The Persistence of Caste in Indian Politics

Author(s): Ronojoy Sen

Source: Pacific Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2 (JUNE 2012), pp. 363-369
Published by: Pacific Affairs, University of British Columbia
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23266849
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 The Persistence of
Caste in Indian Politics

Ronojoy Sen

KEWORDS: Caste, political parties, voting, Indian state, reservations

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5509/2012852363

Samaj Party (BSP), Mayawati, announced her party's list of

When incumbent chief
candidates before the minister
2012 Assembly electionsand leader
in India's most of the Bahujan
populous state, Uttar Pradesh, she did not bother to name the individual
contestants but instead chose to break up the party slate in terms of
its caste (and religious) composition: 85 Scheduled Castes, 113 Other
Backward Classes, 85 religious minorities (primarily Muslims) ,117 upper
castes of which 74 were Brahmins and 33 Thakurs.1 The BSP is a party
that is identified with the Dalits (former untouchables) and lower castes
and has its origins in the 1970s under Mayawati's mentor Kanshi Ram as
first the Backward and Minority Classes Federation (BAMCEF) and later
the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti. The party slate, which now
had more upper castes in the hope of replicating a successful experiment
of a "rainbow" coalition tried out in the 2007 elections,2 was an example
of how caste, as a political construct,3 has evolved in modern India.
This was also a validation of what Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph had
so presciently written about caste in this journal over five decades ago:
"Within the new context of political democracy, caste remains a central
event of Indian society even while adapting itself to the values and
methods of democratic politics." They added that it was the "chief means

1 The Indian Express, 16 January 2012.

2 In 2007, the BSP surprised most analysts, winning 206 out of 403 seats in the Uttar
Pradesh State Assembly by distributing several tickets to upper castes (86 Brahmins, 36
Vaishyas and 36 Rajputs) in what was described as a "sarvajan" strategy. However Christophe
Jaffrelot points out that this was a strategy begun by Kanshi Ram in the late 1990s and
expanded by Mayawati. See Jaffrelot, "Her Sarvajan Test," Indian Express, 26 January 2012.
By caste I mean here the endogamous group (jati) and not the four-fold division of
varna. It is commonly accepted that in "actual operation caste affiliations take not the vertical
homogenous class and status form of varna but the horizontal and segmental form of jati."
Rajni Kothari, "Introduction," in Caste in Indian Politics (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1970),
10. Again Andre Beteille points out, "Castes in the operative sense are not four, but many."
Beteille, Castes: Old and New (London: Asia Publishing House, 1969), 230.

© Pacific Affairs: Volume 85, No. 2 June 2012

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 Pacific Affairs: Volume 85, No. 2 — June 2012

by which the Indian mass electorate had been attached to the processes
of democratic politics."4 This formed part of a larger thesis in their book,
The Modernity of Tradition, where the Rudolphs argued, against prevailing
academic wisdom, that tradition, as represented by structures like caste,
and modernity were not "radically contradictory" and that they could
"infiltrate and transform" each other.5 What I'll do in this short essay
is show why caste—and not caste associations, which was the subject of
the Rudolphs' article—very much remains a relevant category to analyze
Indian democracy by looking at two things: the trajectory of caste in
Indian politics since the 1950s and the policy of the Indian state on caste
based affirmative action or reservation.

It must be remembered that at the time the Rudolphs wrote their

article in Pacific Affairs, the consensus among Indian elites of the
Nehruvian bent of mind was that caste was a retrograde institution that
needed to be consigned to the dustbin of history as quickly as possible.6
The claim by the Rudolphs that caste would be a central feature of
Indian politics in the foreseeable future was not entirely new. The
sociologist, M.N. Srinivas, had a few years earlier pointed out, "Caste is so
tacitly and so completely accepted by all, including those who are most
vocal in condemning it, that it is everywhere the unit of social action."7
Newspapers of the time too recognized this reality.8 But what was new
and controversial was the Rudolphs' claim that caste in the guise of
caste associations took on the form of voluntary associations, which were
perhaps more "truly indigenous assertions of liberties than the liberalism
of the modern Indian middle classes."9
However, it wasn't long before others developed the Rudolphs'
formulation. Though Rajni Kothari in his introduction to an edited
volume titled Caste in Indian Politics disagreed with the Rudolphs that caste
was "Apolitical force in contemporary India" (in fact the Rudolphs did

4 Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, "The Political Role of India's Caste
Associations," Pacific Affairs 33, no. 1 (1960): 5.
5 L.I. Rudolph and S.H. Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1967), 3.
6 Jawaharlal Nehru himself had written in 1946, "In the context of society today, the
caste system and much that goes with it are wholly incompatible, reactionary, restrictive,
and barriers to progress." Nehru, The Discovery of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1992), 257.
M.N. Srinivas, "Caste in Modern India," in Caste in Modern Indian and Other Essays
(Bombay: Media Promoters and Publishers, 1978), 41. The article first appeared in The
Journal of Asian Studies, (XVI), August 1957.
8 The Times of India of 23 October 1955 noted: "The politician who wants that caste and
communal distinctions should disappear is at the same time aware of its vote-catching power,
and is thus faced with a real dilemma ... The first step towards solving the dilemma facing
the politician is to recognize its [caste's] widespread incidence and implications." Cited in
Srinivas, "Caste in Modern India," 41.
9 Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, "The Political Role of India's Caste
Associations," 9.

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 Persistance of Caste in India

not say that it was the primary force in politics, but that it had "absorbed
and synthesized some of the new democratic values"10) he drew on their
argument to conclude, "It is not politics that gets caste-ridden; it is caste
that gets politicised."11 The essays in the volume, which analyzed the
connections between caste and politics in different parts of India, were
an attempt to illustrate that the "segmental and factional manifestations
of the caste system and the consciousness and identifications to which it
gave rise allowed scope for secular organization and struggle."12
What was evident even then was that though caste associations were
widespread in India, particularly in the south which had a long history
of non-Brahmin movements,13 they were already getting co-opted by
political parties as well as larger regional organizations representing
a cluster of similarly positioned jatis. This was foreshadowed by the
Rudolphs with regard to the Vanniyars in Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras)
and the Rajputs and Jats in Rajasthan. This consolidation of jatis for
political purposes was explained by Kothari through the concept of a
"caste federation" which referred to a "grouping together of a number
of distinct endogamous groups into a single organisation for common
objectives."14 Later, in the 1970s this process came to fruition and caste
associations became increasingly obsolete due to "cross-caste alliances
and state-wide political machines" as well as the tendency of caste
associations to "evolve into a caste party."15
This process was precipitated by the inability of the Indian National
Congress to function any longer as a catch-all party where it could bank
on votes from across the caste spectrum. This was most notably shown
in 196716 when the anti-Brahmin and anti-Hindi Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagham (an offshoot of the Justice Party) won state elections in Tamil
Nadu. The same year in Uttar Pradesh the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (which
had evolved from All-India Jat Mahasabha formed by the Jat leader
Charan Singh) edged out the Congress for the first time in the state
by cobbling together a coalition of cultivating castes which was dubbed
as AJGAR, an acronym standing for Ahirs (or Yadavs), Jats, Gujjars and
Rajputs.17 Subsequently the Dalits too gravitated away from the Congress

10 Rudolph and Rudolph, "The Political Role of India's Caste Associations," 22.
11 Kothari, "Introduction," 20.
12 Kothari, "Introduction," 20.
13 See Andre Beteille, "Caste and Political Group Formation in Tamilnad," in Caste in
Indian Politics, ed. Rajni Kothari, 259-94.
14 Rajni Kothari, "Federating for Political Interests: The Kshatriyas of Gujarat," in Caste
in Indian Politics, 72.
15 David Arnold, Robin Jeffrey and James Manor, "Caste Associations in South India: A
Comparative Analysis," The Indian Economic and Social History Review XIII, no. 3 (1976): 373.
16 It was a watershed year when the dominant Congress Party lost in eight State elections.
17 See Christophe Jaffrelot, "The Rise of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt,"
The Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 1 (2000): 90-93.

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 Pacific Affairs: Volume 85, No. 2 —June 2012

in the Hindi heartland with the formation of parties like the BSP which
successfully captured the Dalit vote unlike its predecessors like the
Scheduled Castes Federation and later the Republican Party of India,
both founded by the Dalit icon and former Indian law minister, B.R.
Ambedkar.
ooooooo

In addition to the strategies of political parties, the In

on caste was also absolutely critical in contributing t
and consolidation of caste identities in post-indep
The implementation of the Mandal Commission r
recommending reservations for 400 castes that were
Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—triggered a cataclysm
caste equation in Indian politics, especially in the Hin
north India. The impact of the Mandal report can, ho
back to the Indian government's affirmative actio
policies ever since 1950, something that the Rudolphs d
examine in their essay in Pacific Affairs.
The Indian Constitution not only abolished the practice of
untouchability18 but put in place several measures, including provisions
for reservations, for the advancement of the Dalits,19 who in administrative
language were now known as the Scheduled Castes (SCs), as well as for
the tribals or Scheduled Tribes (STs). While these were seen as necessary
to redress centuries of discrimination against Dalits, the constitutional
safeguards gave a "new lease of life to caste."20 The Scheduled Castes
and Tribes were identified by two separate presidential orders in
1950, but the category of "depressed" and "socially backward classes
of citizens" mentioned in the Constitution was kept undefined. It was
to identify these so-called "other backward classes" that an 11-member
commission was appointed under Kaka Kalelkar in 1953. For three
years the commission struggled to come up with a list of non-Dalit and
non-tribal "backwards" which eventually numbered 2,399 communities,
constituting at the time 32 percent of the population.21 The Congress
government and Nehru rejected the recommendations,22 but the OBC
issue resurfaced again in 1979 when the Janata government appointed
yet another commission headed by Bihar politician B.P. Mandal (who

18 Article 17 of the Indian Constitution.

19 See for example Articles 15, 16, 29, 35, 46, 244, 320, 332, 333, 335 of the Indian
Constitution.
20 Srinivas, "Caste in Modern India," 15.
21 Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern
Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 288-89.
22 Surprisingly, the commission's chairman as well as four other members disagreed with
the findings.

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 Persistance of Caste in India

was himself an Yadav) to look at reservations for OBCs. The report,

which identified 400 castes as "backward," was kept in cold storage until
Prime Minister V.P. Singh, a former Congressman who was heading a
shaky coalition government led by the Janata Dal, resurrected it in 1989
1990. An additional reservation in government jobs and educational
institutions of 27 percent for the OBCs besides the 22.5 percent already
in place for SCs and STs was a decision that changed the face of Indian
caste politics for good. The implementation of the report was followed
in 1992 by a Supreme Court ruling23 — known as the Mandal judgment
— which allowed a maximum of 50 percent reservations, thus giving a
legal stamp to 27 percent reservation for OBCs but not the higher levels
put in place by states such as Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The latest such
instance of state intervention in perpetuating caste categories in policy
was the decision to enumerate caste in the decennial census of 2011 for
the first time since 1931.24
The implementation of the Mandal report provided a further impetus
to caste and vote-bank politics. The OBCs, who constituted 52 percent of
India's population in the 1990s, became a force to reckon with, especially
in the Hindi belt, and no major party could afford to publicly disagree
with the Mandal recommendations. Indeed political scientist Yogendra
Yadav pointed out that the expression "OBC" had "travelled a long way
from a rather careless bureaucratic nomenclature in the document

of the Constitution to a vibrant and subjectively experienced politic

community."25 In the wake of Mandal, several parties were formed from
the debris of the Janata Party, which had come to power for three years
following the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, and its successor
the Janata Dal, headed by V.P. Singh. The two most important leade
to emerge out of the Mandal-inspired caste churn were Mulayam Sing
(originally a comrade of Charan Singh and later part of the Janata Dal
who founded the Samajwadi Party in 1992 and became chief minister
Uttar Pradesh in 1994; and Laloo Prasad Yadav, also of Janata and Jana
Dal vintage, who formed his own party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RLD
in 1997 and was chief minister of Bihar.
Both these leaders used the post-Mandal phase to further the fortunes
of their parties as well as their caste brethren, the Yadavs. In fact, the
politics of Mulayam and Laloo were good examples of how "dominant
castes"26—a phrase coined by Srinivas—were able to milk the benefits

23 Indra Sawhney and Others vs Union Of India (AIR 1993 SC 477).

24 For an argument in favour of counting caste, see Yogendra Yadav, "Why caste should
be counted in," The Hindu, 14 May 2010.
25 Yogendra Yadav, "Reconfiguration in Indian Politics: State Assembly Elections 1993
95," Economic and Political Weekly, 13 January 1996.
26 Srinivas, "The Dominant caste in Rampura," in The Dominant Caste and Other Essays
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 96-115.

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 Pacific Affairs: Volume 85, No. 2 — June 2012

of reservation policies and state patronage. This alienated the other

OBCs such as the Kurmis, Koeris, Lodhis and Gujjars, which went to
show that the OBCs were not a united caste bloc, as some analysts would
have liked to believe. Indeed, Nitish Kumar, the current chief minister
of Bihar who is a Kurmi, abandoned the Janata Dal in 1994 and along
with the socialist leader, George Fernandes, formed the Samata Party.
This points to an important aspect of the nature of caste politics: it is
very difficult to sustain a caste bloc because of the intense competition
between jatisP This is partially true of Dalits as well, with the BSP in
Uttar Pradesh getting strong support from the Jatav (also referred to as
Chamars)—the caste to which Mayawati belongs—but not being able
to attract to the same extent the voters from other Dalit communities
such as the Pasis, Balmikis or Khatiks.28 The complex nature of the OBC
category is also borne out by the inability of parties like the Samajwadi or
RJD to attract the most marginalized among the OBCS who are known as
the Most Backward Castes (MBCs). In fact, it is the BSP which has since
the late 1990s aggressively wooed the MBCs, who have more in common
with Dalits than the better-off Yadavs and Kurmis.

Caste-based reservations have increasingly resulted in an inversion

of the concept of Sanskritization29—efforts by a low caste to move up
the hierarchy by adopting the rituals and customs of a higher caste—
with castes now fiercely competing to claim the label of a "backward"
or a SC/ST, which comes with the benefits of government quotas. The
most recent such instance was the widespread and violent agitation by
the Gujjars, who are classified as OBCs in Rajasthan, demanding ST
status. The Jats of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh too have begun their
own agitation demanding OBC status, which has already been granted
to their caste brethren in Rajasthan, going to show how the different
caste categories put in place by the government have become arenas for
intense contestation.
ooooooo

Though caste consciousness, seen in terms of the ritu

purity and pollution,30 has gradually eroded, especial
(though that wouldn't be readily apparent when we s
ads for marriages in newspapers which spell out caste

There is also the phenomenon of the elites among the OBCs — th

"creamy layer" by the Supreme Court — cornering most of the benefits
See Jaffrelot, "The Bahujan Samaj Party in North India - No longer
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 18, no. 1 (199
Srinivas, "A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization," in Cast
and Other Essays (Bombay: Media Promoters and Publishers, 1978), 42.
The classic statement on this is Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus: T
Its Implications (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press

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 Persistance of Caste in India

or family] requirements in great detail), caste seems to be very much

alive in Indian politics. The question needs to be asked whether the
persistence of caste in politics, or vote-bank politics, is overstated. It is
certainly true that caste isn't the only factor when Indians vote. This is
especially so when you have more than one candidate of the same caste
contesting in the same constituency, which is quite often the case. Then
again surveys have shown that basic issues like food prices, drinking
water and unemployment increasingly animate a majority of voters.31
There are some scholars of caste who blame the media for relentlessly
propagating the centrality of the "caste factor" in elections.32 While we
cannot be certain of what goes through the mind of a voter in making
electoral choices, the fact remains that political parties and the state
treat caste as a crucial mobilization and policy category. This, along with
the centuries-old ties that bind a jati and animosities that polarize jatis,
has helped keep caste in business, as the Rudolphs predicted, in Indian
politics.

National University of Singapore, Singapore, March 2012

"How India Voted: Verdict 2009," The Hindu, 26 May 2009.

Andre Beteille, "India's destiny not caste in stone," The Hindu, 21 February 2012.

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