 6.8 10th–14th Lok Sabhas: regional configurations of diversity

(caste, class and tribe)
S.No. Region Total Open SC ST Actual representation of classes Unknown

and
vacant
FC BC SC ST
th
14 Lok Sabha (2004)
1. South 131 110 19 2 54 52 19 6 –
India (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (39.69) (14.50) (4.58)
2. North 239 179 43 17 118 53 45 21 2
India (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (49.37) (22.17) (18.82) (8.78) (0.83)
3. East 64 46 11 7 41 1 11 9 2
India (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (64.06) (1.56) (17.18) (14.06) (3.12)
4. North 25 19 1 5 9 3 1 11 1
East (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00) (4.00) (44.00) (4.00)
5. West 78 64 5 9 47 10 7 9 5
India (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (60.25) (12.82) (8.97) (11.53) (6.41)
6. Jammu 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
and
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 275 119 83 56 10
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (50.64) (21.91) (15.28) (10.31) (1.84)
13th Lok Sabha (1999)

1. South 131 110 19 2 53 47 19 6 6
India (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (40.45) (35.47) (14.50) (4.58)
2. North 239 179 43 17 120 48 43 19 9
India (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (50.20) (20.08) (17.99) (7.94) (3.76)
3. East 64 46 11 7 41 3 11 9 –
India (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (64.06) (4.60) (17.18) (14.06)
4. North 25 19 1 5 10 3 1 9 2
East (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (40.00) (12.00) (4.00) (36.00) (8.00 )
5. West 78 64 5 9 40 13 8 10 7
India (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (51.28) (16.66) (10.25) (12.82) (8.97)
6. Jammu 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
and
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 270 114 82 53 24
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (49.72) (20.99) (15.10) (9.75) (4.41)

1. South 131 110 19 2 54 46 19 5 7
India (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (35.11) (14.50) (3.81) (5.34)
2. North 239 179 43 17 119 49 43 20 8
India (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (49.78) (20.50) (17.99) (8.36) (3.34)
Table 6.8 10th–14th Lok Sabhas: regional configurations of diversity

(caste, class and tribe) – continued
S.No. Region Total Open SC ST Actual representation of classes Unknown

and
vacant
FC BC SC ST
3. East 64 46 11 7 42 2 12 7 1
India (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (65.62) (3.12) (18.75) (10.93) (1.56)
4. North 25 19 1 5 11 2 1 9 2
East (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (1.00) (36.00) (8.00)
5. West 78 64 5 9 41 13 10 9 5
India (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (52.56) (16.66) (12.82) (11.53) (6.41)
6. Jammu 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
and
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 273 112 85 50 23
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (50.27) (20.62) (15.65) (9.20) (4.23)

1. South 131 110 19 2 54 48 19 5 5
India (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (36.64) (14.50) (3.81) (3.81)
2. North 239 179 43 17 123 54 43 19 –
India (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (51.46) (22.59) (17.99) (7.94)
3. East 64 46 11 7 36 5 12 8 3
India (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (56.25) (7.81) (18.75) (12.50) (4.68)
4. North 25 19 1 5 11 2 2 8 2
East (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (8.00) (32.00) (8.00)
5. West 78 64 5 9 37 14 5 10 12
India (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (47.43) (17.94) (6.41) (12.82) (15.38)
6. Jammu 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
and
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 267 123 81 50 22
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (49.17) (22.65) (14.91) (9.20) (4.05)

1. South 131 110 19 2 64 42 19 5 1
India (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (48.85) (32.06) (14.50) (3.81) (0.76)
2. North 239 179 43 17 129 39 45 21 5
India (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (53.97) (16.31) (18.82) (8.78) (2.09)
3. East 64 46 11 7 36 5 11 8 4
India (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (56.25) (7.81) (17.18) (12.50) (6.25)
4. North 25 19 1 5 10 4 1 8 2
East (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (40.00) (16.00) (4.00) (32.00) (8.00)
5. West 78 64 5 9 42 13 6 10 7
India (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (53.84) (16.66) (7.69) (12.82) (8.97)
6. Jammu 6 6 – – – – – – 6
and
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 281 103 82 52 25
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (51.74) (18.96) (15.10) (9.57) (4.60)
Table 6.9 Comparison of diversity (caste, class and tribe) by region

10th–14th Lok Sabhas
S.No. Look Total Open SC ST Actual representation of classes Unknown

Sabha and
vacant
FC BC SC ST
South India
1. 14th Lok 131 110 19 2 54 52 19 6 –
Sabha (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (39.69) (14.50) (4.58)
(2004)
2. 13th Lok 131 110 19 2 53 47 19 6 6
Sabha (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (40.45) (35.47) (14.50) (4.58)
(1999)
3. 12th Lok 131 110 19 2 54 46 19 5 7
Sabha (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (35.11) (14.50) (3.81) (5.34)
(1998)
4. 11th Lok 131 110 19 2 54 48 19 5 5
Sabha (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (41.22) (36.64) (14.50) (3.81) (3.81)
(1996)
5. 10th Lok 131 110 19 2 64 42 19 5 1
Sabha (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (48.85) (32.06) (14.50) (3.81) (0.76)
(1991)
North India
1. 14th Lok 239 179 43 17 118 53 45 21 2
Sabha (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (49.37) (22.17) (18.82) (8.78) (0.83)
(2004)
2. 13th Lok 239 179 43 17 120 48 43 19 9
Sabha (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (50.20) (20.08) (17.99) (7.94) (3.76)
(1999)
3. 12th Lok 239 179 43 17 119 49 43 20 8
Sabha (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (49.78) (20.50) (17.99) (8.36) (3.34)
(1998)
4. 11th Lok 239 179 43 17 123 54 43 19 –
Sabha (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (51.46) (22.59) (17.99) (7.94)
(1996)
5. 10th Lok 239 179 43 17 129 39 45 21 5
Sabha (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (53.97) (16.31) (18.82) (8.78) (2.09)
(1991)
East India
1. 14th Lok 64 46 11 7 41 1 11 9 2
Sabha (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (64.06) (1.56) (17.18) (14.06) (3.12)
(2004)
2. 13th Lok 64 46 11 7 41 3 11 9 –
Sabha (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (64.06) (4.60) (17.18) (14.06)
(1999)
3. 12th Lok 64 46 11 7 42 2 12 7 1
Sabha (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (65.62) (3.12) (18.75) (10.93) (1.56)
(1998)
4. 11th Lok 64 46 11 7 36 5 12 8 3
Sabha (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (56.25) (7.81) (18.75) (12.50) (4.68)
(1996)
5. 10th Lok 64 46 11 7 36 5 11 8 4
Sabha (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (56.25) (7.81) (17.18) (12.50) (6.25)
(1991)
Table 6.9 Comparison of diversity (caste, class and tribe) by region

10th–14th Lok Sabhas – continued
S.No. Look Total Open SC ST Actual representation of classes Unknown

Sabha and
vacant
FC BC SC ST
North East
1. 14th Lok 25 19 1 5 9 3 1 11 1
Sabha (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00) (4.00) (44.00) (4.00)
(2004)
2. 13th Lok 25 19 1 5 10 3 1 9 2
Sabha (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (40.00) (12.00) (4.00) (36.00) (8.00)
(1999)
3. 12th Lok 25 19 1 5 11 2 1 9 2
Sabha (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (1.00) (36.00) (8.00)
(1998)
4. 11th Lok 25 19 1 5 11 2 2 8 2
Sabha (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (8.00) (32.00) (8.00)
(1996)
5. 10th Lok 25 19 1 5 10 4 1 8 2
Sabha (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (40.00) (16.00) (4.00) (32.00) (8.00)
(1991)
West India
1. 14th Lok 78 64 5 9 47 10 7 9 5
Sabha (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (60.25) (12.82) (8.97) (11.53) (6.41)
(2004)
2. 13th Lok 78 64 5 9 40 13 8 10 7
Sabha (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (51.28) (16.66) (10.25) (12.82) (8.97)
(1999)
3. 12th Lok 78 64 5 9 41 13 10 9 5
Sabha (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (52.56) (16.66) (12.82) (11.53) (6.41)
(1998)
4. 11th Lok 78 64 5 9 37 14 5 10 12
Sabha (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (47.43) (17.94) (6.41) (12.82) (15.38)
(1996)
5. 10th Lok 78 64 5 9 42 13 6 10 7
Sabha (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (53.84) (16.66) (7.69) (12.82) (8.97)
(1991)
Jammu and Kashmir
1. 14th Lok 6 6 – – – – – – 6
Sabha
(2004)
2. 13th Lok 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Sabha
(1999)
3. 12th Lok 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Sabha
(1998)
4. 11th Lok 6 6 – – 6 – – – –
Sabha
(1996)
5. 10th Lok 6 6 – – – – – – 6
Sabha
(1991)
134
Table 6.10 Summary of the representation of Forward Classes, Backward Classes, SCs and STs 10th–14th Lok Sabhas
No. Lok Sabha Total Open Reserved Reserved Actual representation of classes Unknown
for SCs for STs and vacant
FC BC SC ST
th
1. 14 Lok Sabha (2004) 543 424 79 40 275 119 83 56 10
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (50.64) (21.91) (15.28) (10.31) (1.84)
2. 13th Lok Sabha (1999) 543 424 79 40 270 114 82 53 24
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (49.72) (20.99) (15.10) (9.75) (4.41)
3. 12th Lok Sabha (1998) 543 424 79 40 273 112 85 50 23
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (50.27) (20.62) (15.65) (9.20) (4.23)
4. 11th Lok Sabha (1996) 543 424 79 40 267 123 81 50 22
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (49.17) (22.65) (14.91) (9.20) (4.05)
5. 10th Lok Sabha (1991) 543 424 79 40 281 103 82 52 25
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (51.74) (18.96) (15.10) (9.57) (4.60)
The last three tables, viz. Tables 6.8–6.10, clearly demonstrate the
domination of the Forwards over the Backwards. The Forwards
easily account for 65% of the open seats, while the Backwards hover
in the region of 25%. In the 1950s, the Backwards constituted
barely 5% of the members, and today have increased their tally at
least fourfold. There is, as has already been noted, no statutory
reservation for BCs, even though this is now a statutory category.
Every state, as also the Centre, has its own list of BCs, which
identifies the particular castes that are eligible for reservations in
public employment. This is distinct from the Forwards, which is
essentially a residual category, what is leftover once the SCs and STs
– who have quotas – as also the BCs – who do not – are subtracted
from the total.
From the 10 th to the 14 th Lok Sabhas, we find a marginal increase
in the representation of BCs, by 2.95% or 16 seats, with a corre-
sponding decline of Forwards to the tune of 1.10%. During the
11 th Lok Sabha – considered the post-Mandal high noon of BC
resurgence – this went up to 22.65%. It is important to note that
these numbers were mainly contributed by the northern states
which witnessed what Jaffrelot has called ‘India’s Silent Revolu-
tion’. (Jaffrelot, 2003) In the last 15 years, indeed, each of the four
large north Indian states of Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and
Uttar Pradesh have had Chief Ministers from the Backward Castes.
The tables clearly show that while the contribution of the northern
states is close to the national mean of 20%, the southern states
account for a little more and western India for a little less. The
South has actually remained steady at between 35.50%–36.50%,
except in the most recent elections, in which the figure rises to
39.69%. It was, of course, in the north that a dramatic shift was
registered, from 16.31% in 1991 to 22.17% in 2004, just marginally
lower than the 22.59% and 54 seats in the 11 th Lok Sabha. It would
appear that, for the present, this trend has peaked and reached a
plateau.
Adding up the numbers for the Backward Castes, Scheduled Castes
and Muslims, we find the totals just about balancing the numbers of
the Upper Castes or Forward Classes, who continue to constitute
approximately 50% of the Lok Sabha, even through the high period of
lower caste political mobilization in the 1990s. Eastern India, it is
observed, contributes much more than the national average in this cat-
egory, while the west and the north hover around the national
average, and the south and northeast contribute less than this. Unless
and until there is either a broader coalition of backward castes, sched-

uled castes, and minorities, the dominance of upper castes will con-
tinue. Even in the heyday of the Congress system, however, while the
party’s social base depended on these groups, its ministries did not
reflect this diversity.
Let us attempt now to further disaggregate this data, by examin-
ing the break-up of these categories by religious community, as
demonstrated in Tables 6a–6d in the Appendix and Table 6.11 for
the last five Lok Sabhas. Tables 6.12 and 6.13 provide us with a
comparative perspective, based on region, across the five Lok
Sabhas, one organized around regional comparisons within each Lok
Sabha, and the other organized around regional comparisons across
Lok Sabhas. Finally, Table 6.14 presents a summary of the data
across the five Lok Sabhas.
These tables establish that the proportion of Hindus in the Lok
Sabha grew from 78.63% in the 10 th Lok Sabha to 79.18% in the
14 th, having gone up to just over 80% in the 11 th, 12 th and 13 th Lok
Sabhas. As we have already noted, upper castes dominate among
the Hindus, accounting for more than half the total, even if their
numbers are declining somewhat in proportion to their backward
caste co-religionists.
The representation of minorities has remained more or less con-
stant across these four Lok Sabhas. The Sikhs, Christians and Jains
are represented roughly in proportion to their percentage in the
population. At 2.34% of the population, the Sikhs had representa-
tion ranging between 1.84% (in the 10 th Lok Sabha) and 2.39% in
the 14 th. Similarly, at 2.34% of the total population, Christians too
were represented to the extent of 2.94% (in the 10th Lok Sabha) and
2.02% (in the 13 th), but are currently at their lowest ever level of
representation, at 1.84%. It is Muslim representation that continues
to be abysmally low, almost stationary in the region of 5% through-
out the period under study, though their percentage in the popula-
tion is 12.12%. The election of 2004 has registered a minor
improvement in the percentage of Muslims which, though far from
reflecting their proportion in the population, now stands at 6.45%,
with 35 seats, higher than at any time since 1991. This pattern is
explained partly by the demographic distribution of Muslims as
compared to other religious minorities, and partly by the sharply
polarized inter-communal situation prevailing in the country.
Christians have an overwhelming majority in Meghalaya, Mizoram
and Nagaland, and are a significant and concentrated minority in
Kerala, Manipur and Goa. Similarly, Sikhs are a majority in Punjab,
Table 6.11 Religion, caste and tribe in the 14th Lok Sabha
S. No State/UT Total Open SC ST Hindus Muslims Sikh Christians Jains ST* Unknown
& Vacant
UC BC SC T UC SC T UC BC ST T
South India
1. Andhra Pradesh 42 34 6 2 24 8 6 38 2 – – – – – – – – 2 –
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 11 10 4 25 1 – – – – – – – – 2 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 3 7 2 12 3 – – – 3 1 – 4 1 – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 4 25 7 36 2 – – – – – – – – 1 –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – 1 – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2 42 51 19 112 8 – – – 3 1 – 4 1 6 –
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (85.49) (6.10) (3.05) (0.76) (4.58)
North India
7. Bihar 40 33 7 – 15 12 7 354 4 – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
8. Jharkhand 14 8 1 5 4 – 1 5 1 – – – – – – – – 8 –
9. Haryana 10 8 2 – 5 3 2 10 – – – – – – – – – – –
10. Himachal Pradesh 4 3 1 – 2 1 1 4 – – – – – – – – – – –
11. Madhya Pradesh 29 20 4 5 13 5 4 235 – 1 – 1 – – – – – 5 –
12. Chhattisgarh 11 5 2 4 2 2 2 6 – – – – – – – – – 5 –
13. Punjab 13 10 3 – 2 – – 2 – 8 3 11 – – – – – – –
14. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 10 6 5 21 – – – – – – – – 1 3 –
15. Uttar Pradesh 80 63 17 – 28 23 18 69 11 – – – – – – – – – –
16. Uttaranchal 5 4 1 – 3 – 1 4 – 1 – 1 – – – – – – –
17. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
18. Delhi 7 6 1 – 4 1 1 6 – – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 89 53 42 186 16 10 3 13 2 – – 2 1 21 –
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (77.82) (6.69) (5.43) (0.83) (0.42) (8.78)
East India
19. Orissa 21 13 3 5 12 1 3 16 – – – – – – – – – 5 –
20. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 23 – 8 336 5 – – – – – – – – 4 –
21. Andaman & 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
Nicobar
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 36 1 11 50 5 – – – – – – – – 9 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (78.12) (7.81) (14.06)
137
138
Table 6.11 Religion, caste and tribe in the 14th Lok Sabha – continued
& Vacant
North East
22. Arunachal Pradesh 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 2 –
23. Assam 14 11 1 2 4 3 1 97 2 – – – – – – – – 3 –
24. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
25. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 2 –
26. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
27. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
28. Sikkim 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
29. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
30. R. Totals 25 19 1 5 7 3 1 12 2 – – – – – 3 3 – 11 –
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (48.00) (8.00) (12.00) (44.00)
West India
31. Goa 2 2 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
32. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 15 5 2 22 – – – – – – – – – 4 –
33. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 28 5 5 438 1 – – – – – – – – 4 –
34. Dadra and Nagar
Havali 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 –
Daman & Diu 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 78 64 5 9 45 10 7 67 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 9 –
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (85.90) (1.28) (1.28) (11.56)
35. Jammu and 6 6 – – 3 – – 3 3 – – – – – – – – – –
Kashmir
Grand Total 543 424 79 40 222 118 80 430 35 10 3 13 6 1 3 10 2 56 –
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (79.18) (6.45) (2.39) (1.84) (0.37) (10.31)
* Including ST Christians and Muslims

Table 6.12 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe: 10th–14th Lok Sabhas
& Vacant
144h Lok Sabha(2004)

1. South India 131 110 19 2 42 51 19 112 8 – – – 3 1 – 4 1 6 –
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (85.49) (6.10) (3.05) (0.76) (4.58)
2. North India 239 179 43 17 89 53 42 186 16 10 3 13 2 – – 2 1 21 –
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (77.82) (6.69) (5.43) (0.83) (0.42) (8.78)
3. East India 64 46 11 7 36 1 11 50 5 – – – – – – – – 9 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (78.12) (7.81) (14.06)
4. North East 25 19 1 5 7 3 1 12 2 – – – – – 3 3 – 11 –
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (48.00) (8.00) (12.00) (44.00)
5. West India 78 64 5 9 45 10 7 67 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 9 –
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (85.90) (1.28) (1.28) (11.96)
6. Jammu & 6 6 – – 3 – – 3 3 – – – – – – – – – –
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 222 118 80 430 35 10 3 13 6 1 3 10 2 56 –
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (79.18) (6.45) (2.39) (1.84) (0.37) (10.31)
13th Lok Sabha(1999)

1. South India 131 110 19 2 42 46 19 112 6 – – – 4 1 – 5 1 6 1
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (85.50) (4.5) (3.81) (0.76) (4.58) (0.76)
2. North India 239 179 43 17 99 48 40 195 11 9 3 12 1 – – 1 – 19 1
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (81.58) (4.60) (5.02) (0.42) (7.94)
3. East India 64 46 11 7 35 2 11 49 6 – – – – – – – – 9 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (76.00) (9.37) (14.06)
4. North East 25 19 1 5 7 3 1 11 2 – – – – – 5 5 – 9 3
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00)
5. West India 78 64 5 9 40 13 8 68 – – – – – – – – – 10 –
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (87.17) (12.82)
139
140
Table 6.12 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe: 10th–14th Lok Sabhas – continued
& Vacant
6. Jammu & 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 4 – – – – – – – – – –
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 225 112 79 437** 29 9 3 12 5 1 5 11 1 53 5
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (80.47) (5.34) (2.20) (2.02) (0.18) (9.75) (0.92)

1. South India 131 110 19 2 45 44 19 115 4 – – – 4 2 – 6 1 5 –
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (87.77) (3.05) (4.58) (0.76) (3.81)
2. North India 239 179 43 17 98 49 39 192 12 7 4 11 1 – – 1 1 20 2
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (80.33) (5.02) (4.60) (0.41) (0.41) (8.36) (0.82)
3. East India 64 46 11 7 36 2 12 51 6 – – – – – – – – 7 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (79.68) (9.37) (10.93)
4. North East 25 19 1 5 8 2 1 11 2 – – – – – 5 5 – 9 3
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00)
5. West India 78 64 5 9 40 13 10 67 – – – – 1 – – 1 9 1
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (85.89) (1.28) (11.53) (1.28)
6. Jammu & 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 4 – – – – – – – – – –
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 229 110 81 438 28 7 4 11 6 2 5 13 2 50 6
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (80.66) (5.15) (2.02) (2.39) (0.36) (9.20) (1.10)

1. South India 131 110 19 2 40 46 19 110 8 – – – 5 2 – 7 2 5 –
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (83.96) (6.10) (5.34) (1.52) (3.81)
2. North India 239 179 43 17 102 54 40 196 10 9 3 12 1 – – 1 1 19 –
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (82.00) (4.18) (5.02) (0.41) (0.41) (7.94)
Table 6.12 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe: 10th–14th Lok Sabhas – continued
& Vacant
3. East India 64 46 11 7 31 5 12 51 5 – – – – – – – – 8 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (79.68) (7.81) (12.50)
4. North East 25 19 1 5 9 2 2 13 1 – – – – – 5 5 – 8 3
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (52.00) (4.00) (20.00) (32.00) (12.00)
5. West India 78 64 5 9 35 14 5 65 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 10 1
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (83.33) (1.28) (1.28) (12.82)
6. Jammu & 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 3 – – – – – – – – – 1
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 219 121 78 437 28 9 3 12 7 2 5 14 3 50 5
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (80.47) (5.15) (2.20) (2.57) (0.55) (9.20) (9.20)

1. South India 131 110 19 2 48 38 19 105 10 – – – 6 4 – 10 1 5 1
(83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (80.15) (7.63) (7.63) (0.77) (3.81)
2. North India 239 179 43 17 111 39 41 193 11 6 4 10 1 – – 1 – 21 3
(74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (80.75) (4.60) (4.18) (0.42) (8.78) (1.25)
3. East India 64 46 11 7 31 5 11 51 5 – – – – – – – – 8 –
(71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (79.68) (7.81) (12.50)
4. North East 25 19 1 5 8 4 1 13 1 – – – – – 4 4 – 8 3
(76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (52.00) (4.00) (16.00) (32.00) (12.00)
5. West India 78 64 5 9 40 13 6 65 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 10 1
(82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (83.33) (1.28) (1.28) (12.82)
6. Jammu & 6 6 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 6
Kashmir
All India 543 424 79 40 238 99 78 427 28 6 4 10 8 4 4 16 1 52 14
(78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (78.63) (5.15) (1.84) (2.94) 0.18 (9.57) (2.57)
141
** Including Hindus of unknown Coste identity
142
Table 6.13 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe for each Lok Sabha (10th–14th )
S.No. Lok Sabha Total Open SC ST Hindus Muslims Sikh Christians Jains ST* Unknown
& Vacant
South India
1. 144h Lok 131 110 19 2 42 51 19 112 8 – – – 3 1 – 4 1 6 –
Sabha (2004) (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (85.49) (6.10) (3.05) (0.76) (4.58)
2. 13th Lok 131 110 19 2 42 46 19 112 6 – – – 4 1 – 5 1 6 1
Sabha (1999) (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (85.50) (4.5) (3.81) (0.76) (4.58) (0.76)
3. 12th Lok 131 110 19 2 45 44 19 115 4 – – – 4 2 – 6 1 5 –
Sabha (1998) (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (87.77) (3.05) (4.58) (0.76) (3.81)
4. 11th Lok 131 110 19 2 40 46 19 110 8 – – – 5 2 – 7 2 5 –
Sabha (1996) (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (83.96) (6.10) (5.34) (1.52) (3.81)
5. 10th Lok 131 110 19 2 48 38 19 105 10 – – – 6 4 – 10 1 5 1
Sabha (1991) (83.96) (14.50) (1.52) (80.15) (7.63) (7.63) (0.77) (3.81)
North India
1. 144h Lok 239 179 43 17 89 53 42 186 16 10 3 13 2 – – 2 1 21 –
Sabha(2004) (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (77.82) (6.69) (5.43) (0.83) (0.42) (8.78)
2. 13th Lok 239 179 43 17 99 48 40 195 11 9 3 12 1 – – 1 – 19 1
Sabha(1999) (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (81.58) (4.60) (5.02) (0.42) (7.94)
3. 12th Lok 239 179 43 17 98 49 39 192 12 7 4 11 1 – – 1 1 20 2
Sabha (1998) (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (80.33) (5.02) (4.60) (0.41) (0.41) (8.36) (0.82)
4. 11th Lok 239 179 43 17 102 54 40 196 10 9 3 12 1 – – 1 1 19 –
Sabha (1996) (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (82.00) (4.18) (5.02) (0.41) (0.41) (7.94)
5. 10th Lok 239 179 43 17 111 39 41 193 11 6 4 10 1 – – 1 – 21 3
Sabha (1991) (74.89) (17.99) (7.11) (80.75) (4.60) (4.18) (0.42) (8.78) (1.25)
East India
1. 144h Lok 64 46 11 7 36 1 11 50 5 – – – – – – – – 9 –
Sabha (2004) (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (78.12) (7.81) (14.06)
2. 13th Lok 64 46 11 7 35 2 11 49 6 – – – – – – – – 9 –
Sabha (1999) (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (76.00) (9.37) (14.06)
Table 6.13 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe for each Lok Sabha (10th–14th ) – continued
& Vacant
3. 12th Lok 64 46 11 7 36 2 12 51 6 – – – – – – – – 7 –
Sabha (1998) (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (79.68) (9.37) (10.93)
4. 11th Lok 64 46 11 7 31 5 12 51 5 – – – – – – – – 8 –
Sabha (1996) (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (79.68) (7.81) (12.50)
5. 10th Lok 64 46 11 7 31 5 11 51 5 – – – – – – – – 8 –
Sabha (1991) (71.87) (17.19) (10.93) (79.68) (7.81) (12.50)
North East
1. 144h Lok 25 19 1 5 7 3 1 12 2 – – – – – 3 3 – 11 –
Sabha(2004) (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (48.00) (8.00) (12.00) (44.00)
2. 13th Lok 25 19 1 5 7 3 1 11 2 – – – – – 5 5 – 9 3
Sabha(1999) (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00)
3. 12th Lok 25 19 1 5 8 2 1 11 2 – – – – – 5 5 – 9 3
Sabha (1998) (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (44.00) (8.00) (20.00) (36.00) (12.00)
4. 11th Lok 25 19 1 5 9 2 2 13 1 – – – – – 5 5 – 8 3
Sabha (1996) (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (52.00) (4.00) (20.00) (32.00) (12.00)
5. 10th Lok 25 19 1 5 8 4 1 13 1 – – – – – 4 4 – 8 3
Sabha (1991) (76.00) (4.00) (20.00) (52.00) (4.00) (16.00) (32.00) (12.00)
West India
1. 144h Lok 78 64 5 9 45 10 7 67 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 9 –
Sabha (2004) (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (85.90) (1.28) (1.28) (11.96)
2. 13th Lok 78 64 5 9 40 13 8 68 – – – – – – – – – 10 –
Sabha (1999) (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (87.17) (12.82)
3. 12th Lok 78 64 5 9 40 13 10 67 – – – – 1 – – 1 9 1
Sabha (1998) (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (85.89) (1.28) (11.53) (1.28)
4. 11th Lok 78 64 5 9 35 14 5 65 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 10 1
Sabha (1996) (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (83.33) (1.28) (1.28) (12.82)
143
5. 10th Lok 78 64 5 9 40 13 6 65 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 10 1
Sabha (1991) (82.05) (6.41) (11.53) (83.33) (1.28) (1.28) (12.82)
144
Table 6.13 Regional configuration of religion, caste and tribe for each Lok Sabha (10th–14th ) – continued
& Vacant
Jammu & Kashmir

1. 144h Lok 6 6 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 6
Sabha (2004)
2. 13th Lok 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 4 – – – – – – – – – –
Sabha (1999)
3. 12th Lok 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 4 – – – – – – – – – –
Sabha (1998)
4. 11th Lok 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 3 – – – – – – – – – 1
Sabha (1996)
5. 10th Lok 6 6 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 6
Sabha (1991)

Table 6.14 Summary representation of religion, caste and tribe 10th–14th Lok Sabhas
& Vacant
1. 144h Lok 543 424 79 40 222 118 80 430 35 10 3 13 6 1 3 10 2 56 –

Sabha(2004) (78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (79.18) (6.45) (2.39) (1.84) (0.37) (10.31)
2. 13th Lok 543 424 79 40 225 112 79 437** 29 9 3 12 5 1 5 11 1 53 5

Sabha(1999) (78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (80.47) (5.34) (2.20) (2.02) (0.18) (9.75) (0.92)
3. 12th Lok 543 424 79 40 229 110 81 438 28 7 4 11 6 2 5 13 2 50 6

Sabha (1998) (78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (80.66) (5.15) (2.02) (2.39) (0.36) (9.20) (1.10)
4. 11th Lok 543 424 79 40 219 121 78 437 28 9 3 12 7 2 5 14 3 50 5

Sabha (1996) (78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (80.47) (5.15) (2.20) (2.57) (0.55) (9.20) (9.20)
5. 10th Lok 543 424 79 40 238 99 78 427 28 6 4 10 8 4 4 16 1 52 14

Sabha (1991) (78.08) (14.54%) (7.36%) (78.63) (5.15) (1.84) (2.94) 0.18 (9.57) (2.57)

** Including Hindus of unknown Coste identity
145
and have a concentrated presence also in Haryana and Rajasthan.

Muslims form a majority in only one state – Jammu and Kashmir.
Assam and West Bengal have a high concentration of Muslims, but
even Assam – with a 28.43% Muslim population – returned Muslims
in only 2 seats (in percentage terms, 14% of its 14 seats in the
Lok Sabha). Gujarat and Maharashtra have an approximately
9% Muslim population, but have not returned a single Muslim MP
in the last three Lok Sabhas.
Patterns of representation in the Union Cabinet
The Cabinet in India is a smaller body than the Council of Ministers,

and consists only of Ministers of Cabinet rank. As such, it excludes
Ministers of State and Deputy Ministers. Statistically, the average size of
the Council of Ministers is 46, of which 40% on an average would be
Cabinet Ministers. Both the size of the Ministry as well as that of the
Cabinet varies according to political exigencies (such as the stability of
a Government), and also over time as subject areas and portfolios have
tended to expand.9 On the whole, it would appear that whenever the
government has enjoyed a relatively secure majority, the Council of
Ministers has had about 45–60 members, and the Cabinet has tended
to be approximately 30% of the overall size of the ministry. Cabinet
sizes generally hover between 15 and 20, except in the case of coalition
governments, when they tend to be larger. All non-Congress govern-
ments have been coalition governments and the proportion of the
Cabinet is, in these governments, invariably larger. It is not possible
to definitively assert that this explains the better representation of
diversities in coalition governments. Are coalition governments simply
more conducive to the representation of diversities, or does their very
existence express the assertiveness of diversities?
As in all parliamentary systems, it is the Prime Minister who selects
her/his Cabinet, and in doing so a variety of political considerations
are involved. There is no constitutional or statutory provision for the
representation of any particular ethnic group – however defined – in
the political executive.10 It has however been a convention to have the
major religious groups (e.g. Muslims, Sikhs and Christians) and
the Scheduled Castes represented in the Union Cabinet. Galanter’s
(1984:49) study argued that these numbers were slowly rising, but we
can be less sanguine about recent trends that therefore bear closer
examination. As Khalidi’s study of the Union Cabinet shows, while at
least one Muslim was included in every cabinet from 1947–1997, the
coming to power of the BJP has reversed this process. (Muslim India,
Table 6.15 The Council of Ministers from 1947 to the present: a comparative
overview of cabinet sizes
S.No. Lok Sabha Total Government11 Total CM13 MOS14 DM15

strength/ no. of
Women ministers12
1. Independence – Jawaharlal 23 17 4 2
Proclamation Nehru (74.00%)
of Republic
(15/81947–
26/1/1950)
2. Proclamation Jawaharlal 36 21 8 7
of republic – Nehru (58.33%)
First General
Election
(26/1/1950–
17/4/1952 )
3. First Lok Sabha 499/22 Jawaharlal 39 15 9 15
(17/4/1952– Nehru (38.46%)
4/4/1957)
4. Second Lok 500/27 Jawaharlal 46 13 14 19
Sabha Nehru (28.26%)
(5/4/1957–
31/3/1962)
5. Third Lok Sabha 503/34 Jawaharlal 55 18 14 23
(2/4/62–3/3/1967) Nehru (32.14%)
(2/4/62–
27/5/1964)
Lal Bahadur 54 16 16 22
Shastri (29.62%)
(9/6/1964–
11/1/1966)
Indira Gandhi 53 16 18 19
(24/1/1966– (30.18%)
12/3/67)
6. Fourth Lok Sabha 523/31 Indira Gandhi 56 18 19 19
(4/3/1967– (32.14%)
27/12/1970)
7. Fifth Lok Sabha16 521/22 Indira Gandhi 60 15 23 22
(15/3/1971– (25.00%)
18/1/1977)
8. Sixth Lok Sabha 544/19 Morarji Desai 44 20 24 –
(22/3/1977– (26/3/77– (45.45%)
22/8/1979) 28/7/79)
Charan Singh 39 22 17 –
(28/7/79– (50.00%)
14/1/80)
9. Seventh Lok Sabha 544/28 Indira Gandhi 59 19 26 14
(10/1/1980– (14/1/80– (32.20%)
3112/1984) 31/10/1984)
Rajiv Gandhi 49 14 24 11
31/10/1984– (28.57%)
30/12/1984
10. Eighth Lok Sabha 542/45 Rajiv Gandhi 64 20 39 5
(31/12/1984– (31.25%)
27/11/1989)
Table 6.15 The Council of Ministers from 1947 to the present: a comparative
overview of cabinet sizes – continued
S.No. Lok Sabha Total Government11 Total CM13 MOS14 DM15

strength/ no. of
Women ministers12
11. Ninth Lok Sabha 517/27 V.P. Singh 40 18 17 5

(2/12/1989– (2/12/1989– (45.00%)
13/3/1991) 10/11/1990)
Chandra 35 15 16 4
Shekhar (42.85%)
(10/11/1990–
21/6/1991)
12. Tenth Lok Sabha 544/39 P.V. Narasimha 64 17 42 5
(20/6/1991– Rao (26.56%)
10/5/1996)
13. Eleventh Lok 544/40 A.B. Vajpayee 12 12 – –
Sabha (16/5/1996 (100%)
(15/5/1996– –1/6/1996)
4/11/1997) H.D. Deve 42 20 16 6
Gowda (47.61%)
(1/6/1996–
21/4/1997)
I.K. Gujral 44 20 24 –
(21/4/1997– (45.45%)
19/3/1998)
14. Twelfth Lok 539/40 A.B. Vajpayee 45 24 21 –
Sabha (19/3/1998– (53.33%)
(10/3/1998– 13/10/1999)
26/4/1999)
15. Thirteenth Lok 543/48 A.B. Vajpayee 74 29 7 38
Sabha (12/10/1999– (39.18%)
(10/10/1999– 22/5/2004)
May 2004)
16. Fourteenth Lok 543/45 Manmohan 67 29 38 –
Sabha Singh (43.28%)
(May 2004–) (23/5/2004–)
May 2001) Sometimes, this depends on the individual who happens to

be prime minister. As Rafiq Zakaria has written about Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi,
She was always concerned about the psychosis through which the
Indian Muslims were passing and wanted to help them. She
believed that they could overcome it if they were given a sense of
belonging. Hence, she tried to put Muslims in some of the most sen-
sitive positions: two Muslims – Zakir Hussain and Fakhruddin Ali
Ahmed – as President; Hidayatullah and Beg as Chief Justices of the
Supreme Court; Latif as Chief of the Air Staff; Barakatullah, Gafoor

and Antulay as Chief Ministers. The list is not exhaustive but indica-
tive of her attitude, which no other Prime Minister, including
Nehru, adopted so courageously.
(Zakaria, 2004:198–9)
Efforts have often been made to ensure that Muslims and Sikhs are
given special consideration for the office of the President (head of
state) and even the position of Governors of states. The last incumbent
of the Presidency was a dalit (member of the Scheduled Castes), albeit a
graduate of the London School of Economics, a former career diplomat
and former vice-chancellor of a premier university. The current incum-
bent is a nuclear scientist who, before his election to the Presidency,
was a defence advisor to the Government, and also happens to be a
Muslim. While the nomination of a Muslim was not expected from a
ruling coalition led by the party of Hindu nationalism, it is worth
remarking that other considerations may well trump religion. In this
particular case, for instance, the Presidential candidate – a nuclear
scientist widely credited with fathering the Indian bomb – was seen to
be the choice of the government because of a shared affinity on the
nuclear issue; indeed, more cynical observers even said that the gov-
ernment made it difficult for the opposition to not support a Muslim
candidate. It should be mentioned here that the President is elected by
an electoral college composed of the upper house of Parliament, and
the state legislatures, on the basis of the single transferable vote form
of PR. As such, it forces the union cabinet of the day to seek a consen-
sus with other parties. These conventions were set in the pluralist
heyday of the Nehruvian era, when the rich diversity of India was pro-
jected as its defining characteristic and the source of its strength as a
nation.17
It has thus been customary for the major religious groups, especially
Muslims and Sikhs, and some members of the Scheduled Castes to be
represented in the Union Cabinet.18 Prime Ministers have customarily
attended to a range of political considerations apart from these, which
include the regional imperative, especially the North-South balance
within the country.19 In the era of coalition governments, of course,
the need to accommodate those parties with whom there have been
formal pre-poll arrangements is paramount, and the relative shares of
parties are the subject of intense negotiation and hard bargaining.
Sometimes, those whose support has been pledged after the election,
but is crucial to the survival of the government, must also be accom-
modated, with either ministerial positions or the chairpersonship of

some public body or public sector corporation. Cabinet formation is
thus a delicate balancing act, in which the Prime Minister, in consulta-
tion with her/his close associates, makes decisions about how to
balance considerations of representation with the imperatives of
rewarding political loyalty. The objective of securing administrative
efficiency is, in the process, often sacrificed.
In the following pages, we shall examine the data pertaining to
Cabinets in two phases. The first phase takes us from the first Cabinet of
Jawaharlal Nehru at the time of independence in 1947 to the Cabinet of
V.P. Singh at the end of 1990. The second phase records the period
from 1991, in the first five years of which the minority Congress gov-
ernment of P.V. Narasimha Rao ruled, bringing to power for the first
time a Prime Minister from a Southern state. Since the Rao government
was voted out in 1996, India has been governed by two United Front
coalition governments, whose troubled tenures – as we saw in Chapter 5
– lasted barely a year each, followed by the almost uninterrupted rule,
since 1998, of the BJP-led coalition. The interruption in question was a
snap poll, when the 13-day government of Atal Behari Vajpayee failed
to get a parliamentary majority, and had to return to the electorate,
which elected it back to power. This coalition of 23 parties, called the
NDA, and led by the BJP, was voted out in the summer of 2004, when a
new Congress-led coalition called the UPA was voted into office, with
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at its head.
In the first phase, viz. from 1947–1990, the Cabinets – labelled
by the relevant Prime Minister’s initials – are examined in terms of
their religion, language, region and caste break-ups. This is followed
by a similar analysis of the Union Cabinets from 1991 to 2002. The
main reason for choosing 1990 as a break-point is that it constitutes a
political watershed in India. In 1989, Prime Minister V.P. Singh
accepted the recommendations of the Commission on Backward
Classes (also known as the Mandal Commission), giving reservations in
educational institutions and public employment to members of the
OBCs. This was also the period that witnessed the most intense politi-
cal mobilization around caste identity, as well as the formation of
predominantly backward caste parties like the Samajwadi Party, the
Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the predominantly dalit BSP.
The Union Cabinet 1947–1990

As the table below indicates, the Hindus have been predominant in the
Union Cabinet, to approximately the same extent as the proportion in
their population. These data have been interpreted to suggest that the
percentage representation of minorities broadly reflects their proportion

in the population. (Pai Panandiker and Mehra, 1996) For instance,
though there has been no attempt to ensure the representation of certain
minorities – viz. Christians, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists – the Muslim and
Sikh minorities have generally been represented in the Cabinet. However,
this argument reflects the dangers of an excessive emphasis on statistics,
which in its insistence on ‘mirror’ representation, may accept certain
numerical percentages as adequate, without any consideration of what
this might or might not mean in substantive and policy terms. The point
surely should be not merely whether the percentage of Muslims in the
Cabinet reflects the percentage of Muslims in the Indian population, but
also the voice that Indian Muslims enjoy in the polity and in decision-
making processes, and the concern for their well-being that is or is not
reflected in policy. If the first becomes a surrogate for the second, there is
a danger of obscuring and perhaps even abandoning legitimate concerns
about minorities. Should the question of minority rights be reduced to a
percentage representation, especially when the percentages are so minis-
cule and the possibilities of tokenism so high? Nevertheless, it is impor-
tant to keep in mind the fact that these findings relate to the Cabinet,
and not to the Ministry as a whole, and it is possible that groups under-
represented in the Cabinet may be represented in the Ministry, in other
words at the level of Minister of State or Deputy Minister. That would
give them some leverage, though not the status of a Cabinet minister.
The caste composition of the Cabinet between 1947 and 1990 shows
the predominance of the Upper Castes, who on average occupy two-
thirds of Cabinet positions, and at no time does their proportion fall
much below half the Cabinet strength. In contrast to this general
‘forward-caste’ orientation of the Cabinet, a rising trend of backward caste
representation is observable from Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership in 1984.
Between 1947 and 1990, the backward castes average less than 10% of the
Cabinet, and predictably only in the V.P. Singh ministry exceed 20%. The
Scheduled Caste average is 8.86%, almost half their proportion in the
population. However, the proportion of Scheduled Castes in the Cabinet
has been increasing since the early 1980s, and since 1984, the combined
percentage of backward castes and scheduled castes has gone up to rela-
tively high figures of 27.77% (in V.P. Singh’s Cabinet in 1990) and
38.46% (in Rajiv Gandhi’s second cabinet of 1984–89).
It is further notable that not a single member of the Scheduled Tribes
was included in the Cabinet until 1990. Indeed, it was only in 1994 that
Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao gave Mr. P.A. Sangma (formerly a
member of the Council of Ministers, but not of Cabinet rank) the status
of a Cabinet Minister.
Table 6.16 Composition of the Union Cabinet by religious community (1947–1990)
152
S.No. Cabinet Christian Hindu Jain Muslim Parsi Sikh Others Total
1 JN I 2 (11.76%) 11 (64.71%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (11.76%) 1 (5.88%) 1 (5.88%) 0 (0.00%) 17

(1947–50)
2 JN 2 2 (9.52%) 16 (76.19%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (9.52%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (4.76%) 0 (0.00%) 21
(1950–52)
3 JN 3 1 (5.0%) 15 (75.00%) 1 (5.00%) 2 (10.00%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (5.00%) 0 (0.00%) 20
(1952–57)
4 JN 4 0 (0.00%) 12 (75.00%) 1 (6.25%) 2 (12.50%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (6.25%) 0 (0.00%) 16
(1957–62)
5 JN 5 0 (0.00%) 19 (82.61%) 0 (0.00%) 3 (13.04%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (4.35%) 0 (0.00%) 23
(1962–64)
6 LBS 0 (0.00%) 14 (82.35%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (11.76%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (5.88%) 0 (0.00%) 17
(1964–66)
7 IG 1 0 (0.00%) 13 (81.25%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (12.50%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (6.25%) 0 (0.00%) 16
(1966–67)
8 IG 2 0 (0.00%) 21 (87.50%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (8.33%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (4.17%) 0 (0.00%) 24
(1967–70)
9 IG 3 0 (0.00%) 25 (80.64%) 0 (0.00%) 3 (9.68%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (6.45%) 1 (3.23%) 31
(1971–77)
10 MD 1 (4.55%) 18 (81.82%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (4.55%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (9.09%) 0 (0.00%) 22
(1977–79)
11 CS 0 (0.00%) 18 (85.71%) 0 (0.00%) 3 (14.29%) 0 (0.00%) 0 (0.00%) 0 (0.00%) 21
(1979–80)
12 IG 4 1 (4.00%) 21 (84.00%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (4.00%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (8.00%) 0 (0.00%) 25
(1980–84)
13 RG 1 0 (0.00%) 10 (76.92%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (15.38%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (7.69%) 0 (0.00%) 13
(1984)
Table 6.16 Composition of the Union Cabinet by religious community (1947–1990) – continued
S.No. Cabinet Christian Hindu Jain Muslim Parsi Sikh Others Total
14 RG2 0 (0.00%) 25 (76.00%) 0 (0.00%) 5 (15.62%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (8.00%) 0 (0.00%) 32

(1984–89)
15 VPS 1 (5.55%) 15 (83.30%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (11.11%) 0 (0.00%) 0 (0.00%) 0 (0.00%) 18
(1989–90)
Total % 8 (2.22%) 253 (80.10%) 2 (0.63%) 34 (10.76%) 1 (0.32%) 17 (5.38%) 1 (0.32%) 316
Note:
• The numbers are listed, with the percentages in parenthesis. There were no Buddhists in any Cabinet. Jains would generally be regarded as
Hindus, though the religion is listed separately.
• The initials of the Prime Ministers are – JN: Jawaharlal Nehru; LBS: Lal Bahadur Shastri; IG: Indira Gandhi; MD: Morarji Desai; CS: Charan Singh;
RG: Rajiv Gandhi; VPS: V.P. Singh.
Source: Pai Panandiker and Mehra (1996):72.
153
Table 6.17 Composition of the Union Cabinet by caste (1947–1990)
S.No. Cabinet Upper Upper Backward Backward SC SC ST ST Total

Caste Caste Caste Caste No. % No. %
No. % No. %
1 JN I 8 47.70 1 5.90 2 11.76 0 0.00 17

(1947–50)
2 JN 2 13 61.90 1 4.80 2 9.52 0 0.00 21
(1950–52)
3 JN 3 14 70.00 0 0.00 1 5.00 0 0.00 20
(1952–57)
4 JN 4 11 68.75 0 0.00 1 6.25 0 0.00 16
(1957–62)
5 JN 5 15 65.22 2 8.70 2 8.70 0 0.00 23
(1962–64)
6 LBS 11 64.71 2 11.76 1 5.88 0 0.00 17
(1964–66)
7 IG 1 10 62.50 1 6.25 2 12.50 0 0.00 16
(1966–67)
8 IG 2 16 66.67 3 12.50 2 8.33 0 0.00 24
(1967–70)
9 IG 3 21 67.74 2 6.45 2 6.45 0 0.00 31
(1971–77)
10 MD 16 72.73 1 4.55 1 4.55 0 0.00 22
(1977–79)
11 CS 13 61.90 3 14.29 2 9.52 0 0.00 21
(1979–80)
12 IG 4 17 68.00 2 8.00 3 12.00 0 0.00 25
(1980–84)
13 RG 1 6 46.15 2 15.38 3 23.08 0 0.00 13
(1984)
14 RG2 19 59.38 4 12.5 3 9.38 0 0.00 32
(1984–89)
15 VPS 10 55.55 4 22.22 1 5.55 0 0.00 18
(1989–90)
Total 200 63.29 28 8.86 28 8.86 0 0.00 316
Source: Pai Panandiker and Mehra (1996):74.

Note:
• The initials of the Prime Ministers are – JN: Jawaharlal Nehru; LBS: Lal Bahadur Shastri; IG:
Indira Gandhi; MD: Morarji Desai; CS: Charan Singh; RG: Rajiv Gandhi; VPS: V.P. Singh.
It is worth noting, however, that this picture would have differed

greatly in the states of the Indian Union, such that backward castes
dominated politics and government for at least three decades
(cf. the essays in Frankel and Rao, 1989) in many states, especially
those of southern India, before they became visible in the Union
Cabinet. Even today, the representation according to caste would vary
greatly as between states, depending upon the electoral dynamic in a
particular place and at a particular time. For instance, with the dra-
matic increase in the proportion of OBCs getting elected to the Bihar
legislature in the 1990s (Kumar, 2002), it would be reasonable to
expect that the Bihar Cabinet would be largely composed of people
belonging to these castes.
Finally, let us examine the regional representativeness of the Union

Cabinet in the period 1947–1990. Though there has not been – and
arguably cannot be – a conscious policy to reflect all the major
languages (or at least the 14 listed in the Constitution) in the Cabinet,
by and large seven to 11 languages have been represented in most
Cabinets, while 14 linguistic groups have, at one time or another, found
representation in the Cabinet. On the whole, the predominance – to the
extent of 30 to 40% of the total – of Hindi-speakers is however appar-
ent. (ibid.:Table 3.3:77) This is not altogether surprising when we look
at the regional and state representation. The most represented region of
the country has been central India, predominantly the states of Uttar
Table 6.18 Regional representation in the Union Cabinet (1947–1990)

North-East No.
North-East %
Central No.
South No.
Central %
North No
West No
North %
South %
East No.
Cabinet
West %
East %
Total
1 JN I 2 11.80 0 0.00 4 23.53 3 17.65 5 29.41 3 17.65 17
(1947–50)
2 JN 2 3 14.29 0 0.00 4 19.10 3 17.65 5 29.41 3 17.65 21
(1950–52)
3 JN 3
(1952–57) 3 15.00 0 0.00 2 10.00 5 25.00 3 15.00 7 35.00 20
4 JN 4
(1957–62) 2 12.50 0 0.00 2 12.50 4 25.00 2 12.50 6 37.50 16
5 JN 5
(1962–64) 3 13.04 0 0.00 4 17.39 7 30.43 4 17.39 5 21.74 23
6 LBS
(1964–66) 2 11.80 0 0.00 4 23.53 5 29.41 3 17.65 3 17.65 17
7 IG 1
(1966–67) 2 12.50 1 6.25 3 18.75 3 18.75 5 31.25 2 12.50 16
8 IG 2
(1967–70) 3 12.50 2 8.33 4 16.66 7 29.16 6 25.00 2 8.33 24
9 IG 3
(1971–77) 7 22.58 3 9.68 5 16.13 6 19.35 4 12.90 6 19.35 31
10 MD
(1977–79) 3 13.64 0 0.00 4 18.18 3 13.64 5 22.73 7 31.82 22
11 CS
(1979–80) 2 9.52 0 0.00 4 19.10 5 23.80 2 9.52 8 38.10 21
12 IG 4
(1980–84) 4 16.00 0 0.00 6 24.00 7 28.00 2 8.00 6 24.00 25
13 RG 1
(1984) 3 23.10 0 0.00 2 15.38 4 30.80 2 15.38 2 15.38 13
14 RG2
(1984–89) 9 28.13 0 0.00 5 15.62 5 15.62 3 9.38 10 31.25 32
15 VPS
(1989–90) 4 22.22 1 5.55 2 11.11 5 27.77 1 05.55 5 27.77 18
Total 52 16.46 7 2.22 55 17.40 72 22.78 53 16.77 77 24.36 316
Source: Panandiker and Mehra, 1996:80.

Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The Southern states come next, while the
rest is shared more or less evenly between the West, the East and the
North. Table 6.18 shows clearly that the North-Eastern region has been
largely unrepresented, except in three of Mrs. Gandhi’s Cabinets, and
one of Mr. V.P. Singh.
In terms of state size, the over-represented states are Haryana, Jammu
and Kashmir and Karnataka, and the under-represented ones have been
Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and
West Bengal. On the whole, it would appear that region, on the one
hand, and purely political considerations, on the other, have tended to
substantially determine representation in the Cabinet. (ibid.:81)
The Union Cabinet 1991–2002

The 1990s were, as noted earlier, a period of intense caste-based politi-
cal mobilization. The parties that mobilized around caste (such as the
SP and BSP) however never claimed to represent exclusively the interests
of the castes that formed their main social constituency. On the
contrary, they have always claimed to represent a broader coalition of
the disadvantaged, including religious minorities. The data on Union
Cabinets between 1991 and the present register some interesting
trends.20 On the representation of religious diversity, the Cabinet actu-
ally shows an increasing number of Hindus in the Cabinet, and it is
curious and interesting that none of the three Cabinets in which
Hindus form over 90% of the Cabinet are BJP governments. But they
do represent the period of increasing backward caste representation, as
the next table demonstrates. However, the representation of Muslims is
noticeably lower in the BJP-led governments than in its predecessors or
indeed its successor government.
The trend of increasing backward caste representation, which perhaps
explains the unusually high percentage of Hindus in the preceding table, is
clearly brought out in the following table. The backward castes exceed
40% in the two UF Cabinets (numbers 19 and 20), which register a cor-
responding decline in the representation of Upper Castes. The latter
however make a quick recovery in the BJP-led NDA governments, going
back to their former average of two-thirds. There is once again a minor
increase in backward caste representation in the Manmohan Singh
cabinet, though it remains far from the levels achieved during the two UF
governments. The average backward caste representation in this period –
of 19.27% – represents a trend that is at marked variance with the average
for the previous period (1947–1990), which was under 9%. This trend is
likely to endure, and possibly even be enhanced.
Table 6.19 Religious diversity in the Union Cabinet (1990–2005)
No of cabinet
during the
Christian
ministers
Cabinet
Muslim
Others
tenure
Hindu
Parsee
S.No.
Sikh
Jain
16 Ch.Sh. 15 – 14 – 1 – – –
(1990–91) (93.33%) (6.60%)
17 PVNR 28 2 21 – 3 – 2 –
(1991–96) (7.14%) (75.00%) (10.71%) (7.14%)
18 ABV 1 12 – 9 1 1 – 1 –
(1996) (75.00%) (8.33%) (8.33%) (8.33%)
19 HDDG 21 – 19 – 2 – – –
(1996–97) (90.48%) (9.52%)
20 IKG 21 – 19 – 2 – – –
(1997–98) (90.48%) (9.52%)
21 ABV 2 25 1 21 – 1 – 2 –
(1998–99) (4.00%) (84.00%) (4.00%) (4.00%)
22 ABV 3 41 1 38 – 1 – 1 –
(1999– (2.43%) (92.68%) (2.43%) (2.43%)
2004 )
23. MS 29 1 25 – 2 – 1 –
(2004) (3.44%) (86.20%) (6.88%) (3.44%)
Total 192 5 141 1 13 – 7 –
(2.60%) (86.45%) (0.52%) (6.77%) (3.64%)
Note: The initials of the Prime Ministers are Ch.Sh. (Chandra Shekhar), PVNR (P.V.
Narasimha Rao), ABV (Atal Behari Vajpayee), HDDG (H.D. Deve Gowda), IKG (I.K. Gujral),
MS (Manmohan Singh)
The SCs and STs combined account for an average of 10% of

Cabinets in the 1990s, and it is only in the current Manmohan Singh
cabinet that their representation – at 13.79% – begins to somewhat
approximate their proportion in the population. While the Chandra
Shekhar Cabinet is the only one in the history of independent India
which had no representative of the Scheduled Castes, the last
Cabinet of Prime Minister Vajpayee also shows a fairly low – under
5% – representation of these groups.
As in the previous phase, combining the representation of backward
castes and scheduled castes, we find the highest ever figures – between
Table 6.20 Composition of the Union Cabinet by caste (1990–2005)
S.No. Cabinet No. of Upper Backward SC ST Others

cabinet caste caste
ministers
during the
tenure
16 Ch.Sh. 15 9 1 – – 5
(1990–91) (60.00%) (6.66%) (33.33%)
17 PVNR 28 17 3 3 1 4
(1991–96) (60.71%) (10.71%) (10.71%) (3.57%) (14.28%)
18 ABV 1 12 9 – 1 1 1
(1996) (75.00%) (8.33%) (8.33%) (8.33%)
19 HDDG 21 6 10 2 1 2
(1996–97) (28.57%) (47.61%) (9.52%) (4.76%) (9.52%)
20 IKG 21 7 9 2 1 2
(1997–98) (33.33%) (42.85%) (9.52%) (4.76%) (9.52%)
21 ABV 2 25 17 4 2 – 2
(1998–99) (68.00%) (16.00%) (8.00%) (8.00%)
22 ABV 3 41 30 5 2 2 2
(1999–2004) (73.17%) (12.19%) (4.87%) (4.87%) (4.87%)
23 MS 29 16 5 4 3 1
(2004) (55.17%) (17.24%) (13.79%) (10.34%) (3.44%)
Total 192 111 37 16 9 20
(57.81%) (19.27%) (8.33%) (4.68%) (10.41%)
53% and 58% – for these groups in the two United Front governments of
Deve Gowda and Gujral. The comparable figure in the last two Vajpayee
Cabinets has hovered between 17% and 24%. The increase of lower caste
representation in the 19th and 20th cabinets is probably explained by
the fact the United Front government was a motley coalition, including
the Left, but substantially dominated by the socialist and Janata
fragments, who represent this particular social constituency.
Finally, the representation of regions in the Cabinet has under-
gone a dramatic change. Central India which was the most rep-
resented region in the first phase moves down to fourth place in the
second phase. The Southern states move up from second place to
first place, while the west and east similarly move up one rank.
What is common to both phases, however, is the consistent under-
representation of the North-East, which falls from an average of
2.22% in the first phase to 1.56% in the second. Given the well-
known policy neglect of this region, these figures are not surprising,
but they continue to be disturbing.
Table 6.21 Regional representation in the Union Cabinet (1990–2005)21
S. No. Cabinet No. of North North- East South West Central

cabinet East
ministers
during the
tenure
16 Ch.Sh. 15
(1990–91)
17 PVNR 28 3 1 4 7 7 6
(1991–96) (10.70%) (3.50%) (14.28%) (25%) (25%) (21.42%)
18 ABV 1 12 3 – 1 1 4 3
(1996) (25.00%) (8.33%) (8.33%) (33.33%) (25.00%)
19 HDDG 21 2 1 6 9 – 3
(1996–97) (9.52%) (4.76%) (28.57%) (42.85%) (14.28%)
20 IKG 21 2 – 7 9 – 3
(1997–98) (9.52%) (33.33%) (42.85%) (14.28%)
21 ABV 2 25 4 – 4 6 7 4
(1998–99) (16.00%) (16.00%) (24.00%) (28.00%) (16.00%)
22 ABV 3 41 8 – 11 5 10 7
(1999– (19.50%) (26.82%) (12.19%) (24.39%) (17.07%)
2004 )
23 MS 29 4 1 6 9 4 5
(2004) (13.76%) (3.44%) (20.64%) (30.96%) (13.76%) (17.20%)
Total 192 26 3 39 46 32 31
(13.54%) (1.56%) (20.31%) (23.95%) (16.66%) (16.14%)
Combining the Central and Northern regions, we discern a drop of

more than ten percentage points between the first and second phases
that we have identified. How may this be explained? Part of the expla-
nation for this could lie in the composition of the coalitions that have
been forged. The allocation of Cabinet positions does depend on how
critical a particular political ally is, and if the more assertive allies
happen to belong to a particular region/state, their Cabinet positions
may be an expression of nothing more significant than the usual
bargains of transactional politics.
Finally, let us consider the current Cabinet in terms of the various
types of diversity, an exercise that will also serve to emphasize the
overlapping and cross-cutting nature of identities in India. In terms of
religion, the cabinet has two Muslims, one Christian, one Sikh, and – if
the category of Hindu can be treated as a residual category, encompass-
ing members of the scheduled castes – 25 Hindus. In terms of caste,
16 of the 29 members of this cabinet (including one Sikh) can be said
to belong to the forward castes; five to the backward castes; four to the
scheduled castes; and three – including one Muslim – to the scheduled

tribes. In terms of regional distribution, there is a clear preponderance
of the south, which accounts for nine members. The eastern region
contributes six; the central region five; and the north and west provide
four members each. The North-East has only one representative in the
Union Cabinet; likewise, there is also only one woman in the cabinet
who happens to belong to the scheduled castes.
The bureaucracy
The bureaucracy has, since colonial times, been the most coveted form
of employment in India. The ICS of the British era was the most elite
of all civil services, whose members were often described as the
‘heaven-born’. It was believed that, after independence, the civil
service should not have the law and order orientation of the colonial
bureaucracy – the famous ‘steel frame’ – but rather become a develop-
mental bureaucracy to reflect the changed orientation of the Indian
state. This hope was soon to be belied, as administrative traditions
were seen to persist and be reproduced. The ICS of the colonial era was
very small compared to the size of the state structure as a whole, and
comprised only 0.001% of all persons employed by the colonial state
in India.
At the district, an ICS officer possessed enumerated powers running
into thousands: most significantly, he was the head of the magistracy
and of revenue collection. The administration at the provincial and
central levels too was manned by the officials of the ICS. While the
majority of civil servants (53%) were posted in districts, 22% were
posted in provincial capitals and 11% at the centre. When they served
at the centre, ICS officials were considered to be on deputation from
their home province, and would generally revert back to their province
after some years in coveted jobs at the centre. In ethnic terms, the
Indian officials in the ICS were mostly Hindus, and most of these were
Brahmins. However, it is worth noting that Muslim ICS officials
accounted for 16% of the Indian members of the ICS in 1933 and 20%
in 1941. (Potter, 1996:117). Only one member from what were then
known as the Depressed Classes ever succeeded in entering the ICS,
and this was through nomination in 1940, shortly before recruitment
was stopped on account of the war.
The post-independence successor of the ICS is the IAS, which has
enjoyed an elite status similar to that of its predecessor. David Potter’s
analysis of the Indian bureaucracy in the 1980s reveals that though the
number of persons in public sector employment quadrupled in size

between 1953 and 1983 (with the most marked growth being in the
public sector corporations), and the IAS also grew four-fold, it contin-
ued to represent a miniscule elite group within the entire state bureau-
cracy. (Potter, 1996:159–61) With the state moving into the public
sector of the economy, members of the IAS extended their control
to these. However, their orientation towards order continued to be
strong. It was found that the specialist expertise and capacity for inno-
vation required for successful developmental initiatives was lacking,
and that the IAS appeared a rather ‘blunt instrument for development
purposes.’ (ibid.:244)
The dissimilarity of environment for the ICS and IAS was, of course,
palpable in more than one respect. Parliamentary democracy was very
different from the colonial state, united by the idea of imperial inter-
est. The IAS thus had to be attuned to the ideological predilections of
its political masters and its officials began to learn how to realize their
career aspirations accordingly. This impulse was given a certain legiti-
macy in the regime of Mrs. Gandhi who expressed herself in favour of
a ‘committed’ rather than ‘neutral’ bureaucracy, one which would
enthusiastically implement the policies of the political executive,
instead of offering purely disinterested advice while placing policy
options before the minister in the manner of the British civil servant.
The federal character of the new polity also came to play an impor-
tant role in shaping the civil service. Those selected to the Indian
Administrative Service (as also to the other ‘all-India service’, the
Indian Police Service or IPS) are given a state cadre, i.e. a ‘home’ state
in which they would serve, especially at the lower level of the district.
When they are more senior, they might serve either at the secretariat
in the state capital, or be posted to the Centre. A great deal of prestige
attaches to the IAS, especially because membership in this generalist
service also makes it possible to hold a host of coveted positions in
public sector corporations and even in departments that require spe-
cialized knowledge. The bias towards the Centre is more marked now
than in the colonial period. In Potter’s estimate for 1993, 14% of IAS
officers got postings at the centre, 42% got postings in state capitals,
while 25.5% got postings in districts. The district has clearly dropped
in importance, and indeed the premium placed on district experience
has also declined.
The IAS and the IPS are all-India services, and are governed by the
Ministry of Home Affairs. Recruitment to these services, as to a whole
host of other services – such as the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian
Revenue Service, or the Indian Audit and Accounts Service, or the

Indian Customs and Excise Service – is through a combined national
competitive examination. This examination has three stages, spread
over a period of almost one year. It begins with a preliminary objec-
tive-type examination, and those who pass this are eligible to go on to
the next stage, which consists of an examination in two specialized
subjects along with some general subjects. Those who clear this written
examination are then interviewed, and the proportion of those who
are finally selected constitute a very small percentage of the total
number who take the examination. Till the Mandal reform was imple-
mented, 22.5% of the seats were reserved, 15% for the Scheduled
Castes and 7.5% for the Scheduled Tribes. In 1994, a quota of 27% for
the OBCs was added to this. Till the 1980s, indeed, the social back-
ground of recruits to the service was fairly elite: they came predomi-
nantly from middle-class backgrounds, and were educated at the better
schools and colleges. This has changed somewhat in recent years,
partly because of the reservation for OBCs, and partly because with the
liberalization of the economy in the 1990s, young people increasingly
prefer better-paid jobs in the private sector.
The 2003 report on the Civil Services Examination conducted by the
Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) shows that the number of
candidates appearing in the main examination from 1995 to 1998 were
in the region of 8000–9000, while the jobs offered were in the range of
500–700. However, in 1999, the number of those who took the main
examination was down to 4718, of whom 411 were offered jobs. Of
these 411, 15.33% belonged to the Scheduled Castes, 7.30% to the
Scheduled Tribes, 30.90% to the OBCs and 46.47% to the general cate-
gory. (UPSC, 2003)
The IAS has been increasing in size fairly consistently. Before down-
sizing government became the watchword, its annual recruitment of 35
to 40 officers between 1947–53 had risen to 140 by the end of the
1960s, and to over 200 by the end of the 1980s. With a large-scale
expansion of government after independence, however, the proportion
of IAS officials to the overall size of government has remained minis-
cule throughout. Despite the fact that almost a quarter of the IAS was,
in the mid-1980s, accounted for by promotees (from the state civil ser-
vices), the latter are less likely to obtain postings at the Centre, if only
because they need 15 years in service before getting promoted to the
IAS. By this time, they are considerably older than the direct recruits to
the service and hence not in a position to compete with the latter.
Positions in the Union ministries, especially above the rank of Joint
Secretary, are held primarily by members of the IAS, apart from some
members of other central services. These appointments are made under
the Central Staffing Scheme, and executed by an establishment office
that carries out the tasks of screening the confidential reports of officers
and preparing panels for the Establishment Board and the Senior
Selection Board. The latter is presided over by the Cabinet Secretary
himself (there has not yet been a woman Cabinet Secretary). Though
these deputations are generally for short periods of three to five years,
in reality it turns out that some officers manage to spend three-fourths
of their career at the centre, and only a small portion of it in their
parent state cadre. Postings at the Centre are the source of considerable
influence in terms of both policy and career advancement.
An early study of the civil service showed that 75.5% of IAS officers
were Hindu, 5.3% Sikh, 2.1% Muslim and 2% Christian. (Goyal,
1989:429) The same study also showed that Brahmins constituted
37.67% of the Hindu officers. Indeed, the upper castes – i.e., Brahmins,
Kshatriyas and Kayasthas – together accounted for 60.56% of all Hindu
officers. At this point, the Sudra castes constituted only 2.04%, compa-
rable to the Muslims. (ibid.:430) Today, the Sudra castes – in the form
of the OBCs – appear to account for 27%, a jump made possible
entirely by the acceptance of the Mandal reform.
A comprehensive account of which caste and community groups
reach the apex of the civil service, as Secretaries to the GOI, is ham-
pered by the paucity of data. However, a newspaper analysis of the
situations in 2003, showed that Brahmins occupied 42% of these posi-
tions today. Of the 78 secretary-level posts, Brahmins alone occupy 33.
There is no indication of how many of the total posts are held by
upper castes. (The Indian Express, June 23, 2003:1) As far as religious
diversity is concerned, the following table indicates the number and
proportion of Muslim and Christian officers recruited either directly or
by promotion from 1970–2000.
For purposes of the present study, given the importance of central
postings, a list was prepared of all officers above the level of Joint
Secretary in 12 key Union ministries. To make the sample manageable,
this was done for regular five-year intervals from 1975 to 1995. These
include the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and the Cabinet Secretariat.
They also include the important Ministries of Agriculture and Irriga-
tion, Commerce, Communications, Defence, Education and Social
Welfare, Energy, Finance, Home Affairs, Industry and Civil Supplies,
and Information and Broadcasting. The years represented in this
sample also represent fairly divergent political regimes over the last
Table 6.22 Muslim and Christian presence in

IAS (direct recruitment + promotees) (1970–2000)
Year Total Muslims % Christians %

Intake
1971 87 1 1.14 5 5.74

1972 142 1 0.70 4 2.81
1973 124 3 2.14 7 5.64
1974 141 1 0.70 4 2.83
1975 129 2 1.55 7 5.42
1976 138 5 3.62 10 7.24
1977 158 10 6.32 13 8.22
1978 134 10 7.46 13 9.70
1979 117 3 2.56 7 5.98
1980 124 1 0.80 3 2.41
1981 122 0 0 1 0.82
1982 151 4 2.64 5 3.31
1983 180 2 1.11 7 3.88
1984 189 2 1.05 6 3.17
1985 185 3 1.62 3 1.62
1986 192 2 1.04 4 2.08
1987 163 1 0.61 2 1.22
1988 212 11 5.18 2 0.94
1989 220 11 5.00 2 0.90
1990 264 8 3.03 3 1.13
1991 204 8 3.92 2 0.98
1992 159 5 3.14 2 1.25
1993 171 3 1.75 4 2.33
1994 151 4 2.64 2 1.32
1995 144 8 5.55 4 2.77
1996 112 4 3.57 0 0
1997 96 4 4.16 1 1.04
1998 55 1 1.81 0 0
1999 53 2 3.77 0 0
2000 59 2 3.38 2 3.38
Total 4376 122 2.78% 125 2.85%
Source: Civil Lists.
25 years: from Indira Gandhi (1975, 1980) and Rajiv Gandhi (1985), to
V.P. Singh (1990) and P.V. Narasimha Rao (1995). The exercise could
not be taken beyond 1995, the year when the Government of India
discontinued the publication of the directory from which these data
were sourced.
Using this sampling method, a list of officers was arrived at that con-
sisted, on an average, of 120 officers belonging to the IAS for each of
these years. Those officers who had risen to the rank of, say, Joint
Secretary from other central services were excluded. The final list –
cross-checked against the Civil List of the Union Government – was
scrutinized to ascertain the identity of those officers whose religion
could be established by name. The remaining were verified by consult-
ing informed sources. The results, not unexpectedly, show an over-
whelming preponderance of Hindus among those who make it to the
top positions of the Union government. The percentages for Muslims,
though declining over the years, are considerably higher than the pro-
portion of Muslims recruited to the civil service. The relatively high
proportion of Muslims at this level in 1975 is partly explained by
the larger numbers of Muslims who joined the service at the time of
independence, and had reached a certain seniority in the 1970s.
Today, the UPSC – the body responsible for recruitment to the
central government – implements the constitutionally ordained reser-
vation of 15% and 7.5% for SCs and STs in all the recruitments made
to the Central bureaucracy. The table below indicates that, until 1989,
the UPSC interpreted this provision as one that obliged it to fulfil the
quota percentages. Under this regime, it was not possible to conceive
of a person belonging to the SCs or STs getting included on the basis of
merit, in the open category. From 1990, onwards this interpretive
regime changed and the new system interprets the reservation percent-
ages as indicating the minimum required. Thus, from 1990 onwards we
Table 6.23 Religious diversity of IAS officers (at Joint Secretary level or higher
in select ministries of the Union Government)
S.No. Year Total Hindus Muslims Sikhs Christians Jains Parsees

Number
Of Officers
1. 1975 115 100 10 1 3 1 –

(86.95) (8.69) (0.87) (2.60) (0.87)
2. 1980 104 92 5 5 2 – –
(88.46) (4.80) (4.80) (1.92)
3. 1985 125 115 4 3 2 – 1
(92.00) (3.20) (2.40) (1.60) (0.80)
4. 1990 140 129 5 2 2 2 –
(92.14) (3.57) (1.42) (1.42) (1.42)
5. 1995 138 124 5 3 3 3 –
(89.85) (3.62) (2.17) (2.17) (2.17)
166
Table 6.24 Recruitment pattern of candidates belonging to the SC, ST and OBC groups to the Union Civil Services (1981–1999)
Year Scheduled Castes Scheduled tribes Other backward classes

Number of Number of candidates Number of Number of candidates Number of Number of candidates
vacancies vacancies vacancies
reserved Appeared Recommended reserved Appeared Recommended reserved Appeared Recommended
Number Deficit (–)/ Number Deficit (–)/ Number Deficit (–)/

excess (+) excess (+) excess (+)
1981 144 1417 144 – 79 764 79 – – – – –
1982 157 1445 157 – 82 756 82 – – – – –
1983 140 1502 140 – 75 791 75 – – – – –
1984 129 1467 129 – 71 764 71 – – – – –
1985 126 1410 126 – 67 724 67 – – – – –
1986 151 1409 151 – 74 708 74 – – – – –
1987 130 1454 130 – 62 718 62 – – – – –
1988 139 1581 139 – 70 727 70 – – – – –
1989 142 1612 142 – 69 759 69 – – – – –
1990 166 1464 172 +6 80 724 82 +2 – – – –
1991 138 1513 147 +9 77 751 79 +2 – – – –
1992 123 1513 128 +5 59 740 59 –0– – – – –
1993 145 1389 152 +7 79 694 79 –0– – – – –
1994 115 1548 123 +8 61 760 61 –0– 173 2724 204 +31
1995 98 1280 101 +3 49 589 49 –0– 165 2352 189 +24
1996 125 1163 138 +15 57 593 59 +2 174 2160 213 +39
1997 89 1186 94 +5 43 614 46 +3 166 2232 215 +49
1998 53 1316 60 +7 28 662 30 +2 114 2360 142 +28
1999 53 701 63 +10 27 384 30 +3 97 1276 127 +30
Source: Abstracted from the Annual Reports of the Union Public Service Commission 1981–2000.
observe the recruitment of individuals (belonging to categories entitled

to reservation) in excess of the prescribed quota.22 The inauguration of
this new interpretive regime is clearly indicative of the impact of the
Mandal discourse on governmental practices. This is despite the fact
that the key feature of the Mandal reform, viz., 27% reservation for
OBCs had to wait, for another four years, until 1994, before the legal
challenges to it had been exhausted, to be implemented.
It was only after 1989 that the UPSC began providing information
about the number of candidates falling under reserved categories, who
are nevertheless also recruited under the general category. The table
shows that by the time they were extended reservations, OBCs were
already capable of performing well in the competitive examination.
Unlike the Scheduled Castes, who manifest a wide variation in the
number of people entering through the general category, in the case of
the OBCs, a constant number is returned, a number moreover that is
not marginal like that of the Scheduled Tribes. Most importantly, with
the ensured representation of 50% in the civil services, SCs, STs and
OBCs together account for at least 55% of the total recruitment figures
in the union civil services since 1994. This figure appears to have stabi-
lized around 60% during the last three years (1997–99) for which data
are available.
While it is true that the face of Indian bureaucracy is changing, it
would be too early to say what consequences this changing composi-
tion would have in the long run at the top administrative levels. For
one, the experiment must necessarily have a long gestation period.
Its consequences would be evident only after another 20 years when
the current recruits have attained sufficient seniority to occupy top
positions. Secondly, this outcome is also contingent on age, as the
people belonging to SC, ST and OBC categories have been given an
age relaxation, which enables them to enter the civil service at an
older age than people not belonging to such categories. Such data are
not available.
The next two tables provide a comparative perspective, as they reveal
that in spite of reservations in educational institutions, including in
professional courses, there appears to be a definite shortfall in the
availability of suitable candidates for filling up reserved vacancies in
jobs that demand specialized or technical qualifications. Throughout
the decade 1980–90, the reserved vacancies in the Indian Forest Service
and the Indian Engineering Service were barely filled up or fell far short
of the quota, ostensibly for dearth of ‘suitable candidates’. However, in
spite of the fall in the number of vacancies due to the overall intake
cut, the number of aspirants kept multiplying over this period.

Between 1980 and 2000, there was an increase of nearly 400% and
1100% respectively in the SC and ST aspirants for the Indian Forest
Service. Similarly, there was a 1500% and 5000% increase in the
number of SC and ST Candidates respectively appearing for the Indian
Engineering Service examination. However, unlike the civil services
examination, there do not appear to be too many reserved candidates
succeeding in making it to the general category in the recruitment list,
except for the OBC category.
Muslims do not enjoy any reservations in public employment. Given
the generally low levels of education in the Muslim community (as
seen in Chapter 2), the representation of Muslims in the public services
is not altogether surprising. However, as compared to the political rep-
resentation of Muslims in the legislatures, which is in the region of
5 to 6%, it is found that their representation in the more elite services
in public employment is in the region of 2 to 3%, going up to about
6% in state governments and public sector corporations. The data con-
tained in the Report of the High Powered Panel on Minorities, set up
by the GOI, and chaired by Dr. Gopal Singh (1980), are striking.
It is instructive to compare this with the data on the Scheduled
Castes, which show that, despite reservations, these castes account
for approximately 9% of the IAS and IPS, though their representation
in the Indian Forest Service is slightly higher, at 16.48%. (Zakaria,
2004:215)
The Gopal Singh Committee Report also showed that while Muslims
registered with the (government-run) Employment Exchanges in
14 states constituted 6.77% of the total number registered, the actual
placement was just 5.31% of the total. (ibid.:35) In 10 states, Sikhs con-
stituted 2.18% of those registered, and 3.44% of the total placements.
(ibid.) Christians accounted for 5.75% of the total registration, and
3.92% of the placements. A random survey of 150 central government
offices in 14 states revealed the percentage of Muslims to be just 4%.
(Zakaria, 2004:215) In nationalized banks, Muslims accounted for
barely 2.18% of the employees, while Christians and Sikhs accounted
for 2.67% and 2.29% respectively. (Government of India, 1980b:39).
In contrast to these figures, the Muslim employees in 168 public sector
undertakings (corporations) in 13 states was considerably higher
at 10.85%. The corresponding figure for Sikhs was 2.25% and for
Christians 3.83%.
A more contemporary assessment shows the percentage of directly
appointed (i.e., recruited through the annual civil service examination,
as against promoted from state civil service cadres) Muslim officers of
Table 6.25 Recruitment pattern of candidates belonging to the SC, ST and OBC groups to Indian Forest Services (1981–1999)
S.No. Year Scheduled Castes Scheduled tribes Other backward classes


1 1981 18 343 18 – 9 110 9 0 – – – –
2 1982 18 323 18 – 9 103 9 0 – – – –
3 1983 23 294 21 –2 11 114 9 –2 – – – –
4 1984 26 520 26 – 13 158 13 0 – – – –
5 1985 26 557 26 – 13 218 13 0 – – – –
6 1986 26 659 26 – 13 215 13 0 – – – –
7 1987 23 643 23 – 11 228 11 0 – – – –
8 1988 15 776 15 – 8 274 8 0 – – – –
9 1989 11 656 11 – 6 276 6 0 – – – –
10 1990 11 972 11 0 6 335 6 0 – – – –
11 1991 11 844 11 0 6 287 6 0 – – – –
12 1992 11 878 7 –4 4 330 4 0 – – – –
13 1993 11 834 8 –3 4 291 5 +1 13 2540 15 +2
14 1994 11 2232 8 –3 4 615 4 0 20 2931 23 +3
15 1995 11 2305 11 0 6 655 6 0 20 2931 23 +3
16 1996 9 1918 9 0 4 691 4 0 17 2457 22 +5
17 1997 5 1839 5 0 3 663 3 0 7 2373 11 +4
18 1998 5 1997 5 0 2 725 2 0 9 2272 11 +2
19 1999 5 1912 5 0 2 702 2 0 9 2305 13 +4
Source: Abstracted from the Annual Reports of Union Public Service Commission 1981–2000.
169
170
Table 6.26 Recruitment pattern of candidates belonging to the SC, ST and OBC groups to the Indian Engineering Services (1981–1999)
S.No. Year Scheduled Castes Scheduled tribes Other backward classes


1 1981 191 380 145 –46 112 34 18 –94 – – – –
2 1982 178 428 120 –58 106 48 22 –84 – – – –
3 1983 197 426 135 –62 114 55 19 –95 – – – –
4 1984 203 623 127 –76 112 64 19 –93 – – – –
5 1985 178 678 116 –62 99 97 19 –80 – – – –
6 1986 183 888 134 –49 89 157 34 –55 – – – –
7 1987 200 1141 177 –23 111 198 49 –62 – – – –
8 1988 263 1752 165 –98 156 351 65 –91 – – – –
9 1989 217 1698 168 –49 142 341 78 –64 – – – –
10 1990 221 1713 230* +9 153 379 71 –82 – – – –
11 1991 155 2182 172* +17 131 458 61 –70 – – – –
12 1992 118 2737 156* +38 118 533 77 –41 – – – –
13 1993 92 2698 156* +64 90 523 79 –11 – – – –
14 1994 100 4523 103 +3 56 953 56 0 139 6497 173 +34
15 1995 82 4132 84 +2 42 932 42 0 142 5632 175 +33
16 1996 92 3614 93 +1 50 929 51 +1 163 4340 200 +37
17 1997 84 3818 88 +4 56 1111 56 0 170 4244 211 +41
18 1998 75 3682 77 +2 37 1055 37 0 230 4114 282 +52
19 1999 78 4632 79 +1 35 1241 35 0 151 5773 183 +32
*
These are the years, where the some of the backlog positions were filled up
Source: Abstracted from the Annual Reports of Union Public Service Commission 1981–2000.
Table 6.27 Religious minorities in the civil service (January 1, 1980)
Name of Service Muslims Christians Sikhs
Indian Administrative Service 3.22% 2.74% 4.15%

Indian Police Service 2.64% 2.26% 5.41%
Indian Forest Service 3.14% 1.60% 3.07%
Source: Government of India (1980b:33).
the IAS to be just 2.14%; that of Muslim officers of the IPS to be 2.76%;
and of Muslim judges of the High Courts and Supreme Court to be
6.26%. (Al Hidayah, August–December 2002:51–8)
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who have ‘assured’ rep-
resentation in the bureaucracy, also register a shortfall in recruitment
to the elite services of the IAS and IPS. These figures are not surprising
when considered in relation to the data regarding the concentration of
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in agricultural occupations, either
as farmers or as wage labourers. This is further reinforced by the low
levels of enrolment of SCs and STs in courses providing a technical or
professional education. It is nevertheless heartening to observe a three-
to four-fold increase in the course of two decades, between the 1970s
and the 1990s.
Nevertheless, it is a well-documented fact that the concentration of
SCs and STs in the Central Government is primarily in what are known
as Class III and Class IV services, in the lower echelons of the bureau-
cracy. These are the levels of peons (office-boys) and clerks, and while
some mobility is possible from the latter group, it is not substantial.
Most disturbing of all is the fact that the category of sweepers (janitors) –
the occupation traditionally associated with the Scheduled Castes – has
an overwhelming preponderance of these groups, thus suggesting a
certain reproduction of persistent patterns of social dominance in the
corridors of power.
The preponderance of SCs among sweepers is even more compelling
in Table 6.32, which shows the extent of representation of SCs and STs
Table 6.28 Representation of SCs and STs in IAS and IPS (January 1, 1983)
S.No. Cadre Total number of officers SCs % STs %
1 IAS 4236 404 9.54 181 4.27

2 IPS 2198 330 10.46 77 3.5
Source: Annual Report Department of Personnel and Administrative Reform, 1983–84.

172
Table 6.29 Occupational classification of main workers 1961–1991 (all numbers in percentages)
Items Total SC ST
1961 1971 1981 1991 1961 1971 1981 1991 1961 1971 1981 1991
Cultivators 52.78 43.38 41.53 39.74 37.76 27.87 28.17 25.44 68.18 57.56 54.43 54.50
Agricultural Laborers 16.71 23.32 25.16 19.66 34.48 51.74 48.22 49.06 19.71 33.04 32.67 32.69
Household Industry 6.38 3.55 3.99 2.56 6.56 3.33 3.31 2.41 2.47 1.03 1.42 1.04
Other
Workers Workers 24.13 26.75 29.32 38.04 21.20 17.06 20.03 23.08 9.64 8.37 11.84 11.76
Source: Fourth report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (1998).
Table 6.30 All India enrolment figures for SCs and STs at undergraduate,
postgraduate, technical and professional education courses, (1977–1978 and 1995–1996)
Year Total students Scheduled Castes Scheduled Tribes
Number % Number %
1978–79 25,43,449 1,80,058 7.08 41,082 1.62
1995–96 79,55,811 10,58,514 23.31 3,57,477 4.49
Source: Fourth Report of the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
(1998).
Table 6.31 Employment profile of SCs and STs in central government23
Group Total Scheduled Castes % to total Scheduled Tribes % to total
1965 1995 1965 1995 1965 1995 1965 1995 1965 1995
Class I 19,379 65,408 318 6,637 1.64 10.12 52 1,891 0.27 2.89
Class II 30,612 1,08,857 864 13,797 2.82 12.67 103 2,913 0.34 2.68
Class III 10,82,278 23,41,863 96,114 378,172 8.88 16.15 12,390 1,33,179 1.14 5.69
Class IV 11,32,517 10,14,082 1,01,073 221,380 17.75 21.6 38,444 67,453 3.39 6.48
Total 22,64,795 35,57,210 2,98,369 619,986 13.17 17.43 50,989 2,05,436 2.25 5.78
Sweepers – 1,77,527 – 78,719 – 44.34 – 12,269 – 6.91
Grand Total 22,64,795 37,34,737 2,98,369 698,705 13.17 18.17 50,989 2,17,705 2.25 5.83
Source: Fourth Report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
173
in public sector enterprises. As opposed to the category of sweepers,

where SCs account for 87% of employees, their proportion at the
highest level of employment (Group A) is just 8.41%. Once again, it is
Groups C and D (paralleling Class III and IV) which account for the
largest number of SC and ST employees. Similar trends are observable
in Tables 6.33 and 6.34 which show, respectively, the categories of SC
and ST employees in public sector banks, and in central Universities.
Table 6.32 Representation of SCs and STs in public sector enterprises

(January 1, 1996)
Group Total Employees SCs % STs %
A 1,98,625 16,710 8.41 4,505 2.27

B 1,64,402 15,921 9.68 5,788 3.52
C 11,32,860 2,16,801 19.14 98,816 8.72
D 4,77,254 1,06,934 22.41 50,958 10.68
Total 19,73,141 3,56,366 18.06 1,60,067 8.11
Sweepers 24,623 21,506 87.34 800 3.25
Grand Total 19,97,764 3,77,872 18.19 1,60,867 8.05
Table 6.33 Representation of SCs and STs in public sector banks (January 1,
1996)
Cadre Total employees SCs % STs %
Officer 2,52,898 28,102 11.1 9,235 3.65

Clerks 4,73,133 69,493 14.69 22,269 4.71
Sub staff 2,18,980 62,400 28.49 12,794 5.84
Total 9,45,011 159,995 16.93 44,298 4.69
Table 6.34 Composition of the teaching staff of 13 central

universities (1998–1999)
Position Total SCs STs
Number % Number %
Professor 1,550 9 0.58 16 1.03

Reader 1,566 13 0.83 30 1.91
Lecturer 1,786 107 5.99 86 4.81
Total 4902 129 2.63 132 2.69
Source: Sixth Report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes

and Scheduled Tribes.
As mentioned earlier, the liberalization of the economy, and the

consequent availability of better-paid jobs in the private sector, has
meant that the upper and middle-class preference for civil service jobs
has undergone a change. Increasingly, young people from these classes
prefer to take degrees in business management, in many cases abroad,
and join corporations, if possible multinationals. This has led to a shift
in the social profile of those competing in the civil service examina-
tion. While this shift cannot be documented, it is a socially observable
trend that has been widely commented upon. An indirect comment on
it was the declaration emanating from an important conference of
Dalits in January 2002, where a case was made for diversity policies in
corporations. (Government of Madhya Pradesh, 2002) It was argued
that the dalits have not been participants in capitalist development
and entrepreneurship, and the claim was made that they should enjoy
a share in every aspect of the nation’s wealth, if necessary through
quotas in the private sector.
Political parties, the judiciary and the armed forces
Political party executives

The political party executive represents the one category of positions
for which there is no reservation. A macro-view of Tables 6.35 and 6.36
suggests the preponderance of the Forward Castes among the Hindu
members, and of Hindus in the whole universe. Nevertheless, there are
important differences across the various political parties, and also shifts
over time within each of these. The following pages attempt to make
manifest some of these.
Before analyzing Table 6.35, some historical milestones in the Con-
gress Party’s recent career must be identified to make sense of the
shifts. The year 1972 represents the period shortly before the declara-
tion of the National Emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In
this period, while dynastic control of the party was firmly entrenched,
some semblance of the older form of party organization was still in
place, with all CWC members being elected and the positions of Party
President and Prime Minister being held by different individuals. The
year 1976 was the period of the Emergency, and in this year a system
of ‘special invitees’ was introduced. As a result, from this year on, the
CWC consists not only of elected members alone, but also of special
invitees. In 1976, there were 16 elected members and 14 ‘special invi-
tees’. In 1979, the Congress Party found itself out of power at the
Centre for the first time since independence. The expansion of CWC
176
Table 6.35 Composition of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) (1972–2002)
Year Size Hindus Religious Minorities Women Unidentified
Forward Backward SCs STs Total Muslims Sikh Christian Others Total
caste caste
1972 21 12 2 3 1 18 1 1 1 – 3 1 –
(57.14) (16.66) (14.28) (4.76) (85.71) (4.76) (4.76) (4.76) (14.28) (4.76)
1976 30 18 2 3 2 25 2 1 1 – 4 5 –
(60.00) (6.66) (10.00) (6.66) (83.33) (6.66) (3.33) (3.33) (13.33) (16.66)
1979 65 31 5 8 1 52 8 4 2 – 14 7 7
(47.69) (7.69) (12.30) (1.54) (80.00) (12.30) (6.10) (3.05) (21.53) (10.77) (10.77)
1983 19 11 3 2 – 16 1 1 1 – 3 3 1
(57.89) (15.89) (10.52) (84.21) (5.26) (5.26) (5.26) (15.79) (15.79) (5.26)
1987 19 12 3 1 – 16 2 1 1 – 4 1 –
(63.15) (15.89) (5.26) (84.21) (10.52) (5.26) (5.26) (21.04) (5.26)
1992 19 11 3 1 1 16 2 1 1 – 4 1 –
(57.89) (15.89) (5.26) (5.26) (84.21) (10.52) (5.26) (5.26) (21.04) (5.26)
1996 20 9 4 2 2 17 2 1 1 – 4 2 –
(45.00) (20.00) (10.00) (10.00) (85.00) (10.00) (5.00) (5.00) (20.00) (10.00)
1998 22 13 3 2 1 1824 2 1 3 – 6 2 –
(59.00) (13.60) (9.09) (4.54) (81.81) (9.08) (4.54) (13.62) (27.27) (9.09)
2002 37 20 2 1 3 2425 8 1 2 – 11 6 3
(54.05) (5.40) (2.70) (8.12) (64.86) (21.62) (2.70) (5.40) (29.73) (16.22) (8.12)
Source: Lists of CWC from All-India Congress Committee (I) Office.

was possibly a way of the leadership retaining its hold on the party by
accommodating various interests. There were now three categories of
members: Members (16), permanent invitees (25), and special invitees
(24). After her return to power in 1980, Mrs. Gandhi continued as
Prime Minister till her assassination in 1984. The year 1983, towards
the end of her second regime, showed her in complete control over
the Party, with the subservience of her Party colleagues, reinvented as
sycophants and courtiers.
The year 1987 was the high noon of Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership.
Rajiv tried to reinvent the Congress organization, a move that he
announced with great fanfare at the Party’s centenary celebrations in
1985, but soon found his efforts thwarted by entrenched interests and
factional power-centres within the Party. Under Narasimha Rao’s
minority government (1991–96), there was little desire or incentive to
innovate. The Government itself was a fragile holding operation, and
this was reflected in the party organization too, where the dominant
tendency was to preserve and fossilize. The size and composition of the
CWC of 1992 reflects this. The debate on the one-person one-post
principle in what then appeared to be the post-dynastic phase of the
party, culminated in the appointment, in 1996, of Sitaram Kesari as
President of the CWC. For many years before this, the Party President
and the Prime Minister (i.e., the leader of the Party in Parliament) had
been the same individual.
After the Narasimha Rao government, with the Congress out of
power at the Centre, the familiar Congress clamour for a more direct
form of dynastic rule was once again loudly articulated. This was the
occasion for Sonia Gandhi to enter politics as the party President in
1998. The CWC remains very much Sonia Gandhi’s committee. As has
frequently happened in the Congress Party, this executive too is
indicative of a court rather than an internally democratic political
body. The CWC effectively consists of those who are trusted by the
Party President.
This is why, while analyzing this table, it must be kept in mind
that the dominant consideration in the choice of party executive –
especially in the Congress, which is strongly leader-oriented – is more
often individual loyalty than representativeness. It is notable that
while the proportion of Forward Castes in the Congress Party execu-
tive has remained in the region of 50–60%, backward caste represen-
tation peaked in 1996, reaching its lowest-ever point in 2002. This
could be considered surprising in these times of lower-caste assertion.
It could also, on the other hand, be considered unsurprising as these
groups have tended to gravitate towards parties claiming to more

‘authentically’ represent them. However, at the end of this time-
period, we also observe a lower than usual proportion of Hindus to
the whole, below 65% as opposed to the almost constant trend, over
three decades, of an 80% average. Correspondingly, Muslim represen-
tation was at its highest, with Muslims constituting over 20% of the
national party executive. Again, it is hard to say whether this was a
deliberate attempt to win back the minorities, or simply a sign that
particular individuals are critical to the party organization or trusted
by its leader.
The organizational predecessor of the BJP was the Bharatiya Jana
Sangh (BJS), which came into existence on 21st October 1951, repre-
senting the right-wing of the Indian political spectrum, with
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee as its first president. In the early years of
its existence, its Hindu nationalist ideology, along with its indigenist
(swadeshi) pro-market orientation in economic policy, made it the
antithesis of the dominant secular and socialist ideology of the time.
The Jana Sangh possessed, moreover, an image of being a disciplined
party with a committed cadre base. The discipline of the cadre was
directly a reflection of its association with the RSS (an ostensibly cul-
tural organization of militant Hindus engaged in social service), which
also made it something of a pariah, especially because the assassin of
Mahatma Gandhi belonged to the RSS. The Jana Sangh was strongly
rooted in north India, with a following mainly among the trading
classes.
In elections, the Jana Sangh made steady progress in terms of its rep-
resentation in Lok Sabha (moving up from 3 seats in 1952 to 35 in
1967) as well as in various state legislatures, till the fifth general elec-
tion in 1971 in which its performance dropped. There was, following
this, a brief period during which it merged with the Janata party,
which received a resounding defeat in the 1979 election. In 1980, the
party executive passed a resolution asking those members of the party
who held memberships of the RSS to sever their connections with it
immediately. The old-timers of the Jana Sangh refused to comply, and
left the Janata Party to form the BJP with Atal Behari Vajpayee as its
president. The party once again fared poorly in the general election of
1984, in which its strength in the Lok Sabha was reduced to just two
members. Subsequently, aggressive mobilization on the plank of Hindu
nationalism saw its popularity increasing by leaps and bounds, and
riding a wave of sectarian politics, it came to power in 1998, at the
head of a coalition, was voted out, but re-elected again in 1999. From
Table 6.36 Composition of the Bharatiya Janata Party National Executive (1972–2002)26
Year Size Hindus Religious Minorities Women Unidentified
Forward Backward SCs STs Total Muslims Sikh Christian Others Total
caste caste
1972 32 25 3 2 – 30 1 1 – – 2 2 –
(78.12) (9.37) (6.25) (93.75) (3.12) (3.12) (6.24) (6.24)
1976 49 38 4 1 1 44 1 1 – – 2 5 3
(77.55) (8.16) (2.04) (2.04) (89.79) (2.04) (2.04) (4.08) (10.20) (6.12)
1983 49 37 2 2 – 41 3 2 – – 5 5 3
(75.51) (4.08) (4.08) (83.67) (6.12) (4.08) (10.20) (10.20) (6.12)
1986 55 43 4 2 – 52 2 1 – – 3 7 3
(78.18) (7.27) (3.63) (89.09) (3.63) (1.81) (5.45) (12.72) (5.45)
1989 27 24 – 1 – 25 2 – – – 2 3 –
(88.88) (3.70) (92.59) (7.40) (7.40) (11.11)
1991 61 47 5 3 1 57 4 – – – 4 – 1
(77.00) (8.00) (4.90) (1.60) (91.80) (6.60) (6.60) (1.60)
1993 150 89 20 7 3 119 3 – 1 1 5 – 26
(59.40) (13.30) (4.70) (2.00) (79.33) (2.00) (0.70) (0.70) (3.33) (17.30)
1995 104 69 7 5 2 83 5 1 1 1 8 – 13
(66.50) (6.90) (4.80) (1.90) (87.50) (4.80) (1.00) (1.00) (1.00) (7.69) (12.5)
1998 69 42 3 3 4 52 3 1 1 – 5 – 12
(60.50) (4.20) (4.30) (5.80) (75.36) (4.30) (1.40) (1.40) (7.24) (17.4)
2002 97 67 8 4 7 86 4 – 1 1 6 11 5
179
(69.07) (11.94) (4.12) (7.21) (88.65) (4.12) (1.03) (1.03) (6.18) (11.34) (5.15)
Source: Lists of BJS & BJP National Executives for the period 1972–1989 and for the year 2002. For the period 1991–1998, data have been drawn
from Jaffrelot, 2003.27
1999 to 2004, it headed a coalition government at the Centre. The BJP,

traditionally associated with the Brahmin and bania (merchant and
trader) castes, has tried to expand its social base, and increase its
regional spread, and this is the background in which the composition
of is executive must be seen.
Table 6.36 shows that Hindus have dominated the party executive,
though their percentage might occasionally register a small shift.
Interestingly, however, in the present time of lower caste assertions in
politics, the total number of Forward Castes among these has actually
gone up from the region of 59–66% in 1993, 1995 and 1998, to almost
70% in 2002. Similarly, looking at the representation of Backward
Castes in the BJP executive over time, we observe that it fell quite low
in 1995 and 1998 – whether on account of or despite the emergence of
political parties claiming to authentically represent these specific caste
groups – but recovered dramatically in 2002. The proportion of
Muslims, never particularly high, has also declined in the 1990s,
touching a low of 2% in 1993.
Let us turn to the National Executive of the Janata Dal, the national
party most strongly associated with Backward Castes and minorities till
the emergence of the more regionally concentrated Samajwadi Party
and BSP. Christophe Jaffrelot’s data show that, in 1994, the Janata
Dal’s National Executive was dominated (46.79%) by the Forward
Castes. By comparison, the Backward Castes accounted for 25% of the
national executive, and religious minorities for 10%. (Jaffrelot,
2003:342) The extent of Backward Caste representation is unsurprising,
for the Janata Dal has, even in its regional manifestation in the states,
been associated with the middle-peasant farmers and therefore the
backward castes. It was the Janata government of V.P. Singh that
implemented the Mandal reform, giving reservation in government
jobs and educational institutions to the OBCs.
It is the Samajwadi Party that has most strongly claimed to be a party
of the backwards, with some attempt also to attract the religious
minorities. Of all the party executives considered so far, it is the
Samajwadi Party that has a larger proportion of backward castes than
forward castes, and a reasonably high proportion of religious minori-
ties as well. In 1995, the Forward Castes accounted for merely 35.75%
of the SP’s National Executive, with Backward Castes predominating at
42.40%. Religious minorities were also represented in a reasonable pro-
portion, with 13.6% belonging to the Muslim community, and 2.16%
to the Christian community. (Jaffrelot, 2003:373)
Finally, we turn to the composition of the Bahujan Samaj Party,
which in its self-perception, is the authentic party of the dalits. The
BSP, formed in 1984, had two organizational predecessors: the

BAMCEF (Backward and Minorities Classes Employees Federation),
essentially an organization of government employees belonging to
these groups,28 and the DS-4 (the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh
Samiti), which was a quasi-political party established to channelize the
force unleashed by the BAMCEF. (Pai, 2002a:90–1) Initially, the BSP
met with very little success in the parliamentary elections. In the 1989
and 1991 elections, it won three and four seats respectively. In
the 1996 election, by contrast, it won 11 seats, falling to five in the
12th Lok Sabha elected in 1998. In the last (1999) election to the
13th Lok Sabha, the BSP won its highest-ever number of seats: 14.
However, it had made resounding gains in the elections to the Uttar
Pradesh Assembly in 1993 and 1996, winning 66 and 67 seats respec-
tively in a house of 425 at the time.29 The BSP has held power in the
state of Uttar Pradesh, sometimes in collaboration with the Samajwadi
Party, but mostly in rather unlikely (some say unholy!) cohabitation
with the BJP. The BSP does not give out details regarding its national
executive, but it is arguable that its Uttar Pradesh state executive is a
good substitute for the national executive. Like most Indian political
parties, the BSP is also extremely leader-centric, and hence the role of
the party executive may be purely nominal.
At first glance, the relatively low proportion of SCs in a party where
one would expect them to be preponderant, may appear to be aston-
ishing. However, if the larger category of OBCs is further disag-
gregated, the latter becomes less surprising. In the 1996 executive,
dominant OBC castes like the Yadavs, Kurmis and Lodhs accounted
for a mere 6.8%, whereas the MBCs accounted for 37.4%. These
castes, as noted in Chapter 3 of this book, are located at the bound-
ary of the OBCs and the Scheduled Castes, and have increasingly
begun to create a separate identity for themselves, which is especially
assertive against and hostile towards the dominant OBC castes.
Likewise, in the 2000 party executive, the MBCs accounted for
39.30%, while the OBCs constituted only 7.20% of the total
Backward Caste members. The BSP’s national executive also showed
an increase in the number of forward castes from 3.7% in 1996 to
14.30% in 2000, which could conceivably represent the party’s desire
to appeal to a wider cross-section of voters. The representation of
Muslims, likewise, declined marginally from 10.5% in 1996 to 7.10%
in 2000. (Jaffrelot, 2003: 403–4)
In the matter of giving tickets, too, the BSP has not confined itself to
dalits alone. Since 1989, the number of tickets given to Muslims and
OBCs to contest the Uttar Pradesh state Assembly elections has been
rising. This was particularly true of the 1993 election in which the BSP
had entered into a poll alliance with the Samajwadi Party. In 1996, two
Brahmins and one Kshatriya (forward caste) were also among the can-
didates chosen by the party to contest in Uttar Pradesh. For the parlia-
mentary elections, until 1996, the BSP generally fielded either SCs or
BCs. In 1998, however, one Brahmin was elected on a BSP ticket, while
in 1999, of the 12 (out of 14 elected to the Lok Sabha on BSP tickets)
on whom information was available, three were Rajputs, one Brahmin,
one OBC, and three Muslims. (Pai, 2002a:100) The party executive too
broadly reflects this trend.
The political assertion of the lower castes in Indian politics has, as
we have seen, led to demands of incorporation in the private sector.
Other public institutions – which were deliberately designed to be dif-
ference-blind – have also been subjected to scrutiny in recent years.
Two such institutions are the higher judiciary and the military. The
Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes published two reports to examine the representation
of these groups in the High Courts and the Supreme Court, on the one
hand, and in defence services, on the other.
The Second Report of the Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of
the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (2000) recommended reservation in the
higher judiciary, based upon its findings, which revealed that out of 481
judges in position in the High Courts (in the states), there were a total
of 15 judges belonging to the Scheduled Castes, five belonging to the
Scheduled Tribes, and 35 belonging to the OBCs. Since there is no
policy of compensatory discrimination in the judiciary, these could be
described as ‘spontaneous’ rather than designed. Of the 21 judges on
the bench of the Supreme Court, not a single judge belonged to any of
these groups, though it is well-known that some – including the Chief
Justice at the time – belonged to religious minorities. (Committee on
the Welfare of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, 2000:13–14)
The Seventeenth Report of the Parliamentary Committee similarly
examined the ‘military participation ratio’ of the Scheduled Castes and
Tribes, which it found to be below acceptable levels, in the absence of
reservation as Table 6.37 shows.
This chapter has presented a broad overview of the extent of repre-
sentation of minorities and disadvantaged caste groups in chiefly three
institutions: the Lok Sabha, the Union Cabinet and the central bureau-
cracy. It has also provided a glimpse of the representational deficit in
political party executives, the higher judiciary and the military. This
inter-institutional comparison suggests that, more than any other, it is
Table 6.37 SCs and STs in the military
Year Total SC % ST %
strength
(numbers)
1990 10,01,523 85,494 8.53% 23,405 2.34%

1995 9,14,970 66,213 7.23% 16,538 1.80%
2000 10,78,281 77,841 7.21% 25,750 2.38%
Source: Committee on the Welfare of the Scheduled Castes and

Scheduled Tribes, 2001:34.
the sphere of politics that has witnessed a broadening of the social base.
Though the percentages may not appear to be very dramatic, in real
terms the character of Parliament has certainly changed, as many non-
elite groups that were not formerly a part of the political process now
are. The greater representativeness of Parliament has been achieved
more or less spontaneously, through the emergence of parties appealing
to backward caste sentiments and assiduously cultivating particular
social constituencies. However, it is interesting to note that the propor-
tion of scheduled caste candidates still does not much exceed that pro-
vided by the quota, despite the emergence of the BSP, which has
presented itself as a party speaking on behalf of the dalits, and whose
leader is a dalit woman. The composition of the Cabinet is largely a
reflection of the composition of Parliament. While parties have been
central to the increase in backward caste representation in Parliament
and Cabinets, political party executives are seen to be determined more
by loyalty to party leadership than by concerns of representativeness. In
relative terms, it is the bureaucracy that has apparently been most resis-
tant to change. Notwithstanding the reservations for the SCs and STs,
which have been in place since 1950 and have facilitated the entry of
these groups into the civil service, they are inadequate to ensure
that civil servants belonging to such groups manage to reach the top
decision-making positions.
It is interesting to note that until the 1990s, reservation in adminis-
tration was perceived as the chief, if not exclusive, institutional instru-
ment of achieving equity, and the clamour for the extension of
reservations to the OBCs (officially accepted in 1990) echoed this
assumption. As such, the main institutional space for the advance-
ment of the welfare of disadvantaged groups was broadly perceived as
an administrative space. The political assertions that facilitated the
change in the social composition of Parliament only began to mani-
fest themselves in the 1970s, with avowedly caste-based parties

coming to prominence in the 1990s. It is hardly surprising then that
in the political sphere, the only seats contested by members of the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were – and indeed continue to
be – those that were officially reserved for them. It is a rarity for a
member of these groups to be nominated by a political party to
contest an election from a general/open constituency, and even more
rare for such a candidate to actually succeed.
Recent years have seen a variety of demands for quotas being artic-
ulated. These include the demand for reservation for economically
backward upper castes, which was most stridently articulated by a
nondescript political party based in Rajasthan, but was referred by
the former union government to the Attorney-General, who in turn
recommended the setting up of a national commission to examine
the issue. A bill designed to guarantee 33% reservation to women has
been pending in Parliament for over ten years, mostly because the
largely male parliamentarians are reluctant to reduce their own
opportunities and prospects for the future, but also because there is a
concurrent demand for caste-based sub-quotas within the 33%. In
recent months, two other reservation-related issues have been promi-
nent. The first of these was a decision by the newly-elected Congress-
led government of Andhra Pradesh to provide a 5% reservation for
Muslims belonging to the backward castes, which has for the present
been struck down by the High Court of that state. The second is a
demand for reservations in the private sector, which has been
endorsed by the present central government. This is being fiercely
contested, with both normative and practical arguments being
offered against it. Thus, on the one hand, it is argued that such a
move would be detrimental to merit; on the other, that there is no
security of tenure in the private sector and to introduce it would be
both impractical as well as undesirable, given that the imperative of
corporations is to make profits and which they would be ill-equipped
to do if they are permanently burdened by inefficient employees. It is
also being suggested that diversity can be achieved in other ways –
such as the American – and not merely through the implementation
of quotas. Finally, a diversity policy is being contemplated for non-
governmental organizations, whose funding could be adversely
affected if they fail to conform.
In the next and concluding chapter, we examine the significance
of the patterns of representation that we have observed, and their
implications for Indian society and politics.
7
Conclusion
The preceding chapters have tried to map the variety of cultural diver-
sity in India, and to provide an account of the various policies and
institutional mechanisms devised to manage it. They have demon-
strated that these policies and institutions have not been an unmiti-
gated success, and there are at least three signifiers of this contention.
Firstly, as we saw in Chapter 4, the institutions of the public sector are
not representative of religious minorities, the scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes in a way that adequately mirrors their proportion in
the population. Secondly, though the scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes do enjoy constitutionally mandated reservation in public institu-
tions, including the bureaucracy and legislative bodies, the substantive
policy outcomes that could have been expected from these policies
have not ensued. Lending credence to this contention is the evidence
(noted in Chapter 2) of the continuing material inequalities that
overlap with social disadvantage. Finally, India has witnessed mobiliza-
tion as well as conflict along lines of caste and community, ironically
coming full circle with recent demands for reservations for upper
castes!
This study has tried to underscore the point that, in India, social
and cultural inequalities – defined in terms of caste, tribal or religious
identity – overlap strongly with economic and material inequalities.
Members of the scheduled castes, for instance, are not merely targets
of caste prejudice, untouchability and violence by higher castes, they
are also victims of exploitation and oppression that takes very real,
material forms. They constitute the poorest sections of Indian society,
with per capita incomes well below the national average. Indeed, the
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are the worst off in terms of
most social indicators, e.g., literacy rate, gender disparities in literacy,
185
infant mortality, and so forth. Likewise, a comparison of Hindus and

Muslims in respect of social indicators shows a larger proportion of
Muslims than of Hindus to be subsisting below the poverty line.
Muslims also register lower literacy rates, lower work participation
rates, lower rates of access to electricity and piped water, and so on.
Indeed, with the exception of the scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes, they are the poorest of all ascriptively-defined population
groups. Of course, it must be added that the same is not true of other
religious minorities: Christians, for instance, register a literacy rate of
81%, considerably higher than the national average, while Sikhs are
on the whole much more prosperous than other minorities.
It is worth emphasizing the fact that the poorest sections of Indian
society – the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes – are also the groups
which have had the benefit of reservations and quotas in legislatures,
public employment and publicly funded education. As material depriva-
tion continues to persist despite these policies of compensatory discrim-
ination, the question of whether these policies were ill-designed or have
only been inadequately implemented will need to be addressed. In
Chapters 5 and 6 of this work, we examined the role of political parties
and the party system, as also the actual patterns of representation that
emerge from chiefly three institutions: the lower house of parliament,
the cabinet and the civil service. Let us quickly recapitulate the findings.
In the Lok Sabha, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes do not
have a large presence beyond the numbers guaranteed by the reserved
quota. The scheduled tribes have tended to exceed the quota by an
average of about 2.5%, which is almost entirely explained by the
demographic concentration of these groups in the states in which they
are present in larger numbers. By contrast, there are generally between
a minimum of two and a maximum of six scheduled caste candidates
elected to non-reserved seats. In demographic terms, this is a function
of the scattered distribution of the SC population, as they account for
more than 20% of the population in only four states, in all of which
they are thinly distributed across the states’ territory. In political terms,
it is interesting to observe that these candidates do not necessarily
belong to parties like the BSP which claim to be their authentic
spokesperson. Indeed, they belong to a wide range of political parties –
from the radical dalit Republican Party of India, the CPM and the
Congress, on the one hand, to the BJP and Shiv Sena, on the other.
Over the last five Lok Sabhas, the BSP, the CPM, the Congress and the
BJP have returned two scheduled caste MPs each from non-reserved
seats. The RPI has sent the maximum such MPs – six in all if we count
Conclusion 187
in the BBM, a splinter group of the party – since the 10th Lok Sabha,
and all of these from the state of Maharashtra where SCs constitute
only 11.1% of the population.
The ‘politics of presence’ notwithstanding, mirror representation has
not translated into effective policy outcomes. Dalit legislators have not
been especially active on issues like atrocities against dalits or the effec-
tive implementation of the law against untouchability, nor even been
energetic members of parliamentary committees. The persistence of
untouchability, and the continued impoverishment and material
deprivation of the scheduled castes, is a disconcerting reminder of the
limits of formal representation. Scheduled tribe MPs too have not been
particularly effective in pressing for major policy initiatives.
In contrast to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, religious
minorities do not enjoy any quotas or guaranteed representation. The
numbers of India’s largest religious minority – the Muslims – have, in
recent times, been almost stationary between 5 and 6%. This under-
representation can only partly be explained by the fact that the first-
past-the-post electoral system tends to disfavour minorities that are not
geographically concentrated, as is the case with the Muslims. Of the 35
Muslims elected to the 14th Lok Sabha, two belong to denominational
parties and three to the two main parties in the Muslim-majority state
of Jammu and Kashmir. Of the remaining 30, ten were elected on
Congress tickets, five by the CPM, with the rest being divided amongst
other mostly caste-based parties, claiming to represent disadvantaged
groups in an encompassing way.
The most notable shift in patterns of representation in Parliament
has been effected by processes that are strictly political. The backward
castes – whose numbers were in the region of 5% in the 1950s – now
account for approximately 25% of the Lok Sabha. This is substantially
the result of the political mobilization of these caste groups through
the 1990s, by parties that could be loosely described as offspring of the
Janata Dal of yesteryears, including the Samajwadi Party in Uttar
Pradesh and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. In this period, the back-
ward caste percentages in the Lok Sabha were given a fillip mainly in
the northern states, as the contribution of the southern states (where
backward castes historically came to be politically assertive much
earlier) has remained steady at about 35% of the total number of MPs
elected from that region. The northern states’ contribution, by con-
trast, registered a dramatic increase from 16.31% in 1991 to 22.59% in
the 11th Lok Sabha of 1996, an achievement that has been repeated in
the 14th Lok Sabha of 2004 with 53 seats and 22.17% of MPs. Thus,
despite the continued predominance of the Forward Castes (to the

tune of 65% of the open seats, or close to 40% of the total) the political
assertions of the backward castes have assuredly translated into more
seats in parliament. Consequently, the combined totals of the sched-
uled castes, scheduled tribes, backward castes and Muslims just about
balance the numbers of the Forward Castes. The largest four north
Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan
have also had chief ministers belonging to the backward castes.
Our survey of the Union Cabinet – where there is no reservation, but
a strong convention that all major diversities must be represented –
reveals that the Cabinet has become more broad-based since the 1990s.
From 1947–1990, for instance, there were less than 10% backward caste
representatives in the cabinet. It was only in Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet of
1984 that the number of backward castes began registering an increase,
going up to about 20% in V.P. Singh’s 1989 cabinet. The highest repre-
sentation of these groups was seen in the two United Front govern-
ments of 1996–98, when these castes exceeded 40% of the total. The
trend was again reversed when the BJP-led NDA coalition came to
power. On an average, backward caste representation in the cabinet
from 1991 to the present has been at just under 20%, which is more
than double of what it was during the previous period (1947–1990).
Even as backward caste representation has doubled from the first
phase (1947–1990) to the second (1991 to the present), scheduled caste
representation has remained about the same. Indeed, the SCs have
been consistently under-represented in the cabinet. From 1947–1990,
the average SC representation was 8.86%, about half their proportion
in the population. This has not changed very much after 1991, when
these groups have averaged 8.33%. It was only in the last Vajpayee
cabinet of 1999 that their representation fell below 5%.
The data relating to the scheduled tribes in the cabinet are perhaps
the most striking. From 1947–1990, there was not a single minister of
cabinet rank from this category in the union cabinet. It was for the first
time in 1994 that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao gave P.A. Sangma
(already a member of the Council of Ministers) the status of a cabinet
minister. Today, the Manmohan Singh Cabinet has the highest ever
percentage of ST ministers (3), an unprecedented 10.34%.
The average representation of the Muslim minority in the period
from 1947–1990 was 10.76%. Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinets had over 15%
representation of Muslims, significantly higher than the cabinets of
Mrs. Indira Gandhi and even more than those of Jawaharlal Nehru’s
five cabinets. Since 1990, it was in the Narasimha Rao cabinet that
Conclusion 189
Muslims had a representation over 10%, and in the two United Front
governments just under that figure. The NDA years were expectedly the
lean years, with only 3 to 4% Muslims in the two Vajpayee cabinets.
This figure has been improved in the current cabinet which has close
to 7% Muslims. Sikh representation in the cabinet has declined if the
averages of the first and second phase are compared. From 1947–90,
this average stood at 5.38%, while in the current phase it is a little
lower at 3.64%. In the Manmohan Singh cabinet, the Prime Minister
himself is the only Sikh in the cabinet!
Finally, it is instructive to record the shifts in the pattern of regional
and linguistic representation in the cabinet. In the 1947–90 period,
despite a predominance of Hindi-speakers, most cabinets had represen-
tatives of between seven and 11 language groups. In all, about 14
language groups found representation in the cabinet at one time or
another. In this phase, too, it was central and northern India – in par-
ticular, the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – that were
most represented, with the southern states constituting the second-
largest regional conglomeration in the cabinet. The most neglected
region has consistently been the North-East, except in three of
Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s cabinets, and one of V.P. Singh. Since 1991, the
highest representation is of the southern region (23.95%), followed by
the eastern states (20.31%). Next in rank are western (16.66%) and
central (16.14%) India, with the north at just 13.54%. The representa-
tion of the North-East continues to be abysmally low, at under 2%. The
explanation for the shift in patterns of regional representation lies sub-
stantially in the reality of coalition politics. Prime Ministers no longer
have the luxury of creating nicely balanced cabinets which heed every
convention of representation. Instead, the allocation of cabinet posi-
tions depends on how critical and assertive a particular political ally is,
and how many seats in the lower house it has brought to the coalition.
The third public institution that is central to our concern here is the
bureaucracy. As in Parliament, there is quota-based reservation for the
scheduled castes (15%) and scheduled tribes (7.5%) in the civil service.
Despite the existence of these quotas, a government report in 1983
calculated the actual percentage of scheduled castes in the IAS as
9.54% and that of scheduled tribes as 4.27%. In the IPS, the corre-
sponding figures were 10.46% (SCs) and 3.5% (STs). These low per-
centages are hardly surprising considering the concentration of these
groups in agricultural occupations, whether as small and marginal
farmers or as landless labourers; and their relative lack of access to
education. Little wonder then that data regarding employment in the
central government should show the preponderance of these groups

in what are called the Class III and Class IV categories (essentially cler-
ical staff, office boys and janitors).
Since 1994, members of the OBCs have had a quota of 27% in the
bureaucracy. It is too early yet to assess the impact of the post-1994
reservation, as those recruited since that date are still relatively junior
in service. Recruitment data between 1981 and 1999 show that, at least
since 1990, the UPSC has invariably recommended for recruitment a
larger number of SC candidates than the seats reserved for them in the
civil service. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in Parliament,
where there are usually just three or four such MPs elected from non-
reserved seats. The excess for the STs is marginally lower than that for
the SCs. The most striking observation is with respect to candidates
from the OBCs who have, since 1994, been recommended in excess of
anywhere between 24 and 49 over and above the reserved seats. Thus,
in 1997, the number of seats reserved for OBC candidates was 215, and
an additional 49 candidates were recommended for recruitment. This
excess clearly indicates that there are candidates from these groups
who are successfully competing in these examinations on their own
merit and so qualifying for the job. Another explanation could be the
often exaggerated argument that a small elite section of these groups
tends to corner the benefits of quotas and then reproduces them inter-
generationally. In relation to the OBCs, this was described – in a land-
mark judgement of the Supreme Court – as ‘the creamy layer’, which
ought not to be eligible for compensatory discrimination.
However, in the somewhat more technical services such as the
Indian Forest Service or the Indian Engineering Service, we find a
shortfall in the availability of suitable candidates to even fill the
reserved vacancies in jobs that require a technical qualification or spe-
cialized expertise. It is only since 1995 that the deficit has been
redressed with respect to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. This
deficit does not apply to the OBCs who generally qualify for seats in
excess of those reserved for them.
No religious minority, as noted earlier, enjoys any reservation in
public employment, even if they happen to be backward caste Muslims
or dalit Christian, because officially these categories are only recog-
nized in relation to the Hindu faith. The political representation of
Muslims in the legislatures, we saw, is in the region of 5 to 6%. Their
representation in the more elite services in public employment is even
lower, in the region of 2 to 3%, going up to about 6% only in state
governments and public sector corporations. Our data, covering
Conclusion 191
recruitment (direct as well as through promotion from the public ser-

vices of the states) into the IAS between 1970 and 2000, shows an
average of 2.78% for Muslims and 2.85% for Christians.
Not unexpectedly, a study published in 1989 found the civil service
to be predominantly Hindu, with Brahmins accounting for close to
40% of the Hindu officers, and upper castes in general accounting for
over 60% of the total. Our study of officers of the IAS at the level of
Joint Secretary and above in 12 select ministries of the central govern-
ment, at five year intervals over a 20 year period, found that Hindus
accounted for close to 90% of these, Muslims for 3.62% and Sikhs,
Christians and Jains for 2.17% each.
The preceding pages suggest that two sets of comparison have been
made. The first set is between groups: those that have access to quota-
based reservation (such as the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes),
those that do not (such as the religious minorities), and those that
have quotas only in public employment but not in the legislatures (the
backward castes). A second set of comparison is between institutions:
those where there are quotas (the lower house of Parliament and the
civil service) and those where there are not (the cabinet). A subset of
the second is the contrast between political and administrative spaces,
i.e. between parliament and the bureaucracy. We have observed how,
in Parliament, representation for the reserved categories of SCs and STs
has exceeded the quota only marginally by about 2%, while the sub-
stantively larger representation of the OBCs – who do not have quotas
– has been achieved through the political process. In the bureaucracy,
the representation of SCs, STs and OBCs has extended beyond the
quota – which all three categories enjoy – quite substantially, evidently
on the basis of the merit of the candidates themselves. It is members of
the religious communities that are disadvantaged in both these
spheres, and the backward groups among them (e.g., among Muslims)
are obviously more affected.
II
In the first two decades after independence, as we noted in Chapter 1,

the constitutional commitment to affirmative action in education and
public employment was paralleled by some concern, however token,
for the representation of different regions, linguistic groups, religious
minorities, and other disadvantaged sections in public institutions.
The nation-building project encouraged the creation of an inclusive
Indian identity, and the commitment to address inequality was an
important component of this task. Policies of compensatory discrimi-

nation, for instance, were viewed as instruments through which to
offset the advantage enjoyed by some, and to equalize opportunities
at the starting line.
The Congress Party was largely responsible for this programmatic
commitment, and while it consistently proclaimed its commitment to
the welfare of the disadvantaged, this was not sufficiently reflected in
policies of substance, more often than not degenerating into cynical
populism. Even where well-intentioned policies had the potential to
address social and economic inequalities, there were serious problems
of implementation, closely related to the rent-seeking proclivities of
state personnel. Promises to redress inequality thus became manifesto
commitments with very little policy substance, and without the ability
to contain the predictable distortions of such policies as were made.
Until the 1990s, of course, the dominant arena of affirmative action
was the administration, rather than the polity. The major shift towards
the assertion of lower castes for representation in the political sphere
occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century. The cornerstone
of the BSP’s political programme, for instance, has been the capture of
state power. This is underwritten by the conviction that the key to the
advancement of the dalits lies in controlling the state and its resources.
Viewing the administration as the handmaiden of politics, whenever
the BSP has come to power in Uttar Pradesh, its Chief Minister
Mayawati has reshuffled all portfolios to ensure that dalit civil servants
occupy all the top key positions of the state administration. Never-
theless, even the creation of these new political spaces – what has been
called the ‘second democratic upsurge’ (Yadav, 2000: 120) – has not
yielded tangible policy benefits for the poor and disadvantaged any
more than did the avowedly pro-poor policies of the Congress in the
first few decades after independence.
Social and economic inequalities of the sort that obtain in a large
and complex society like India could have been expected to generate
class conflict, but the movements of peasants and workers – defined in
non-denominational terms – are a thing of the past. Instead, political
mobilization has tended to occur along the axes of caste and com-
munity. These have sometimes erupted in conflict, and at other times
been expressed in the phenomenon of lower caste assertions creating
political spaces where there previously appeared to be none. Why did
ethnic mobilization become the preferred mode of doing politics?
There are arguably two reasons for this. Firstly, even as the dominant
discourse of the dominant political party – the Congress Party – was
Conclusion 193
one of nation-building and the creation of an inclusive Indian iden-

tity, it did not fight shy of exploiting ethnic divisions or seeking votes
on the basis of caste and religious identity, particularly at the local
level where clientelistic politics was the norm. This conferred a certain
legitimacy on caste-based mobilization and, with the emergence of
caste associations in the political domain, resulted in the transforma-
tion of caste itself according to the numerical imperatives of modern
democratic politics. In a large and diverse society, the possibilities for
the political construction of multiple identities are arguably endless,
and the Indian polity has witnessed this phenomenon in an acute
form.
With the fragmentation of the polity, the incentive to appeal to a
larger constituency has disappeared. With it has gone the commit-
ment to cultural pluralism, and anything reminiscent of it smacks of
tokenism. With the main political parties no longer taking a direct
initiative in this matter, the task of accomplishing a diverse public
sector is left to the direct assertions of politically mobilized groups.
At stake, of course, is the very idea of the Indian nation-state, par-
celled out as it is between caste, region, and religion. Reinforcing
this is the fact that neither of the two main parties enjoys an all-
India presence: the Congress once did, but no longer does; the BJP is
content to make its presence felt through its regional allies. For the
BJP, indeed, the incentive to foster the unifying ‘national’ myth is
low. It is tempted to court the majority, but has realized that the
cross-cutting caste allegiances render this project difficult, if not
impossible. It has, after all, despite six years of being in office, not
managed to cross the threshold of 25% of the national vote. This
(and the fact that its base in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh was
lost to caste politics) is why the BJP actually entered into the game
of caste politics itself.
There are currently at least four types of caste assertion on offer: the
dalit, the OBC, the MBC, and the recent demands from the upper
castes of Rajasthan. The latter two are still peripheral, but if the logic of
competitive populism runs its full (and arguably absurd) course, most
of India may well end up being officially perceived as disadvantaged in
one or other respect. Given the political (rather than ritual) salience of
caste today, what is at stake, it is worth recalling, is not caste per se, but
politicized caste. The fragmentation of the polity does not, moreover,
necessarily denote a more representative polity, and the insincerity and
corruptibility of the political elites of the parties naturally has much to
do with this.
III
The mapping and explanation of patterns of ethnic representation in

the institutions of governance is arguably an important but in itself
incomplete exercise. It must be supplemented by an account of at
least three types of outcomes: first, policy outcomes, as reflected in the
material conditions of disadvantaged groups, and given the already-
demonstrated overlap between social and economic inequalities. To
what extent have reservations actually expanded access to domains
from which such groups were previously excluded, and to what
extent has such access been universalized within such groups?
Secondly, societal outcomes in terms of the increased insecurity of
minorities and their vulnerability to violence; the generation of
resentment among other less disprivileged groups; the fragmentation
of civil society; and the fate and future of the project of universal
citizenship, nationhood and nation-building. Thirdly and finally,
political outcomes in terms of both patterns of political mobilization,
as well as state capacity and state discourses, are important.
Let us take policy outcomes first. It is abundantly clear that the
entire panoply of institutional quotas has failed to substantively
address the disadvantages that mark the condition of the vast majority
of such groups. This is only partially explained by the fact that elites
within these groups have tended to corner the benefits and reproduce
them inter-generationally. More alarming is the fact that, even where a
politics of presence has been advanced through quotas – as in the legis-
latures and the bureaucracy – this has not translated into effective rep-
resentation, and consequently policy initiatives for these groups have
remained woefully inadequate. The human development indicators for
disadvantaged groups testify to the fact that greater opportunities for
voice have not led to material improvements, as those at the bottom of
the ritual order, or on the margins of society, continue to carry multi-
ple burdens of denial and deprivation, both cultural as well as eco-
nomic. A more radical argument would, with some justice, blame this
failure on the entrenched social hierarchies that underwrite the stran-
glehold of the upper castes and upper classes (and sometimes these are
the same) on Indian society.
In societal terms, secondly, it has already been observed that even
those members of the scheduled castes who have made the transition
to the middle class hesitate in identifying themselves as such. In
the aftermath of communal violence in Gujarat in February 2002,
members of the Muslim minority continue to live in fear; Christians
Conclusion 195
too have been victims of violence, especially in tribal areas. The ghet-
toization of the Muslim minority is a common feature in Indian cities,
sometimes – as in Gujarat – actually facilitating mass violence. The pol-
itics of ‘Hindutva’ adopted by the BJP, and its affiliate organizations,
sought to consolidate a majoritarian Hindu identity, and in the process
caused a polarization of society along communal lines. Even though
the BJP and its coalition partners lost the parliamentary election of
2004, this may prove to be an enduring legacy in societal terms. The
last few years have seen a fragmentation of Indian society in terms of
both religion and caste. The resentment bred by the policy of reserva-
tions also intensified in the 1990s, partly as a result of the acceptance
of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations guaranteeing quotas
for OBCs, and partly due to the manifestly opportunistic politics of the
parties which came into being claiming to authentically represent the
interests of particular caste-groups, especially backward castes.
The third and final outcome that needs to be assessed is the political.
Indeed, it is difficult to characterize this exclusively as an outcome, for
the party political process has in equal measure contributed to the rep-
resentational pattern in public sector institutions. In the constitution
of legislatures, it is frequently assumed that the choice of the FPTP elec-
toral system generates representational outcomes skewed in favour of
majorities. The Indian experience however belies this, to the extent
that a more diverse national legislature has actually been achieved
despite the FPTP system. This is largely attributable to the emergence, in
the 1990s, of smaller parties – such as the Samajwadi Party, the BSP,
and the Rashtriya Janata Dal – whose strategies of electoral mobiliza-
tion are based on caste cleavages. Since 1989, India’s party system has
become increasingly fragmented with the number of national parties
remaining more or less constant, while the number of state parties
have more than doubled. The carving up of parliament among a large
number of parties has also led to another outcome that is generally
associated with proportional representation systems, viz. coalition
government.
The role of political parties in mobilizing identity has been crucial
not just to the processes of identity-formation and construction, but
also to the many forms of political conflict that have besieged the
Indian polity. Whether it was the sons-of-the-soil type of political artic-
ulation (as witnessed in Maharashtra and Assam in the 1970s and
1980s respectively, and uncannily resurfacing again today); or the sub-
national, occasionally even secessionist, assertions of autonomy (as in
Punjab in the 1980s); or the assertions of ‘social (as an euphemism for
caste) justice’; all these challenges to the Indian state have been led by
political parties of at least regional importance. They have severely
tested the ability of the state to accommodate new demands based in
ethnicity, with some – such as Kashmir – remaining unresolved to the
present.
It is evident that the politics of reservation have spawned an unend-
ing spiral of imitative, and eventually competitive, demands for a
variety of different groups who have been busy inventing identities of
disadvantage, the Jats and Brahmins in Rajasthan being an example of
this. In the current situation of a multiplicity of parties and greater
political fragmentation of identity, it does appear to be a strategically
superior option for parties to seek to narrow rather than broad-base
their appeal in ethnic terms. This runs contrary to the hypothesis that
in ethnically divided societies, national parties are forced to broad-base
their appeal. For the first few decades after independence, the Congress
itself – as the single dominant ‘umbrella’ party – represented a coali-
tion of this kind, albeit by encompassing a wide range of diversity
within its own fold. For this period, therefore, the hypothesis held
true, though there was of course only one dominant party on the polit-
ical landscape. The erosion of the wide support base of the Congress
was accompanied by the emergence of a large number of regional
parties, many of whom claim to represent particular sections of society.
Also, the BJP has adopted a rather different way of broadbasing its
appeal. Rather than seeking to build a social coalition on the basis of
respect for diversity, it has chosen to posit an alternative construction
of identity: an overarching Hindu identity, which submerges the many
identities (of, for example, caste and language), to yield a potential
jackpot of a four-fifths majority. Whether or not there are takers for
this in the future, it is clear that national parties must seek to broad-
base their appeal, while smaller regional parties can succeed with a
narrower base but can only hope to play a subordinate role at the
centre.
At the same time, it is undeniable that such change as is observable –
in the greater representativeness of Parliament, for example – appears
to be a result of political mobilization rather than a product of policies
of affirmative action. While the decline of Muslim representation in
Parliament may be attributed to the absence of quotas, it is also due to
the demographic distribution of the Muslim minority, and an
insufficiently forward-looking community leadership emphasizing
issues like personal law and divorce, rather than the economic or
educational backwardness of the community. By contrast, the quotas
Conclusion 197
provided for dalits have not translated into a significant improvement

in their quality of life. The policy impact of greater representation
secured for OBCs by political parties remains indeterminate yet. It is
however abundantly clear that the political process and political
parties play a crucially important role in defining and limiting the
possibilities of emancipation for disadvantaged groups.
As such, while it is true that institutions have not as a rule been
spontaneously sensitive to cultural diversity – e.g., under-representing
minorities, and over-representing dominant castes – it could be said
that the problem lies less with the institutions themselves, and more
substantially with the failure of the state to address background
inequalities, including those of an economic nature. Symbolic inequal-
ities generate the politics of recognition, and this dimension of
inequality has indeed been addressed through the political process.
Material inequalities – such as those engendered by poverty and
unequal access to resources such as land and education – have not, by
contrast, received the policy attention they arguably deserve. Policies
of ‘social justice’ (frequently an euphemism for caste-based reservations
in Indian political discourse) have been a poor substitute for a more
robust notion of distributive justice. This is possibly why, despite the
policies of compensatory discrimination and quotas, and despite the
incorporation of lower castes into the political elite, policy outcomes
for these social groups have been so woefully inadequate. A place in
the structures of governance can be legislated, but neither social preju-
dice nor material inequalities can be legislated away. They require
much more determined action from both state and civil society.
Appendix
Table 5a Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the

No. Party Seats contested Seats FD1 in % of % of votes

won no. of votes won in
seats polled the seats
contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
National Front (Minority Coalition Government)

1. JD 21 244 143 29 17.79 41.39
2. ICS(SCS) 7 14 1 9 0.33 13.72
3. TDP 1 33 2 0 3.29 43.58
Total 146 21.41
Left Front (Outside support)
4. CPI 17 50 12 20 2.57 28.02
5. CPM 15 64 33 5 6.55 44.68
6. FBL 4 8 3 5 0.42 28.54
7. RSP 3 6 4 1 0.62 44.24
Total 52 10.16
BJP (Outside Support)
8. BJP 21 225 85 88 11.36 26.97
INC & Electoral allies
9. INC 31 510 197 5 39.53 4
10. ADK 1 11 11 0 1.50 60.05
11. MUL 5 18 2 16 0.32 7.68
12. KCM 1 1 1 0 0.12 48.27
Total 211 41.47
Others
13. JKN 1 3 3 0 0.02 95.73
14. MAG 1 1 1 0 0.04 48.69
15. SSP 1 1 1 0 0.03 68.52
16. BSP 18 245 3 221 2.07 4.53
17. GNLF 1 1 1 0 0.14 56.49
18. HMS 2 12 1 11 0.07 3.73
19. IPF 3 13 1 11 0.25 10.30
20. JMM 2 12 3 6 0.34 16.29
21. M-COR 1 1 1 0 0.08 38.78
22. MIM 2 8 1 7 0.21 10.25
198
Appendix 199
Table 5a Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the

9th Lok Sabha (1989) – continued
No. Party Seats contested Seats FD1 in % of % of votes

contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
23. SAD(M) 2 9 6 2 0.77 44.25

24. SHS 1 3 1 1 0.11 21.57
Total 23 4.13
25. IND 30 3713 12 3672 5.25 5.46
Grand Total 529 82.42
Table 5b Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the

No. Party Seats contested Seats FD in % of % of votes

contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
Indian National Congress (Minority Government) + Electoral Allies

1. INC 31 496 239 62 36.55 38.00
2. ADK 1 11 11 0 1.61 60.76
3. KCM 1 1 1 0 0.14 53.44
4. ICS(SCS) 10 28 1 25 0.35 6.48
5. JD(G) 1 10 1 0 0.50 36.84
6. MUL 5 20 2 18 0.30 6.41
Total 255 38.80
National Front
7. JD 24 313 56 145 11.77 21.47
8. TDP 1 35 13 1 2.96 37.56
9. AGP 1 14 1 6 0.54 16.75
Total 70 15.27
Left Front
10. CPI 17 43 14 16 2.48 29.53
200 Appendix
Table 5b Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
11. CPM 16 63 35 7 6.14 42.04

12. FBL 9 19 3 16 0.41 10.69
13. RSP 4 9 4 4 0.63 30.03
Total 56 9.66
BJP + allies
14. BJP 28 473 120 186 20.04 21.91
15. SHS 2 23 4 5 0.79 21.04
Total 124 20.83
Others
16. SJP 20 351 5 305 3.34 4.99
17. BSP 19 255 4 211 1.80 3.93.
18. JMM 3 14 6 8 0.53 21.64
19. MRP 1 1 1 0 0.06 45.14
20. NPC 1 1 1 0 0.12 52.23
21. SSP 2 2 1 0 0.04 21.33
22. ASDC 1 1 1 0 0.05 44.38
23. HVP 1 4 1 3 0.12 13.28
24. MIM 1 2 1 1 0.16 25.21
25. IND 29 5537 1 5524 4.10 0.38
Total 22 10.32
Table 5c Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the

S. No. Party Seats contested Seats FD in % of % of votes

contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
United Front (Coalition government with out side support of INC)

1. JD 21 196 46 85 8.08 23.45
2. SP 1 64 16 7 2.86 27.27
Appendix 201
Table 5c Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the

S. No. Party Seats contested Seats FD in % of % of votes

contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
3. DMK 2 19 17 1 2.15 53.69

4. TDP 1 36 16 2 2.97 38.24
5. AGP 1 11 5 0 0.76 32.64
6. AIIC(T) 21 321 4 310 1.46 2.58
7. MPVC 1 1 1 0 0.10 66.33
8. KCP 1 11 1 10 0.17 8.36
9. TMC(M) 1 20 20 0 2.19 54.56
10. CPI 19 43 12 22 1.97 24.93
11. CPM 19 75 32 22 6.21 37.09
12. FBL 1 3 3 0 0.37 46.15
13. RSP 1 4 4 0 0.52 49.70
14 MUL 1 2 2 0 0.22 49.02
15. JMM 1 20 1 16 0.31 8.54
16. AIMIM 1 2 1 1 0.10 18.99
17. UGDP 1 1 1 0 0.03 40.52
18. ASDC 1 1 1 0 0.05 52.68
19. SDF 1 1 1 0 0.04 72.15
20. KEC(M) 1 1 1 0 0.11 54.41
Total 185 30.67
Congress
21. INC 31 529 140 127 28.80 29.65
BJP + Allies
22. BJP 28 471 161 180 20.29 23.39
23. SAP 16 81 8 51 2.17 14.10
24. SHS 1 20 15 0 1.43 42.46
25 SAD 1 9 8 0 0.76 40.52
26. HVP 1 4 3 0 0.35 39.12
27. MAG 1 2 1 1 0.04 26.77
196 25.04
Others
28. BSP 3 117 11 47 3.64 18.90
29. RSP 1 1 1 0 0.11 49.78
30. SP 12 47 1 43 0.42 5.22
31. IND 31 10635 9 10603 6.28 0.32
Total 22 10.45
202 Appendix
Table 5d Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Coalition Government

1. BJP 28 388 182 57 25.59 35.54
2. SAP 12 57 12 35 1.76 15.80
3. ADK 2 23 18 0 1.83 45.39
4. HVP 1 4 1 0 0.24 29.52
5. JKN* 1 6 3 0 0.21 35.34
6. JP 6 16 1 15 0.12 3.73
7. PMK 1 5 4 0 0.42 46.54
8. SAD 1 8 8 0 0.81 50.54
9. SHS 13 79 6 55 1.77 11.80
10 TDP* 1 35 12 1 2.77 38.01
11. BJD 1 12 9 0 1.00 47.13
12 HLD(R)* 1 7 4 0 0.53 37.74
13. LS 12 33 3 24 0.69 11.49
14 MDMK 1 5 3 2 0.44 44.45
15. WBTC 1 29 7 3 2.42 35.01
Total 273 40.60
INC Alliance
16. INC 32 477 141 153 25.82 29.00
17. KEC (M) 1 1 1 0 0.10 53.90
18. MUL 4 7 2 5 0.22 14.45
19. RJD 21 116 17 80 2.78 12.74
20. SJP(R) 11 20 1 15 0.06 0.19
21. UMFA 1 1 1 0 0.10 57.27
Total 167 29.08
United Front
22. CPI 18 58 9 40 1.75 16.17
23. CPM 16 71 32 20 5.16 33.68
24. DMK 2 18 6 0 1.44 42.32
25. FBL 2 4 2 1 0.33 35.37
26. JD 18 191 6 156 3.24 9.12
27. RSP 2 5 5 0 0.55 48.12
28. SP 17 166 20 88 4.93 15.88
29. TMC(M) 1 20 3 0 1.40 40.25
Total 83 18.18
Appendix 203
Table 5d Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
Others
30. AC 1 2 2 0 0.05 51.55
31. AIIC(S) 7 9 1 7 0.12 8.48
32. AIMIM 1 1 1 0 0.12 41.36
33. AIRJP 7 38 1 30 0.56 7.79
34. ASDC 1 1 1 0 0.05 45.42
35. BSP 17 251 5 176 4.67 9.68
36. MSCP 1 2 1 0 0.05 25.18
37. PWPI 1 2 1 1 0.07 19.43
38. SDF 1 1 1 0 0.03 64.51
39. IND 28 1915 6 1898 2.37 0.65
Total 20 8.08
*HLD(R) switched from others to NDA. JKN and TDP Switched from UF to NDA. TDP did
not join the government. However it is a part of NDA.
Table 5e Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Coalition Government

1. BJP 28 339 182 24 23.75 38.78
2. JD (U) 12 60 21 24 3.10 27.49
3. AITC 2 29 8 2 2.57 38.51
4. BJD 1 12 10 0 1.20 57.64
5. DMK 1 19 12 0 1.73 46.88
204 Appendix


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
6. HVC 1 1 1 0 0.07 52.33

7. JKN 1 6 4 0 0.12 27.93
8. MDMK 1 5 4 0 0.44 44.66
9. PMK 2 8 5 0 0.65 44.97
10 SAD 1 9 2 0 0.69 39.48
11. INLD 1 5 5 0 0.55 59.03
12 MADMK 1 1 1 0 0.11 50.73
13. ABLTC 1 4 2 0 0.22 32.47
14 MSCP 1 2 1 1 0.06 24.68
15. TDP* 1 34 29 0 3.65 48.61
16. SHS 14 63 15 41 1.56 14.23
Total 302 40.47
INC Alliance
17. INC 31 453 114 88 28.30 33.30
18. ADK 2 29 10 5 1.93 33.71
19. RJD 14 61 7 26 2.79 24.62
20. MUL 3 12 2 10 0.23 8.70
21. RLD 3 15 2 10 0.37 14.13
22. KEC(M) 1 1 1 0 0.10 51.63
Total 136 33.72
Left Alliance
23. CPI 17 54 4 39 1.48 15.00
24. CPM 16 72 33 20 5.40 34.59
25. FBL 4 15 2 12 0.35 12.46
26. RSP 2 5 3 1 0.41 35.78
27. KEC 1 1 1 0 0.10 46.90
Total 43 7.74
Others
28. BSP 16 225 14 154 4.16 9.81
29. JD (S) 18 96 1 88 0.91 5.02
30. NCP 22 132 8 97 2.27 9.28
31. SDF 1 1 1 0 0.03 51.67
32. SJP(R) 4 14 1 13 0.08 3.56
33. SP 13 151 26 90 3.76 13.98
34. AIMIM 1 1 1 0 0.12 41.36
35. BBM 1 4 1 0 0.19 29.75
Appendix 205


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
36. CPI(ML) 12 56 1 53 0.33 3.06

37. PWPI 1 2 1 1 0.08 18.90
38. SAD(M) 1 1 1 0 0.08 41.73
39. IND 31 1945 6 1928 2.74 0.75
Total 62 14.75
Table 5f Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Coalition Government

1. INC 33 417 145 82 26.53 34.43
2. RJD 6 42 24 14 2.41 31.27
3. DMK 1 16 16 0 1.81 58.24
4. NCP 11 32 9 10 1.80 33.98
5. PMK 2 6 6 0 0.56 51.66
6. JMM 4 9 5 3 0.47 28.43
7. TRS 1 22 5 17 0.63 13.19
8. LJNSP 12 40 4 32 0.71 10.02
9. MDMK 1 4 4 0 0.43 58.23
10. JKPDP 1 3 1 0 0.07 39.29
11. MUL 6 10 1 8 0.20 9.61
12. RPI(A) 5 7 1 6 0.09 6.31
13. JD(S) 12 43 3 24 1.47 15.67
Total 224 37.18
206 Appendix
Table 5f Relative strength of political parties and alliances in the


contested
No. of No. of
states seats
and UTs
Left Front (Outside Support)

14. CPI(M) 19 69 43 15 5.66 42.31
15. CPI 15 34 10 19 1.41 23.70
16. RSP 3 6 3 2 0.43 33.50
17. AIFB 5 10 3 7 0.35 18-81
18. KEC 1 1 1 0 0.09 48.52
Total 60 7.94
National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
19. BJP 31 364 138 57 22.16 34.39
20. SHS 14 56 12 34 1.81 17.90
21. BJD 1 12 11 0 1.30 51.15
22. JD(U) 16 73 8 44 2.35 17.73
23. SAD 1 10 8 0 0.90 43.42
24. TDP 1 33 5 0 3.04 42.75
25. AITC 5 33 2 7 2.07 29-97
26. MNF 1 1 1 0 0.05 52.46
27. SDF 1 1 1 0 0.04 69.84
28. IFDP 1 1 1 0 0.07 34.38
29. NPF 2 3 1 2 0.18 31.77
30. Total 188 33.97
Others
31. SP 23 237 36 169 4.32 10.26
32. BSP 25 435 19 358 5.33 6.66
33. RLD 11 32 3 23 0.63 11.08
34. AGP 1 12 2 4 0.53 23.53
35. SJP(R) 7 10 1 9 0.09 5.32
36. JKN 1 6 2 2 0.13 22.02
37. NLP 6 18 1 17 0.09 2.81
38. AIMIM 1 2 1 1 0.11 21.29
39. BNP 2 4 1 3 0.04 9.25
Total 66 11.27
40. IND 32 2385 5 2370 4.25 4.64
543 94.61
Table 6a Religion, caste and tribe: 10th Lok Sabha
S. No State/UT Total Open SC ST Hindus Muslims Sikh Christians Jains STi Unknown
&Vacant
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 27 4 6 37 3 – – – – – – – – 2 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 11 8 4 23 2 – – – 1 – – 1 1 1 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 7 2 2 11 2 – – – 5 2 – 7 – – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 3 24 7 34 1 – – – – 2 – 2 – 1 1
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – – 1(ST) – – – – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – – – – 1 – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2 48 38 19 105 10 – – – 6 4 – 10 1 5 1
83.96% 14.50% 1.52% 80.15% 7.63% 7.63% 0.77% 3.81%
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 16 12 8 37ii 6 – – – 1 – – 1 – 8 2
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 3 3 2 9iii – 1 – 1 – – – – – – –
9. Himachal 4 3 1 – 3 – 1 4 – – – – – – – – – – –
Pradesh
10. Madhya 40 25 6 9 18 5 6 29 1 – – – – – – – – 10 –
Pradesh
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 3 1 – 4 – 5 3 8 – – – – – – 1
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 12 5 3 20 1 – 1 1 – – – – – 3 –
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 50 12 20 82 3 – – – – – – – – – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 5 1 1 7 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 111 39 41 193 11 6 4 10 1 – – 1 – 21 3
74.89% 17.99% 7.11% 80.75% 4.60% 4.18% 0.42% 8.78% 1.25%
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 9 4 3 16 – – – – – – – – – 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 21 1 8 34iv 5 – – – – – – – – 3 –
18. Andaman and 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
Nicobar
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 31 5 11 51 5 – – – – – – – – 8 –
71.87% 17.19% 10.93% 79.68% 7.81% 12.50%
207
208
Table 6a Religion, caste and tribe: 10th Lok Sabha – continued
& Vacant
North East
19. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 2
Pradesh
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 6 4 1 11 1 – – – – – – – – 2 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – 2 2 – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 8 4 1 13 1 – – – – – 4 4 – 8 3
76% 4% 20% 52% 4% 16% 32% 12%
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 14 6 2 22 – – – – – – – – – 4 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 25 7 4 42v 1 – – – – – – – – 5 –
30. Dadra and 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 –
Nagar Haveli
31. Daman& Diu 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
R. Totals 78 64 5(6.41) 9(11.53) 40 13 6 65 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 10 1
82.05 83.33 1.28 1.28 12.82
32. Jammu and
Kashmir 6 6 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 6
G. TOTAL 543 424 79 40 238 99 78 427 28 6 4 10 8 4 4 16 1 52 14
78.08% 14.54% 7.36% 78.63% 5.15% 1.84% 2.94% 0.18% 9.57% 2.57%
i
Including ST Christians and Muslims
ii
Including 1 Hindu of unknown caste identity
iii
Including 1 Hindu of unknown caste identity
iv
Including 4 Hindus of unknown caste identity
v
Including 6 Hindus of unknown caste identity
Table 6b Religion, caste and tribe: 11th Lok Sabha
& Vacant
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 25 6 6 37 2 – – – – – – – – 3 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 10 9 4 23 2 – – – 1 – – 1 1 1 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 3 2 2 12ii 2 – – – 4 1 – 5 1 – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 2 29 7 38 – – – – – 1 – 1 – – –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – – 1(ST) – – – – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – – – – 1 – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2 40 46 19 110 8 – – – 5 2 – 7 2 5 –
83.96% 14.50% 1.52% 83.96% 6.10% 5.34% 1.52% 3.81%
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 19 17 8 44 4 – – – 1 – – 1 – 5 –
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 4 2 2 8 – 2 – 2 – – – – – – –
9. Himachal 4 3 1 – 3 – 1 4 – – – – – – – – – – –
Pradesh
10. Madhya 40 25 6 9 16 7 6 29 – – – – – – – – – 11 –
Pradesh
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 2 1 – 3 – 7 3 10 – – – – – – –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 12 6 4 22 – – – – – – – – – 3 –
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 40 21 18 79 6 – – – – – – – – – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 6 – 1 7 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 102 54 40 196 10 9 3 12 1 – – 1 1 19 –
74.89% 17.99% 7.11% 82% 4.18% 5.02% 0.41% 0.41% 7.94%
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 9 4 3 16 – – – – – – – – – 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 21 1 9 34iii 5 – – – – – – – – 3 –
18. Andaman and 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
Nicobar
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 31 5 12 51 5 – – – – – – – – 8 –
71.87% 17.19% 10.93% 79.68% 7.81% 12.50%
209
210
Table 6b Religion, caste and tribe: 11th Lok Sabha – continued
& Vacant
North East
19. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 2
Pradesh
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 7 2 2 11 1 – – – – – 1 1 – 2 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – 2 2 – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 9 2 2 13 1 – – – – – 5 5 – 8 3
76% 4% 20% 52% 4% 20% 32% 12%
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 12 8 2 22 – – – – – – – – – 4 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 22 6 3 42iv 1 – – – – – – – – 5 –
30. Dadra and 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 –
Nagar Haveli
31. Daman& Diu 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
R. Totals 78 64 5(6.41) 9(11.53) 35 14 5 65 1 – – – 1 – – 1 – 10 1
82.05% 83.33% 1.28% 1.28% 12.82%
32. Jammu and 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 3 – – – – – – – – – 1
Kashmir
G. TOTAL 543 424 79 40 219 121 78 437 28 9 3 12 7 2 5 14 3 50 5
78.08% 14.54% 7.36% 80.47% 5.15% 2.20% 2.57% 0.55% 9.20% 9.20%
i
ii
Including 5 Hindus of unknown Caste identity
iii
iv
Table 6c Religion, Caste and Tribe: 12th Lok Sabha
& Vacant
South India
1. Andhra 42 34 6 2 26 6 6 38 1 – – – – – – – – 3 –
Pradesh
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 12 6 4 25ii 1 – – – – – – – 1 1 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 5 2 2 13iii 2 – – – 4 1 – 5 – – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 2 29 7 38 – – – – – 1 – 1 – – –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – – 1(ST) – – – – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – 1 – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2 45 44 19 115 4 – – – 4 2 – 6 1 5 –
83.96% 14.50% 1.52% 87.77% 3.05% 4.58% 0.76% 3.81%
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 19 14 8 41 6 – – – 1 – – 1 – 6 –
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 2 4 1 9iv – – 1 1 – – – – – – –
9. Himachal 4 3 1 – 3 – 1 4 – – – – – – – – – – –
Pradesh
10. Madhya 40 25 6 9 12 8 6 30v – – – – – – – – 10 –
Pradesh
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 3 – 1 4 – 7 2 9 – – – – – – –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 10 5 3 18 – – 1 1 – – – – – 4 2
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 43 18 18 79 6 – – – – – – – – – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 6 – 1 7 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 98 49 39 192 12 7 4 11 1 – – 1 1 20 2
74.89% 17.99% 7.11% 80.33% 5.02% 4.60% 0.41% 0.41% 8.36% 0.82%
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 11 2 3 16 – – – – – – – – – 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 24 – 9 34vi 6 – – – – – – – – 2 –
18. Andaman and 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
Nicobar
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 36 2 12 51 6 – – – – – – – – 7 –
71.87% 17.19% 10.93% 79.68% 9.37% 10.93%
211
Table 6c Religion, Caste and Tribe: 12th Lok Sabha – continued
212
& Vacant
North East
19. Arunachal 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 2
Pradesh
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 6 2 1 9 2 – – – – – – – – 3 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – 2 2 – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 8 2 1 11 2 – – – – – 5 5 – 9 3
76% 4% 20% 44% 8% 20% 36% 12%
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 14 7 2 23 – – – – – – – – – 3 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 25 6 8 43vii – – – – – – – – – 5 –
30. Dadra and 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 –
Nagar Haveli
31. Daman and 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
Diu
R. Totals 78 64 5 (6.41%) 9(11.53%) 40 13 10 67 – – – – 1 – – 1 9 1
82.05% 85.89% 1.28% 11.53% 1.28%
32. Jammu 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 4 – – – – – – – – – –
Kashmir
G. TOTAL 543 424 79 40 229 110 81 438 28 7 4 11 6 2 5 13 2 50 6
78.08% 14.54% 7.36% 80.66% 5.15% 2.02% 2.39% 0.36% 9.20% 1.10%
i
ii
iii
iv
v
vi
Including 1 Hindu of unknown Caste identity
vii
Table 6d Religion, Caste and Tribe: 13th Lok Sabha
& Vacant
South India
1. Andhra
Pradesh 42 34 6 2 26 6 6 38 1 – – – – – – – – 3 –
2. Karnataka 28 24 4 – 12 6 4 25ii 1 – – – – – – – 1 1 –
3. Kerala 20 18 2 – 5 2 2 13iii 2 – – – 4 1 – 5 – – –
4. Tamil Nadu 39 32 7 – 2 29 7 38 – – – – – 1 – 1 – – –
5. Lakshadweep 1 1 – – – – – – 1(ST) – – – – – – – – 1 –
6. Pondicherry 1 1 – – – 1 – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 131 110 19 2 45 44 19 115 4 – – – 4 2 – 6 1 5 –
83.96% 14.50% 1.52% 87.77% 3.05% 4.58% 0.76% 3.81%
North India
7. Bihar 54 41 8 5 19 14 8 41 6 – – – 1 – – 1 – 6 –
8. Haryana 10 8 2 – 2 4 1 9iv – – 1 1 – – – – – – –
9. Himachal
Pradesh 4 3 1 – 3 – 1 4 – – – – – – – – – – –
10. Madhya
v
Pradesh 40 25 6 9 12 8 6 30 – – – – – – – – 10 –
11. Punjab 13 10 3 – 3 – 1 4 – 7 2 9 – – – – – – –
12. Rajasthan 25 18 4 3 10 5 3 18 – – 1 1 – – – – – 4 2
13. Uttar Pradesh 85 67 18 – 43 18 18 79 6 – – – – – – – – – –
14. Chandigarh 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 – –
15. Delhi 7 6 1 – 6 – 1 7 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 239 179 43 17 98 49 39 192 12 7 4 11 1 – – 1 1 20 2
74.89% 17.99% 7.11% 80.33% 5.02% 4.60% 0.41% 0.41% 8.36% 0.82%
East India
16. Orissa 21 13 3 5 11 2 3 16 – – – – – – – – – 5 –
17. West Bengal 42 32 8 2 24 – 9 34vi 6 – – – – – – – – 2 –
18. Andaman and
Nicobar 1 1 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – –
R. Totals 64 46 11 7 36 2 12 51 6 – – – – – – – – 7 –
71.87% 17.19% 10.93% 79.68% 9.37% 10.93%
213
Table 6d Religion, Caste and Tribe: 13th Lok Sabha – continued
214
& Vacant
North East
19. Arunachal
Pradesh 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 2
20. Assam 14 11 1 2 6 2 1 9 2 – – – – – – – – 3 –
21. Manipur 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
22. Meghalaya 2 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – 2 2 – 2 –
23. Mizoram 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
24. Nagaland 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 1 – 1 –
25. Sikkim 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
26. Tripura 2 1 – 1 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – 1 –
R. Totals 25 19 1 5 8 2 1 11 2 – – – – – 5 5 – 9 3
76% 4% 20% 44% 8% 20% 36% 12%
West India
27. Goa 2 2 – – 1 – – 1 – – – – 1 – – 1 – – –
28. Gujarat 26 20 2 4 14 7 2 23 – – – – – – – – – 3 –
29. Maharashtra 48 41 3 4 25 6 8 43vii – – – – – – – – – 5 –
30. Dadra and
Nagar Haveli 1 – – 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1 –
31. Daman and
Diu 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 1
R. Totals 78 64 5 (6.41%) 9 (11.53%) 40 13 10 67 – – – – 1 – – 1 9 1
82.05% 85.89% 1.28% 11.53% 1.28%
32. Jammu
Kashmir 6 6 – – 2 – – 2 4 – – – – – – – – – –
G. TOTAL 543 424 79 40 229 110 81 438 28 7 4 11 6 2 5 13 2 50 6
78.08% 14.54% 7.36% 80.66% 5.15% 2.02% 2.39% 0.36% 9.20% 1.10%
i
ii
iii
iv
v
vi
Including 1 Hindu of unknown Caste identity
vii
Notes
Chapter 1 Representing India: Democracy and Diversity

1 E.g., the Partition, resulting in the formation of the two independent
nations of India and Pakistan, was the product of political mobilization on
the basis of religious identity.
2 The reasons why community rights are respected can vary, and are clearly
important. Kukathas, for instance, argues that the liberal respects the rights
of a community to live according to its own practices, not because the
culture has the right to be preserved, but rather because – consistent with
the liberal principle of freedom – individuals belonging to the community
should be free to associate in (or dissociate from) cultural communities, as a
form of voluntary association. (Kukathas, 2002:135)
3 This was a book for young people, which had already sold 500,000 copies
since the publication of its first edition in 1940.
4 The communities whose special needs were to be so addressed were, firstly,
the religious minorities, of which the Muslims constitute the largest group,
followed by Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, among others;
and, secondly, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The Scheduled
Castes is an official category for describing the formerly untouchable castes
who are, in today’s political discourse and by self-identification, better
described as dalits (the oppressed). The term scheduled refers to the listing,
in a Schedule of the Constitution, of such castes who are, by virtue of this
official recognition, entitled to reservations and quotas. The Scheduled
Tribes, likewise, describes tribal communities who also prefer to be called
adivasis.
5 Delegated representation denotes an agent or spokesperson who acts on
behalf of his principal, e.g. a sales representative or an ambassador. In sym-
bolic representation, a person symbolizes the identity or qualities of a class
of persons, e.g. Adam as the symbolic representative of all mankind. (Birch,
1971:39)
6 Perhaps the singular exception to this pattern was the extremely powerful
Dalit (scheduled caste) Congress politician, Jagjivan Ram, who justly enter-
tained prime ministerial ambitions. He was an important minister in Indira
Gandhi’s Cabinet. As Defence Minister in the latter, he was seen as second
only to the Prime Minister herself, and also served as President of the Congress
Party. But Jagjivan Ram was without a doubt the proverbial exception that
proved the rule.
Chapter 2 Mapping Diversity in India

1 This was reflected in the Congress Party’s internal organizational structure,
which was substantially federal, with the Provincial Congress Committees
being implicitly based on linguistically defined regions.
215
216 Notes
2 The relevant data from the Census of 2001 are not yet available.
3 Maithili is the language spoken in the Mithila region of Bihar, which wit-
nessed an agitation in the 1950s and 1960s for a separate linguistic state.
This agitation did not have a strong base, being limited to the upper-caste
elites of the area. The Bihar government has, since 1949, recognized
Maithili as a mother-tongue, which entitles children of Maithili-speaking
families to be educated in it. However, the state government has on the
whole not provided adequate facilities for this to be realized. (Brass,
1992:160–1)
4 The Bodos are the largest of the ‘plains tribes’ in the state of Assam that
have been agitating – through ethnic riots and violence that have been
interpreted as ‘ethnic cleansing’ – for a separate state of ‘Bodoland’. Bodo
speakers are believed to number 1.1 million. (Baruah, 1999:Ch.8)
5 The term Harijan (Children of God) was used by Mahatma Gandhi who
fought vigorously against untouchability, which he regarded as a blot on
the Hindu social order. This term has now been superseded in political
discourse by the term dalit (literally meaning the oppressed or the
ground down). The term Scheduled Caste is an administrative category
which specifies these castes for purposes of determining their eligibility
for compensatory discrimination.
6 As proportion of total population in the state.
7 As proportion of population of Scheduled Castes in the country.
8 “Increasingly they look like a particularly downtrodden proletariat, some-
times lumpenproletariat. But they share this situation with many millions
of Indians from different religious and caste communities, and sometimes
class seems the most appropriate concept with which to approach this
broadly experienced condition. Even within the logic of caste, the Untouch-
ables fail to emerge as the single subordinated element. Backward elements
among what the varna order calls ‘Sudras’ are also clearly subordinated
today.” (Mendelsohn and Vicziany, 1998:9)
9 The HCR is a measure of poverty that represents ‘the percentage of the pop-
ulation that earns/spends below a certain level of income (expenditure).’
(Shariff, 1999:38) This level is described as the poverty line.
10 While the poverty line is a measure of the incidence of poverty, the Sen
Index describes the intensity of poverty. (Shariff, 1999:38–9)
11 This data is based upon an all-India sample survey (with a stratified random
sample of 9457 Indian citizens from all states of India, excluding Jammu
and Kashmir), conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, Delhi in 1996.
12 As proportion of total population in the state.
13 As proportion of population of Scheduled Tribes in the country.
Chapter 3 Managing Diversity: Institutions, Policies and

Politics
1 The phrase refers to the form of populist politics engaged in by the
Dravidian parties of southern India (mainly the DMK and the ADMK) in
whose discourse ethnic and populist appeals were skilfully intertwined,
with identity fuelling the claim to material entitlements.
Notes 217
2 The Aligarh movement sought to persuade the upper-class Muslims of

western Uttar Pradesh of the benefits of English education and western
science. The establishment of a Scientific Society, a modernist Urdu journal
and the Aligarh Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College, were efforts
oriented to this end.
3 The pronouncement of the word talaq (divorce) three times consecutively is
oral divorce.
4 For a detailed account of the political and parliamentary discourse around
this case, see Niraja Gopal Jayal (1999), Chapter 3.
5 On civil society in Gujarat, see Niraja Gopal Jayal (2003).
6 For a detailed account of Muslim representation in the Fourteenth Lok
Sabha, see Niraja Gopal Jayal (2004:202–7)
7 Laura Jenkins summarizes this paradox pithily: ‘Can policies both reflect and
destroy the categories associated with disadvantage?’ (Jenkins, 2003:175)
8 This has generally amounted to a figure of 15% for the Scheduled Castes
and 7% for the Scheduled Tribes, a total of 22%.
9 Separate electorates are explicitly outlawed by Article 325 of the Constitution,
which provides that no person shall be excluded from any electoral roll on
grounds of religion, race or caste.
10 The process by which a caste can get its claim to backwardness authenti-
cated (by the National Commission on Backward Classes) is contentious
and involves organization, the gathering of data on the ranking of the caste
in relation to other castes above and below it, and sometimes even what
has been described as the ‘claim to be backward in order to move forward’
(Jenkins, 2003:186)
11 Laura Jenkins observes that state classifications and ‘simplifications’ shape
identity politics and seek to adjudicate, freeze and even police the bound-
aries of particular caste groups in order to control the ambiguity and limi-
nality that often characterizes caste identity. However, she argues, protests
and challenges by groups questioning the implementation of reservation
policies also serve to prevent the reification of such fixed and static
classifications by the state. (Jenkins, 2003)
12 Elwin himself disputed this description, arguing that far from advocating
the preservation of the separate culture of the Baigas, a tribe in central
India, he was concerned about the ‘question of keeping them alive, saving
them from oppression and exploitation, giving them a simple form of
development.’ (Elwin, [1960] 1977:31)
Chapter 4 Promoting Diversity and Protecting the Vulnerable

1 The three-tier system was the norm, except for those states where, depend-
ing on population size and distribution, only two tiers were required.
2 This section is based upon the author’s paper ‘Social Inequality and
Institutional Remedies: A Study of the National Commission for Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes’, for the NETSAPPE Annual Meeting, June
2003. Much of the data presented here was gathered for a research report
on the Commission prepared by the author, with Bishnu Mohapatra, for
the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo (published in Jayal
and Mohapatra, 2004:138–201)
218 Notes
3 Some of the recent reports of the Committee have examined the representa-
tion of scheduled castes and tribes in the higher judiciary, the military, and
the nationalized banking sector. Others have investigated the allocation of
funds by the Planning Commission for welfare programmes for these
groups; or employment policies in the wake of liberalization; or the
working of tribal co-operatives; and so on.
4 It is worth recalling that the Mandal Commission on Backward Classes was
also set up by the same government, and in the same year.
5 This section is substantially based on a background paper ‘Gender and
Decentralisation’ prepared by the author for the United Nations Development
Programme in 1999.
6 The term ‘namesake’ refers not to someone bearing the same name, but is a
literal translation of a Hindi phrase meaning ‘in name only’. It is used to
denote membership in name only, rather than in substance.
Chapter 5 Negotiating Diversity: Parties and the Electoral

System
1 See, for instance, the argument of Donald L. Horowitz that many features of
the American Constitution considered to be integral to it, were not the result
of brilliant constitutional design, but rather improvised and unintended
consequences of other disputes and issues. (2002:17–18)
2 E.g., the Government of Fiji consulted Donald Horowitz and Arend Lijphart
while drafting its constitution.
3 In the 1977 and 1980 elections, the BJP – then known as the Bharatiya Jana
Sangh – had merged with the Janata Party, and hence an estimate of its
popular vote could not be derived.
4 The study based on this survey of 2000 voters was Samuel J. Eldersveld and
Bashiruddin Ahmed (1978).
5 ‘This applies especially to Muslims, who are in a majority only in Jammu
and Kashmir state and an estimated three constituencies each in Kerala and
West Bengal and one in the Lakshadweep islands, the population so
covered being under 10% of the Muslim population. Elsewhere, Muslims
are 20–50% of the population in 71 constituencies, 10–20% in 126 con-
stituencies and under 10% of the population in the remaining 336 or
five-eighths of the constituencies.’ (Sridharan, forthcoming).
6 Kothari [1964] (2002).
7 Patron-client relations, of course, also worked to secure, for the Congress,
the ‘vote banks’ of groups such as the Scheduled Castes.
8 Atul Kohli (1990) revisited the five districts in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh,
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, studied by Myron Weiner (1967)
in the early 1960s, and found that the local party organization of the
Congress to which Weiner had attributed its success in transforming itself
from a movement to a political party had completely disappeared.
9 Southern India had, as we noted in Chapter 3, witnessed mobilization
against the Brahmins several decades previously, as had Maharashtra.
10 This table follows the Election Commission’s definition in categorizing
political parties.
State Party: A political party that has been engaged in political activity for
a continuous period of five years, and has, at the general election in the
Notes 219
State/Union Territory to the House of the People, or to the Legislative

Assembly, for the time being in existence and functioning, returned either
(i) at least one member to the House of the People for every twenty five
members of that House, or any fraction of the number elected from
that State/UT; or (ii) at least one member to the Legislative Assembly of that
State/UT for every thirty members of that Assembly or any fraction of that
number.
National Party: A political party, which is recognized as a State Party in
four or more State/UTs, is known as a National Party.
Registered (Unrecognized) Party: A political party which is registered with
the Election Commission of India, but is not a State or National Party is
known as a Registered (Unrecognized) Party.
11 The ‘banias’ are Vaishyas or commercial castes, and the BJP’s traditional
support base was substantially the merchants and traders, hence this
appellation.
12 Indeed, there is an incentive for further differentiation within the broad
caste category. Kanchan Chandra has shown how the BSP’s strategy has
been to encourage ‘the multiplication of monoethnic factions’. Its candi-
dates would be encouraged not to mobilize support across the ethnic units
of the caste, but restrict themselves to their particular sub-caste only.
(Chandra, 2004:258)
Chapter 6 Representing Diversity in Institutions of

Governance
1 Phillips (1996) distinguishes between a politics of presence – in which
women, ethnic minorities and other excluded groups are guaranteed fair
representation – and a politics of ideas, which represents a political choice
between the policies and programmes of political parties, rather than on
the basis of group concerns and interests.
2 Lijphart (2001) interprets the backtracking on Hindi as the official lan-
guage, as well as the enactment of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights
in Divorce) Act, 1986, as examples of the minority veto, one of the four
features of consociationalism.
3 Elections were not held in this state
4 Including 1 Hindu of unknown caste identity
6 Including 2 Hindus of unknown caste identity
8 Including 5 Hindus of unknown caste identity
9 Some obvious examples would be the Ministry of Information Technology
which could not have been conceived of in the 1950s, or the Ministry for
Disinvestment, which is a product of the economic reforms process of the
1990s.
10 Dr. Ambedkar’s Memorandum and Draft Articles on the Rights of States and
Minorities, presented to the Constituent Assembly in March 1947, proposed
that the ‘representatives of the different minorities in the Cabinet shall be
elected by members of each minority community in the Legislature by single
transferable vote’. (Rao, 1967:91), but there is no evidence that the question
of reservations in the Cabinet was seriously discussed in the Assembly.
220 Notes
11 Governments under acting Prime Ministers are not included.

12 Since Cabinet reshuffles are common, this figure represents the average size
of a particular government.
13 Cabinet ministers. The figures within parenthesis indicate the percentage of
Cabinet ministers against the size of the Council of Ministers as a whole.
14 Ministers of state.
15 Deputy ministers.
16 This Lok Sabha lasted for 5 years, 10 months and three days, It did not
complete its full term because Mrs. Indira Gandhi declared a National
Emergency that lasted from June 1975 to February 1977.
17 This is echoed in Lijphart’s (2001:330) view that Indian democracy was
more firmly consociational between 1947–1967, and has become less so
since, as intergroup violence and tension have increased.
18 By contrast, it was for the first time in 1994 that a member of the Scheduled
Tribes was given a Cabinet post. Women too have been given positions of
Minister of State or Deputy Minister, but only rarely Cabinet Ministerships.
This excludes, of course, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for whom political
power was more easily accessible for dynastic reasons.
19 Till P.V. Narasimha Rao, there had been no Prime Minister from a southern
state. Indeed, most Prime Ministers were from Uttar Pradesh, not least
because that state returned the largest number of MPs (85) to the Lok
Sabha. To offset this ‘northern’ dominance, Prime Ministers were generally
conscious of the need to have a balanced regional representation and
include southern politicians too in their cabinets.
20 Since Cabinets are routinely ‘reshuffled’, sometimes several times in a year,
we have adopted the following methodology to generate this data. For each
year that a Prime Minister spent in office, one sample Cabinet was taken.
The number of Cabinet ministers in each of the sample Cabinets was
added, and divided by the number of years that the Prime Minister was in
office, to arrive at the average size of the Cabinet. This methodology
has been used in all the following tables on the Union Cabinet from
1991–2002.
21 To synchronize our data with the data used for the earlier phase of
1947–1990, we have followed the same categorization of states into regions
as adopted by Panandiker and Mehra (1996) in their study of patterns of
representation in the Union Cabinet from 1947–1990. For other parts of
this paper, most notably the section on Parliament, a different characteriza-
tion of region has been used. The classification of states into regions in this
section is as follows:
North India: Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Chandigarh,
Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir.
Central India: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh
East India: Orissa, West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar
North-East India: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura.
West India: Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman
and Diu.
South India: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry,
Lakshadweep.
Notes 221
22 The numerical prefixed by + sign in rows corresponding to the year 1990

onwards indicates the extent of this excess.
23 The percentages in this table are not very different from those reproduced
in the Ninth Five Year Plan of the Planning Commission, Government of
India. (Government of India, 1997:Table 3.96).
24 Excluding one Scheduled Tribe and one Christian
25 Excluding two Scheduled Tribes, one Christian and one Muslim
26 For the years 1972 and 1976, the data is for the BJS working committee.
27 For the period 1991–98, this table draws upon the data provided by Jaffrelot
(2003:Table 13.3:470). Jaffrelot’s data is however more disaggregated and
detailed. Here, the categories of Upper Caste and Intermediate Caste have
been merged in the single category of Forward Castes. Jaffrelot’s categoriza-
tion of and numbers for OBC, SC and ST groups, as also religious minori-
ties, have been retained. The reason for the absence of data on women in
the period 1991–1998 is because the focus of Jaffrelot’s study is on caste and
community, rather than gender.
28 In an interview, Waman Meshram (National President of BAMCEF) rejected
the common view of BAMCEF as a trade union, describing it rather as an
organization of the educated dalits in government to act as agents of
change in society. BAMCEF was formed in 1976 as a ‘talent bank’ of dalits,
to intellectually awaken and energize the two million educated people
belonging to oppressed groups who had joined government service to work
on behalf of the larger society of oppressed people. The creation, in 1984, of
the BSP by a breakaway group, signalled their disillusionment with the
failure of BAMCEF to achieve this objective.
29 This went down to 403 after the creation of Uttaranchal state.
Appendix
1 FD stands for Forfeiture of Deposit. A candidate’s security deposit is for-
feited if he is not elected and he also fails to secure more than one-sixth of
the total valid votes polled in the constituency.
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Index
affirmative action Babri Masjid, demolition of the, 56,

constitutional commitment to, see also under communal
191 riots/violence
constitutional provisions for, 4 Backward
policies of, 5, 36, 196 classes, 28, 60, 63
Aga Khan, 92 Classes Commission, 63, 64
Ahmed, Bashiruddin, 220 Classes Reservation Commission, 31
Ahmed, Fakhruddin Ali, 148 no statutory reservation for, 135
AJGAR, 106 representation, 135
Akali Dal, 96 ten different denotations of, 60
Aligarh movement, 219 Backward castes, 12, 36–7, 60, 64, 135
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Chief Ministers from, 135
Kazhagam (AIADMK or ADMK), Backward and Minorities Classes
xi, 99, 218n1 Employees Federation (BAMCEF),
All India Christian Council, 50 xi, 181, 221n28
All India Muslim OBC Organisation, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), xi, 57,
57 66–7, 96, 105, 115, 129, 150, 156,
all-India sample survey, 218, see also 186, 192, 195
National Sample Survey emergence of, 183
Organisation ethnic profile of, 181
Ambedkar, B.R. Dr, 28, 58–9, 85 leader-centric character of, 181–3
Memorandum and Draft Articles on Bangladesh, 2, 23
the Rights of States and Bayly, Susan, 60–1
Minorities, 221 Beteille, Andre, 37
Ambedkar, Prakash, 129 Bengal Presidency, 38, 44
Ambedkar villages, 86 Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), xi, 97,
American Constitution, 220 178, 220, 223
Anglo-Indians Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), xi, 5, 67,
community, 118 95, 98–100, 113, 180, 186, 220
reservation in the legislatures, 114 ‘Brahmin-bania’ party, 110
separate electorates for, 92 cadre-based party, 110
Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Coalition government 1998–2004,
see AIADMK 12, 150
Ansari, Abdul Qaiyum, 32 communalism of, 110
Anthropological Survey of India, 38 and corruption, 111
Antulay, A.R., 149 ethnic profile of, 180
armed forces, 175–84 -led NDA governments, 109, 156
Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), xi, 46 recruitment of dalits and tribals,
Assam Accord, 46 113
Attorney-General of India, 184 Sangh Parivar, 113
Austin, G., 93 Bharatiya Kranti Dal, 105
Autonomous District Councils, 70 Bharipa Bahuja Mahasangha (BBM),
Azad, Maulana Abdul Kalam, 53 xi, 129, 187
228
Index 229
Bihar Provincial Jamiat-ul-Momineen, Central Government, 19, 64, 66, 79,

32 171
Biju Janata Dal, 99, 106 Central Legislative Assembly, 59
Bodos ‘Bodoland’, 218 Central Staffing Scheme, 163
Bofors scam, 108 Centre for the Study of Developing
Brass, Paul, 46, 54 Societies (CSDS), xi, 97–8, 218
British Chandhoke, Neera, xiii, 20, 44, 53
Army in India, 58 Chandra, Kanchan, 221
colonial rule, 1–2, 26, 36, 58, 89, Charan Singh, Choudhury, see under
102 Prime Ministers
policy of ‘divide and rule’, 48 Christians/Christianity, 21–2, 24, 27,
Buddhism/Buddhists, 20, 23, 28, 217 30, 50, 136, 120, 186, 217
bureaucracy, 13, 79, 160–75, 189–91 Dalit, 30
‘committed’, 161 Fundamental Rights, 60
ethnic composition of, 13 literacy rate, 86, see under literacy
quota-based reservation for, 189 majority community in three states,
recruitment data, 190 22
representation of SCs, STs and missionaries, 69
OBCs in, 191 scheduled caste converts to, 120
Burke, Edmund, 6 civil rights
atrocities and protection of, 75,
Cabinet Secretariat, 13, 163 see also Prevention of Atrocities
Cabinets, see Union Cabinets Act 1989
caste, 28 coalition governments, 5, 90, 149
anti-Brahman sentiment, 59 formal pre-poll arrangements,
basis for political mobilization, 26 149
and class, 37 inherent instability of, 96
defining characteristic of Indian politics, 189
society, 25 short-lived, 106
identities, 36, 58 colonial rule, see under British
inequality, 26 Commissioner
and Hinduism, 28 on Backward Classes, 106, 150,
political mobilization, 150, 187 see also Mandal Commission
politics, 105, 193 for Linguistic Minorities, 20
ranking of, 219 for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
and ‘social justice’, 195 Tribes, 38, 72
stratification, 26, 58 Communal Award of 1932, 60,
system, 31, 58 see also Depressed Classes
Census of India, 17 communal riots/violence, 96
1931, 28, 46 Babri Masjid, destruction of, 53
1951, 38, 45–6 during Partition of India, 53
1961, 45 essentially urban phenomenon,
1981, 22 54
1991, 22, 38 role of the state in, 54
2001, 20, 28, 39 security of Muslim citizens, 57
data on languages, 17, Communist Parties, 96
literacy rate, see under literacy Communist Party of India (Marxist)
mother tongue, 17, 20, 42, 45, 46, (CPM), xi, 99, 107, 186
52, 218n3 in West Bengal, 109, 129
230 Index
compensatory discrimination, 62, 69, federalism, cultural rights and

74, 186, 192 personal laws, 100
‘the creamy layer’ and, 190 Forty Sixth Amendment Bill, 74
policies of, 5, 14, 79, 102, 186, 190, freedom of the citizen in, 49
192, 197, 218 ‘national’ language, 17
Comptroller and Auditor-General ‘official’ languages, 17
(CAG) of India, xi, 77–8 One Hundredth Amendment bill,
Congress Party 18
commitment to equal citizenship provides cultural autonomy, 100
and secular values, 55, 110 reservation of seats , 61
Congress system, 136 separate electorates explicitly
decline of hegemony, 37, 96 outlawed, 219
defeat of, 105 Seventh Amendment to (1956), 44
dynastic control over, 175, 177 Sixty Fifth Amendment Act 1990,
ethnic profile of, 177 74
-led coalition, 109 constitutional discourse, 119
organizational attenuation, 12 Council of Ministers, 146, 151
party of consensus, 36, 102 ‘the creamy layer’, see under
party preferred by disadvantaged compensatory discrimination
people, 98 criminal law, 4, 51
protector of minorities, 55 through constitutional provisions,
sympathy wave for, 104 4
‘umbrella’ character of, 11, 36 limiting the, 51
Congress (I), 97 universally applicable, 4
Congress (R), 97 Criminal Procedure Code Section, 125
Congress Working Committee of the, 51
(CWC), xi, 175–7 crude birth rate (CBR), 25
consociational model, 100, see also cultural diversities, 2, 15
Lijphardt, A. approach to, 3
Constituent Assembly, 42–3, 48–9, 53, in India, 185
221 cultural pluralism, 5
Constitution of India cumulative historical inequality, 36
73rd and 74th Amendment Acts Curzon, Lord, 42
(1993), 71, 82
Article 16(4), 63 dalits, 28, 36, 66, 73, 96, 115, 197
Article 25, 48 Bahujan samaj, 75
Article 26, 48–9 the oppressed, 217–18
Article 27, 49 rising atrocities against, 73, see also
Articles 29 and 30, 49 Prevention of Atrocities Act
Article 44, 51 1989
Article 46, 61 decennial all-India census of 1871,
Article 243-G, 83 58, see also Census
Article 325, 94, 219 Delimitation Commission, 94
Article 340, 63 democracy/democratization, 6, 8, 90
Article 341, 30 decentralization, 82–4
common civil code importance of, ethnic diversity in, 90
51 Indian, 111
Eighth Schedule of, 17, 19 legitimacy, 101
Eleventh Schedule, 83 majoritarian formula, 90
Index 231
objective of, 66 Dravidianist mobilization, against the

political programmes of different state and central governments,
parties, 8 45
politics, 66 DS-4 (the Dalit Shoshit Samaj
third wave of, 89 Sangharsh Samiti), 181
universal adult franchise, 6 Duverger, M. 100
Department of Social Welfare,
Government of India, 72 East Bengal (later East Pakistan and
Depressed Classes, 58–60, see also now Bangladesh), 46
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled economic deprivation, 9, 16–17, 23,
Tribes 41, 55
deprivation Eldersveld, S.J., 220
important forms of, 34 Election Commission of India, 12, 77,
material, 186 220–1
of rights, 76 elections, 57, 110, 129
social and economic, 9, 41 conduct of, 92
Desai, Morarji, see under Prime to the Eleventh Lok Sabha, 1996,
Ministers 98, 108
Deve Gowda, H.D., see under Prime fifth general election in 1971,
Ministers 178
Directive Principles of State Policy, 5, limited provisions relating to, 92
61, 92 mid-term election in 1998, 109
non-justiciable, Article 44, 49 Muslim-majority constituencies,
Directorate General of Backward 57
Classes Welfare (DGBCW), 72, 74 popular vote, 95, 105, 109
disadvantaged groups, 72, 102, 116 seeking votes on the basis of caste
Discovery of India, 3 and religious identity, 193
diversity, 25, 104 to the Tenth Lok Sabha, 1991,
associated with PR, 101 108
challenge to the idea of, 104 to the Twelfth Lok Sabha, 1998, 98,
gender disparities, 25, see also under 109
literacy electoral system, 10, 100, 89–113
of India, 3 first-past-the-post (FPTP), 10
linguistic, see linguistic diversity hung parliaments, 96, see also
managing, 42, 70 Parliament
mapping, 15, 41 majoritarian formula, 90, 96
negotiating, 89, 113 majority run-off system, 101
for non-governmental multi-member constituencies, 94
organizations, 184 multi-party polity, 99
outcomes, 101 proportional representation,
policies, 175, 184 see proportional representation
promoting, 71, 88 (PR)
representing, in institutions of reform, 101
governance, 114–87 reserved constituencies, 94, see also
various types of, 1 reservations
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), single-member constituencies, 94
xi, 96, 99, 218 Eleventh Schedule, see under
Dravidian parties of southern India, Constitution of India
218 Elwin, V., 67, 219
232 Index
English, 19, 42–3 gender and decentralization, 220

language of legislation, 19 gender justice, 5, 49
learning of, 37, 42 disparity in literacy, 41
official language, 43 principles of, 5
equal citizenship, 4, 48 prospects of, 49
equality Ghanghare, R.M., 129
background conditions of, 33 Ghurye, G.S., 67
democratic principle of, 5 Gopal Singh Committee Report, 168
ethnic Government of India (GOI), xi, 63,
cleansing, 218 74, 82
conflict, 54, 89 Act of 1909, 47
diversity, 1, 14, 16, 89; 100 Act of 1919, 48, 59
identity, 16 Acts 1935, 37, 48, 91
parties, 97 Secretaries to the, 163
representation, 194 separate electorates for communal
Ever Enrolment Rate (EER), xi, 25, representation, 48
see also literacy rate government(s), 95, 100, 162
of Assam, 19
federalism, xv, 91, 100 down-sizing, 162
fertility levels, 34 elected on a minority share, 100
Fifth Five Year Plan, 69 employees, 190
first-past-the-post, see FPTP of Fiji, 220
Forward single-party majority, 95
Bloc, 99 Green Revolution, 63, 106
Castes, 13, 223 Gujral, I.K., see under Prime Ministers
FPTP system, xi, 10, 91, 94–5, 100–1,
104, 115, see also under electoral Harijans, 58, 218
system Haryana Vikas Party, 99
disfavouring minorities, 115 Hasan, Mushirul, 47, 50–1, 53
distortions of, 104 Head Count Ratio (HCR), xi, 24, 35,
encouraging ethnic mobilization, 40, 218
100 health indicators, 25
majoritarian, 94 High Court
single-member territorial language, 19
constituencies, 101 of Madhya Pradesh, 51
Fundamental Rights in the Indian Hindi, 19, 43, 45, 53, 221
Constitution, 48, 92 agitation against, 45
Devanagari script, 53
Galanter, Marc, 4, 31, 38, 60, 73, 115, dialects of, 19
146 protests in Tamil Nadu, 45
Gandhi, Indira, see under Prime Sanskritized, 43, 53
Ministers and Urdu, 43
Gandhi, Mahatma (Mohandas Hindu(s), 15, 21
Karamchand Gandhi), 58, 178, and Muslims, 54–5
218n4 nationalism, 5
Gandhi, Rajiv, 46, 64, 104, 108, 151, principal minority, 22
164, 177, see also under Prime revivalist parties, 97
Ministers social order, 15, 26
Gandhi, Sonia, 177 Hindu Code Bill of 1950, 49
Index 233
Hinduism Indian Engineering Service, 167, 190

Brahmanical, 58 Indian Forest Service, 13, 161, 167,
a federation of faiths, 21 190
‘normative association’ of Hindi reserved vacancies, 167
with, 52 Indian National Congress, see
and Sikhs, 30 Congress Party
Hindustani, 43, 53 Indian National Lok Dal (Haryana),
‘lingua franca’ of India, 53 106
mix of Hindi and Urdu, 43 Indian Parliament, see Parliament
Hindutva, 15, 111 Indian Police Service (IPS), xi, 161,
Horowitz, D.L., 220 189
household income, 33 successor of the ICS, 160
human development indicators, 16, Indian Revenue Service, 162
34, 194 Indian society, 13, 16, 26, 71, 103,
Human Development Report for 105
India, 33, 40 cross-cutting cleavages, 103
hung parliament, see under electoral diversity of, 16
system marginalized groups in, 71, 105
Hussain, Zakir, 148 overlap between caste and material
disadvantage, 26
IAS, xi, 13, 160–1, 163, 189 Indian Union Muslim League (IUML),
identity, 11, 16 xi, 57
construction of, 14 inequalities, 10, 14, 41, 191–2, 197
political fragmentation of, 11 cultural, 10, 41
politics and, 219 intra-group, 10
primordial, 16 material, 197
income, agricultural, 33 social and economic, 10, 14
Income-Poverty Ratios, 35 symbolic, 197
India, 2, 149 infant mortality rates, 35
cultural diversity of, 149 institutional design, 10, 14
independence, 9, 26 flaws in, 14
India Human Development Report, Integrated Rural Development
24 Scheme, see Jawahar Rozgar
Indian Administrative Service, Yojana
see IAS Intermediate Castes, 37, 223
Indian Audit and Accounts Service, Islam, 21, 28, 31
13, 160–5, 168, 171, 189–91 and Christianity, 30
Indian bureaucracy, see bureaucracy low-caste converts to, 31
Indian Civil Service (ICS), xi, 13,
160–1, 199 Jaffrelot, Christophe, 135, 180, 223
and IAS, 161 Jagjivan Ram, 217
religious composition, 160 Jains, 20
Indian Constitution, 2, 4, 91, see also Jammu and Kashmir, 53, 187, 220
Constitution of India Jana Sangh, see Bharatiya Jana Sangh
of 1950, 38 Janata Dal, 99, 106, 180
secular, 4 association with Backward Castes,
preamble to the, 75 180
Indian Customs and Excise Service, ethnic profile of, 180
162 Janata Party, 97, 107, 178, 220
234 Index
Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, 85 linguistic diversity, 18–20, 42–3, 46,

Jayal, Niraja Gopal, xv–xviii, 111, 218
115, 217n4 additional ‘official’ languages, 20
Jenkins, Laura, 219 Bodo, 19
Jews in India, 20, 23 English, 18
Joint Parliamentary Committee on Maithili, 18, 218
the Welfare of Scheduled Castes management of, 47
and Scheduled Tribes, 73 mother-tongues, 20, 42, 218
Judaism, 21 politically contentious in, 43
judiciary, 175–84 single national/official language,
Justice Movement, 59 43
literacy, 34, 189
Kaka Kalelkar Report, 63 gender disparity, 34, 41, 185
Kanshi Ram, 128–9 rate, 24–5, 30, 34, 41, 185–6
Karnataka, 22, 29, 44, 60, 64, 66, 84, Lohia, Ram Manohar, 105
99, 106, 109, 112, 117, 121–2, Lok Dal, 67, 105, 107
124–5, 127, 137, 156, 207, 209, Lok Sabha(s), 10, 12, 74, 94, 101, 109,
211, 213, 218n8, 220n21 130, 136, 182, 187, 222
Kesari, Sitaram, 177 1st, 115
Khalistan, 23 9th to 14th, 108
KHAM alliance, 105 10th, 129, 136
Khan, Mohammed Ahmed, 51 10th to 14th, 128
Khan, Syed Ahmad Sir, 47 11th, 135
Kohli, Atul, 220 12th, 13th, 14th, 129
Kothari, Rajni, 67, 96, 102 comparisons across the five, 130
Krishnamurty, Jana, 110 current (14th), 109, 119, 219
Kukathas Chandran, 217 elections (1952–1971), 56
extent of representation of
Lakshadweep islands, 220 minorities, 182
language(s), 39, 43, 45–7, 96 first six, 128
basis of federation, 43 NDA call for the dissolution of, 109
basis of movements for statehood, 46 ‘northern’ dominance in, 222
controversies, 42–3 profiles, changes in, 187
dialects, 39 Lok Shakti (Karnataka), 106
in Eighth Schedule, 46
Maithili movement, 47 Madan, T.N., 21
national language, 43 Madras Presidency, 44, 59
official language , 43 Majlis-e-lttehadul Muslimeen (MIM),
policy on, 45 xi, 57
protection for linguistic minorities majoritarian formula, 90, 100, see also
within states, 45 under electoral system
riots, 44 Majumdar, Manabi, 35
Law Commission of India, 101 Mandal, B.P., 64
Laxman, Bangaru, 110 Mandal Commission on Backward
Legislative Assemblies, 32, 61 Classes, 28, 64–5, 106, 220
liberalization, 175 criteria for determining social and
Lieten, G.K., 85, 86 educational backwardness, 65
Lijphart, A., 115, 220–2 implementation of, 162, 180
theorist of consociationalism, 100, recommendations, 195
221 reserved quotas for OBCs, 64
Index 235
Manohar Joshi case, Supreme Court in the IAS, 171

judgement in, 111 in the judiciary, 171
Masani, Minoo, 3 not homogeneous, 22
Mayawati, 86 192 OBC organizations, 67, 117
Mehra, Ajay, 222, 227 political leadership, 56
Members of Parliament (MPs), 10, representation, 56, 115, 196, 219n6,
110, 115, 119, 129, 186 see also representation
Mendelsohn, Oliver, 28 second largest religious community,
Meshram, Waman, 223 22
Mill, J.S., 6, 89, 90 separate electorates for, 92
Ministries/Ministry, 163 Shah Bano judgement, see under
for disinvestment, 221 religious minorities
of Home Affairs, 73 social and economic deprivation,
of Information Technology, 221 55, see also deprivation
of Social Welfare, 74 voting patterns, 55
of the Union Government, 13 women, 52
minorities/minority, 55, 100, 134,
see also religious minorities Narmada Valley, 74
claims of, 3 National Commission
community, 51 on Backward Classes, 71, 219
identity, 55 for Minorities, 30, 49, 71
marginality, 55 to Review the Working of the
rights, 92 Constitution (NCRWC), xi,
veto, 100, 221 101
mirror representation, 151, 187 for Safai Karamcharis (cleaning
Mishra, Salil, 52 personnel), 79
Mitra, Subrata K., xiii, 99 for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Mohapatra, Bishnu, 219 Tribes, 71
Mookerjee, Shyama Prasad Dr, 178 National Commission for Minorities,
Morley-Minto Reforms, 59 10, 49–50
Most Backward Castes (MBCs), xi, National Commission for Scheduled
64 Castes and Scheduled Tribes,
Motilal Nehru, Report of 1928, 44, see NCSCST
48 National Conference, 109, see also
Mountbatten, Lord, 48 Jammu and Kashmir
multi-party system, 4, 90, 100–1, 112, National Council for Applied
113 Economic Research, 33
centripetal tendency, 101 National Democratic Alliance (NDA),
coalition governments, 90 xi, 109, 150, 156, 188–9, 203,
one-party dominated, 100 206
Muslim League, 48, 55 National Election Survey of CSDS,
post-Partition period, 55 98
Muslim Personal Law, 51 National Emergency (1975–77), 104,
Muslim Women’s (Protection of 106, 175, 222
Rights in Divorce), 51, 221 National Front, 108
Muslims national identity, 89
association with Urdu language, 52 defined, 2
backward class, 32, 57 movement for independence, 89
community, 56–7 National Sample Survey Organisation
dalits, 30 (1999–2000), 23, 34
236 Index
NCSCST, xi, 10, 35, 38, 70, 71–80 Parliamentary Committee on the
28th and 29th Reports of the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and
Commissioner, 74 Scheduled Tribes, 182
atrocities against Dalits, 79, see also Parsis, 93
Prevention of Atrocities Act Partition, 2, 23, 32, 43, 217
1989 party system, 95, 101–13
constitutional obligation of, 80 Passi, Balraj, 128
core areas of functioning, 78 Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai, 93
powers of a civil court, 76 per capita income, 23–4, 33, 40, 185
protective institution, 10, 72 personal laws, 49
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 32–3, 44, see also Phillips, A., 8, 114, 221
under Prime Ministers Planning Commission, 76, 220, 223
five cabinets, 188 Ninth Five Year Plan of, 223
Nepal, 23 political
North-East, 158 accommodation, 64
articulation, 195
Official Languages Act, 45 assertion, 182
Other Backward Classes (OBCs), xi, citizenship, 6
13, 26, 28, 31, 36, 63–4, 72, 83, community, 6
88, 105, 223 decentralization, 88
mobilization, 36, 41, 44, 66, 105, 192
Pai, Panandiker, V.A., 222 political parties, 11, 50, 101–13,
Pai, Sudha, 86 175–84, 193, 220–1
Pakistan, 2, 7, 23, 48 politicization
creation of, 7 of caste, 67
pan-Indian parties, 97 congruence between party and
pancha shila (five principles), caste, 105
enunciation of, 7, see also Nehru, politics, 46, 59, 66, 180, 192–3
Jawaharlal administration and , 192
panchayats, 62, 85–7 competitive populism, 66
control over the, 87 lower caste assertions in, 180
district-level Zilla Parishad, 62 of numbers, 59
intermediate block or mandal of patronage, 68
panchayat, 62 of presence, 8, 114, 221
nyaya, 84 Poona Pact, 60
pradhan, pradhanis in, 86 population
representation of women in, 85, 87 of Hindus, 27, 59
tiers of, 62, 82 main characteristics of, 6
Parekh, Bhikhu, 2 of Muslims, 24, 52, 55–6, 59, 115
Parliament, 3, 5, 7, 18, 73, 81 118, Potter, D., 160–1
120, 184 poverty, 33
changing social composition of, 183 incidence of, 33
committees of, 187 intensity of, 33, 218
Muslims in, 116 line, 218
proportion of Scheduled Castes and parameters of, 33
Scheduled Tribes, 120 PR-type, 100
proposal for 33% reservation for proportional representation (PR)
women, 184 system, 11, 93, 116–17, 195,
reserved seats in, 118 see also representation
Index 237
President of India, 15, 59, 77 Rao, Narasimha, P.V., see under Prime
elected by an electoral college, 149 Ministers
power to alter/de-schedule, 38 Rashtriya Janata Dal, 65, 96, 106, 150,
Presidential Order of 1950, 30 195
Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989, 77 Rashtriya Lok Dal, 106
Prime Minister, 13, 15, 222 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),
Charan Singh, Choudhury, 105, xii, 113, 178
147 assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
Desai, Morarji, 147 and, 178
Deve Gowda, H.D., 106, 109, 158 religion
Gandhi, Indira, 104, 109, 148, 156, conversion, 30
164, 175, 177, 188, 217, 222 politicization of, 23
Gandhi, Rajiv, 46, 51, 64, 105, 108, politics of, 47–58
151, 164, 177, 188 represented in the Union Cabinet,
Gujral, I.K., 106, 109, 158 149
Nehru, Jawharlal, 147, 150, 188 religious minorities, 4, 7, 35, 217,
Rao, Narasimha, P.V., 108, 150–1, 223, see also under representation
164, 177, 188, 222n19 absence of quotas for, 7
Secretariat (later Office), 13, 163 freedom of religion, 4
Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 147 guarantees of rights for, 4
Shekhar, Chandra, 157 Shah Bano judgment, 50
Singh, Manmohan Dr, 110, 150, tokenism, 151
156–7, 188–9 Report of the High Power Panel on
Singh, V.P., 64, 106, 108, 148, Minorities, 168
150–1 representation, 4, 6–7, 9, 12, 18
Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 109, 157 assertion of lower castes for, 192
private sector, 184 and democratic ideal, 7
proportional representation (PR) and electoral dynamic, 154
systems, xi, 11, 116 federal structure based on linguistic
Protection of Civil Rights Act, 63 boundaries, 4
Provincial Congress Committees, implications for Indian society and
217 politics, 184
Provincial Legislatures, 38 in the legislatures, 38
public sector, 1, 185 Levellers’ conception of, 7
Punjab, 38, 44 microcosmic representation, 6
Punjabi Suba, 45 of minorities, 136
normative and empirical, 7
Quotas, 6–8, 62, 190 outcomes of, 9,10, 17, 195
for disadvantaged groups, 6 over-represented states, 156
failure to substantively address in Parliament, 186,187
disadvantage, 194 patterns of, 12, 186, 189
in housing, allotment of land, 62 in the political sphere, 192
not resulting in effective theories of, 6
representation, 194 Whig theory of, 6
Representation of the People Act
Rai, Alok, 43 1951, 92, 93
Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinets, 188 Republic of Ireland, 92
Rajya Sabha, 61, 73 Republican Party of India (RPI), xi,
Ram Temple in Ayodhya, 108 129, 186
238 Index
Republican Socialist Party, 99 secularism

reservations, 30, 33, 59, 62, 66, 84, concept of, 48
129, 185, 191, see also affirmative Gandhian concept of sarva dharma
action; compensatory sambhava, 50
discrimination; quotas Nehruvian idea of dharma
for backward classes, 84 nirpekshata, 50
constitutionally mandated, 185 Sen, Amartya, 34
in education and public Sen Index, 33, 40, 218
employment, 59 Shah Bano v. Mohammed Ahmed Khan,
for a limited period of time, 33 51
in panchayats, 72 Shah, Ghanshyam, 64, 67
policies, 28, 117, 219 Shahabuddin, Syed, 57
in the private sector, 66 Sharma, B.D., 74
Rudolph, Lloyd and Rudolph, Shastri, Lal Bahadur, see under Prime
Susanne, 3, 55, 67 Ministers
Shekhar, Chandra, see under Prime
Sainath, P., 87 Ministers
Samajwadi Janata Party, 66, 96, 99, Sheth, D.L., 36–7
105–6, 150, 180–2, 195 Shinde, Sushil Kumar, 129
Samata Party, 32, 99, 106 Shiv Sena, 99, 129, 186
Sangh Parivar, see under Bharatiya Sikhs, 22, 31, 186, 217
Janata Party (BJP) Sindhi language, 46
Sangma, P.A., 151, 188 Singh, Manmohan Dr, see under Prime
Sanskrit, 46 Ministers
Sayeed, P.M., 120 Singh, V.B., xiii, 99
Scheduled Castes (SCs), xii, 9, 26, Singh, V.P., see under Prime Ministers
30, 33–6, 38, 58, 70, 96, 185, single-state parties, 107
217–19 Socialist Party, 105
definitional criteria, 38 Sri Lanka, 23
distribution of population, 29, 128 Sridharan, E., 93, 95, 101, 218n5
formerly untouchable castes, 217 Sriramulu, Sri Potti, fast unto death,
grievance-redressal mechanism for, 44
70 state(s), 4, 219
human development indicators of, creation of states, 45
33 linguistic states, reorganization of,
as official category, 217 43
status for Muslim Dalits, 58 State Assembly (Vidhan Sabha)
victims of exploitation and elections, 32, 98
oppression, 185 States Reorganisation Commission in
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled 1953, 44–5
Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) structures of governance, 16, 47, 114,
Act, 63 197
Scheduled Tribes (STs), xii, 9, 34–6, Subramanian, Narenda, xiii, 45, 97
40, 60, 114, 184, 219 Subramaniam, S., 35
Cabinet positions, 222 Supreme Court, 19, 51, 111
distribution of population, 39, 118 Indra Sawhney judgement, 65,
elected in excess of the reserved 190
quota, 129 language of, 19
official definition, 120 Muslim judges, 171
Index 239
talaq (divorce), 219, see also Muslims Union Government, 13, 36, 45, 73,
Tamil nationalism, 45 165
Telugu Desam Party, 99 Union Public Service Commission
Thakur, Karpoori, 105 (UPSC), 162, 165, 167
The People of India project, 38 United Democratic Front (Kerala), 57
tribes, 36–8, 68, 217, 220 United Front (UF)
adivasis, 217 Cabinets, 108, 156
animism, 21, 37 coalition of the old National Front
displacement, 68 and the Left Parties, 108
folk Hinduism or Christianity, 21 governments, 31, 156, 158
impoverishment, 68 United Provinces (now Uttar
protective measures for, 68 Pradesh), 53, 59
under-represented in white-collar United States of America, 92
employment, 36 untouchability, 27, 59, 61, 63, 115
Trinamool Congress, 109 Article 17, 61
indignity of, 63
Uniform Civil Code, 49 law against, 115
Union Cabinets, 13, 66, 146, 150–1, persistence of, 187
155–6, 182, 188–9, 222 Upper Castes, 36, 135, 194, 223
caste composition, 151 urbanization, 41
extent of representation of Urdu language, 52, 53
minorities, 182 mother tongue , 52
formation of, 150 official language in Pakistan, 52
linguistic representation in, 189 policy neglect of, 53
mirror representation in 151,
see also mirror representation Vajpayee, Atal Behari, see under Prime
patterns of representation in, Ministers
147–50, 222 Varshney, Ashutosh, 53–4
representation of diversity in, 188 Vicziany, M., 28
representation of Muslims in, 156.
188 Weiner, Myron, 220
representation of the North-East in, West Bengal, 220
158, 189 Work Participation Rate (WPR), xi,
representation of regions in, 155, 25, 34
158, 222
reshuffles, 222 Yadav, Yogendra, 56, 99, 192
size of, 146
smaller body than Council of Zakaria, Rafiq, 148
Ministers, 146 Zoroastrians, 20–1, 23, 217

Representing India: Niraja Gopal Jayal

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Representing India

Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of

Niraja Gopal Jayal

Series Editor: Yusuf Bangura

Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance Series

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,

Niraja Gopal Jayal

List of Tables viii

Foreword by Thandika Mkandawire xv

Preface by Niraja Gopal Jayal xvii

Chapter 1 Representing India: Democracy and Diversity 1

6.8 10th–14th Lok Sabhas: regional conﬁgurations of

6.28 Representation of SCs and STs in IAS and IPS

AGP Asom Gana Parishad

RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

The author, series editor and publisher of this volume gratefully

• Table 2.3, p. 24: The National Council of Applied Economic

India’s complex ethnic cleavages seem to defy classiﬁcation as a single

cleavage. Jayal’s study suggests that the politics of Hindu revivalist

Niraja Gopal Jayal

Map not to Scale

This volume is part of a multi-country study exploring issues of inclusion,

Cultural pluralism, social inequality and the founding

Modern Indian nationhood was arguably a creation of the movement

project of ‘nation-building’. At the same time, it consciously sought to

mative argument that underpinned the departure from the principle

Democracy, representation and quotas

As we have noted, guaranteed representation, in the form of quotas, is

….Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors, from different and

Diametrically opposed to this is the Levellers’ conception of representa-

The imperfections of representation: normative and empirical

Despite guarantees and safeguards in the form of quotas, representa-

we consider the problem of internal minorities such as women belong-

policy outcomes. How can we assess the outcomes of representation?

Structure of the book

Seeking an explanation for the representational outcomes in three

provisions were supplemented with additional institutions, laws and

attributable to the emergence, in the 1990s, of smaller parties whose

many of whom claim to represent particular sections of society, such as

about their ethnic backgrounds is not ofﬁcially documented, this exer-

The President of the Indian republic today is a Tamil-speaking Muslim

The interaction between shifting and ﬂuid identities, processes of

Unsurprisingly, given the size of the country, India manifests immense

number of Nepalese people in India. However, there remain many lan-

Table 2.1 Ofﬁcial languages in India

Hindi 337,272,114 40.22%

Source: Census of India, 1991.

Out of the 1650 languages spoken in India, only a handful dominate

Four articles of the Constitution protect the rights of minorities to pre-

Religion Population Proportion Sex Sex Literacy Female Work

1. Hindus 827,578,868 80.5 931 925 65.1 53.2 40.4

Source: Abstracted from the Census of India, 2001.

world’s major religions have a presence and following in India. Of

(where they represent 37% of the population), Punjab (34%), Meghalaya

Buddhists predominate only in the district of Ladakh – in the state of

percentage difference of 18.52%: while the per capita income of

Table 2.3 Percentage distribution of household income by source across

Agr/ Artisan/ Petty Org Salaried Qualiﬁed Agr Non-

Hindus 56.1 4.3 4.6 1.8 16.4 0.5 8.0 6.2

Source: Shariff (1999:35).

Caste is frequently taken to be the deﬁning characteristic of Indian

caste has, historically and socially, been experienced. This explains

Brahmans at the top and the Dalits/Harijans/Scheduled Castes5 at the