democracy and the recasting of caste in india
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Democracy and the Recastingof Caste in IndiaJuned Shaikh aa Department of History , University of Washington ,SeattlePublished online: 09 Nov 2010.
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India Review, vol. 9, no. 4, October–December, 2010, pp. 450–461Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN 1473-6489 print; 1557-3036 onlineDOI:10.1080/14736489.2010.523634
FIND1473-64891557-3036India Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, Oct 2010: pp. 0–0India ReviewREVIEW ESSAY
Democracy and the Recasting of Caste in IndiaDemocracy and Caste in IndiaIndia ReviewJUNED SHAIKH
Politics of Inclusion: Caste, Minorities and Affirmative Action. ByZoya Hassan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. 316 Pages.Hardcover, $40.00.
The Vernacularisation of Democracy: Politics, Caste, and Religion inIndia. By Lucia Michelutti. New Delhi: Routledge, 2008. 256 Pages.Hardcover, $100.00.
The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. ByAnupama Rao. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009.416 Pages. Paperback, $24.95.
On May 7, 2010, the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh,declared in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, that thegovernment would decide shortly if caste would be one of the socio-economic parameters used to classify India’s population in the Censusof 2011.1 Caste is a historically important feature of social stratifica-tion in India, and it was deemed to be the foundational unit of societyby the Census Commissioner for the 1901 census, H. H. Risley. In hisinfluential work, The People of India, Risley argued that caste formedthe “cement that holds together the myriad units of Indian society”and that if this cohesive force was removed, “order would vanish andchaos would supervene.”2 Risley’s notion of caste reflects the influ-ence of India’s high-caste literati on the formation of colonial knowl-edge.3 Moreover, his view of caste also illustrates the influence of
Juned Shaikh is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at the University ofWashington, Seattle.
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theories of anthropometry and race; thus, for instance Risley held thatthe distinction between high caste and low caste could be establishedby the measurement of heads and noses, skin color, and the shape ofthe jaw.4 The intellectual labor expended by Risley and his interlocu-tors—other colonial administrators and their high caste informants—contributed to the making of caste as an important feature of Indiansociety and a vital unit of colonial governance.5
The political implications of the project of colonial knowledge andgovernance resonate in India today, even though caste was abandonedas a unit of classification after the 1931 census.6 The demand to includecaste in the 2011 census is seen as a sign of the continued politicalassertion of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), a group of castesthat comprised 32 per cent of India’s population according to the 1931census7 and by various estimates could form 50–55 percent of the pop-ulation or, if the claims of some OBC activists are to be believed, thenumber could be as high as 70 percent. 8 The possibilities offered bythe socio-political mobilization of these castes and their influence ingovernment formation at the Center and in various states in NorthIndia since the 1980s have been described by Christophe Jaffrelot asthe “silent revolution” and by Yogendra Yadav as the “second demo-cratic upsurge.”9 The demand to include caste in the 2011 census, then,is a condition of this upsurge.
One of the reasons caste has retained its status as an importantfeature of Indian society, since H.H. Risley’s intervention in thelate-nineteenth century, is because it has been a crucial barometer fordesignating the socio-economic backwardness of individuals andgroups. Moreover, since the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth cen-turies, various caste groups have used the census reports to constructsolidarities at a regional level and demand caste mobility and remediesfor their backwardness. The books under review study the politicalimplications, the processes, and the limits of state policies of classifica-tion and governance. Zoya Hasan, in Politics of Inclusion, examineshow the postcolonial Indian state has embraced the logic of back-wardness of castes and lauds its commitment to redress the historicaldisadvantages experienced by lower castes through affirmative actionpolicies. She would, however, want the Indian state to deepen itsobligation for social justice and include non-Hindu minorities, espe-cially lower class Muslims, within the purview of its affirmative actionpolicies (p. 238). Lucia Michelutti’s Vernacularisation of Democracy
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studies how the ideologies of equality and social justice are trans-formed and internalized through the modality of democracy andhighlights how these notions of social justice and equality enter thepopular consciousness of a particular group, namely the Yadavs ofMathura, through the idioms of religion and masculinity, and ideas ofpersonhood (p. 10). Michelutti emphasizes that notions of democracywere reworked (or vernacularized) and highlights how caste was alsomodified in the process. She demonstrates this by showing the trans-formation of the Yadav caste into a quasi-ethnic community (p. 7).Anupama Rao, in The Caste Question, poses the logic of redressingsocio-economic inequalities through the recognition of caste dispari-ties as the paradox of Indian modernity. This paradox, she says, entailsthe desire to annihilate caste and the disparities associated with it inthe process of becoming modern while simultaneously strengtheningit in practice because caste in general, and the dalits in particular, arecentral to the operation of Indian democracy. All three books reflecton the mutual constitution of the practices of Indian democracy andthe phenomenon of caste as important features of life in India.
In Zoya Hasan’s study of state policies, constitutional frameworks,and political processes that engage the question of social backward-ness in postcolonial India, she highlights the assumptions undergird-ing the varying strategies of the state to deal with different socialgroups: the lower castes and minorities. She argues that the Indianstate addresses the question of social justice for the lower castes withinthe “context of justice, equality and democracy” (p. 9) but does notadopt a similar approach to deal with its religious minorities. Accord-ing to Hasan, minorities are imagined as subjects of religious differ-ence with cultural rights but not of socio-economic deprivation(p. 233). This approach, she points out, has not addressed the questionof under-representation of Muslims in government, parliament, andpolicy-making bodies (p. 14). Thus, she notes that even though theIndian constitution safeguards rights of religious minorities, “largesections of them have been feeling a sense of marginalization andalienation from the nation-state” (p. 8). Hasan locates the variations inthe state’s approach toward marginalized caste and religious groups inthe institutional frameworks that were erected at the time of India’sindependence and against the backdrop of India’s partition (p 15). Sheargues that the approach is in need of revision and that religious minor-ities should also be made the subject of affirmative action (p. 15).
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In making her case for extending the wages of backwardness toIndia’s minorities, Hasan teases out the religious assumptions under-girding the notion of social backwardness. In chapter 2, she points outthat social backwardness assumed a Hindu society (p. 32) and there-fore ritual status in the caste system became the basis for solutions tosocial deprivation. Caste “came to dominate the project of nationalism,democracy, and citizenship, and much of public policy in modernIndia” and this, in turn, strengthened the institution of caste (p. 38).According to her, right-wing Hindus welcomed the exclusion of non-Hindus from the institutional structures created to alleviate backward-ness (p. 32). In chapter 3, she outlines how the ideology of Hindutva andthe international and national conjuncture shaped by an anti-Muslimrhetoric inhibited the government from providing substantive benefitsto Muslims. Thus, even institutions like the National Commission forMinorities or the National Human Rights Commissions remainedineffective (p. 73) and the recommendations of the Gopal Singh Com-mittee Report (tabled in 1983) and the Sachar Committee Report(tabled in 2006) were unheeded.
In chapter 4, Hasan further explores the assumptions undergirdingsocial backwardness by evaluating the politics of affirmative action forcastes that have been grouped under the umbrella category of OtherBackward Classes (OBCs) and by paying particular attention todebates around the implementation of the Mandal CommissionReport in 1990 (she calls it “Mandal I”) and in 2006 (“Mandal II”).According to Hasan the key question of the Mandal Reports waswhether “OBCs should be identified on the basis of caste or on thebasis of economic and occupational criteria” (p. 79). She acknowl-edges that the politics of affirmative action for the OBCs has“changed the polity” (p. 117) but notes with dismay that caste hasremained the exclusive criteria for reservations in jobs and higher edu-cation (p 118). In chapter 5, Hasan highlights the under-representa-tion of Muslims in legislatures and decision making bodies bycontrasting it with the “political fortunes of the OBCs” (p. 127). Sheargues that decision makers from disadvantaged groups “can use thelegislative and policy arenas to bring about improvements” (p. 126).Hasan lays more stress on political process—the inclination and bold-ness of the political parties to field candidates from disadvantagedcommunities—than on institutional remedies for substantive changesin increasing representation. In chapters 6 and 7, Hasan suggests that
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sub-quotas for Muslim OBCs and dalits who have converted toChristianity and Islam would help politicians and policy makersrethink the discourse and practice of affirmative action and bringmore disadvantaged groups within the purview of social justice andmake the polity “more representative and pluralistic” (p. 191).
Hasan’s plea for an inclusive notion of social justice is based onevidence of disadvantage and under-representation of minorities fromthe Sachar Committee Report (2006), the Statistical Report of theElection Commission of India, Government of India Reports, andsocial scientific studies of other scholars. Her argument for affirmativeaction for minorities is worked out through the modality of class.Only when policy makers and political parties look beyond caste andacknowledge class as criteria for backwardness can minorities beincluded in affirmative action programs, she argues. In Hasan’s analysisclass becomes the supplement to support claims based on alreadyexisting group identities like caste and religious communities. More-over, one of the assumptions of her argument is that policy makersand elected representatives categorized as belonging to a particularcommunity will address the demands of the social group. Similarly,she assumes that affirmative action policies would create a middleclass among minorities that would ultimately be advantageous to thecommunities. Both assumptions are highly optimistic and problem-atic, in large part because the conception of politics and “the political”remains rather narrow: politics remains the preserve of political par-ties, leaders, and policy makers.
While Hasan’s notion of what is political focuses on the strategiesand practices of institutions and policy makers and the centrality ofelectoral politics and political parties, Lucia Michelutti moves beyondthis notion in the Vernacularisation of Democracy. For Michelutti, thepolitical extends beyond institutions and political parties and into theeveryday lives of the people where modern notions of democracybecome “part of conceptual worlds that are often far removed fromtheories of liberal democracy” (p. 12). In her study of the notions ofdemocracy held by the Yadav caste of the city of Mathura in the northIndian state of Uttar Pradesh, Michelutti argues that the internaliza-tion of democracy in Yadav consciousness has changed the form andstructure of the community (p. 13). Michelutti reveals how the vernac-ularization of democracy has changed who members of the Yadavcommunity worship, altered marriage practices in the community,
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and also changed the way Yadavs vote and how they “perceive politicsand political leaders” (p. 13). The recasting of the Yadav caste in theprocess of the vernacularization of modernity has resulted in themaking of horizontal affinities in the Yadav/Ahir caste cluster. Shecalls this process the ethnicization of caste (p. 8).
Michelutti’s political anthropology is based on extensive ethno-graphic material, archival sources, official publications, caste litera-ture, publications of political parties, and religious texts. Herinterdisciplinary approach helps put forth a compelling study of thevernacularization of democracy and its entry into popular conscious-ness among the Yadavs, a caste classified as OBC by the B.P. MandalCommission Report. In chapter 1, she outlines the condition thatmade the political mobilization of backward castes and the ascen-dancy of the Yadavs possible in the 1990s and 2000s. According toher, the deepening of democracy set in motion social processes thatled to the weakening of the hold of dominant castes. This created thespace for different patterns of authority and enabled a class of locallevel politicians “who are often poorly educated, provincial, and comefrom lower middle class, and more often also from lower/backwardcaste communities” (p. 24). Michelutti argues that the Yadavs becamea politically ascendant group as a result of these changes (p. 19).
In chapter 2, Michelutti explores the entanglement of distinctprocesses—religious topographies associated with Lord Krishna, themythical and historical recollection of the Yadav/Ahir kingdom, andthe interaction of males in public spaces in Mathura—that have con-tributed to the formation of the Yadav community. According toMichelutti, the central features of Yadav political performances inthese public spaces were the rhetoric of self-respect, the display ofmasculinity, the absence of women, and the image of Lord Krishna asthe “socialist wrestler” (p. 66). In chapter 3, she combines data fromcolonial ethnographers with her ethnography of Mathura Yadavs inthe late 1990s to argue that Ahir/Yadav scholars, social activists, reli-gious reformers, politicians, and the colonial and postcolonial statecontributed to the formation of the Yadav community. Moreover,she points out that democratic politics provided Yadavs the stage towork out their identity in which myths, oral epics, folk kinship theo-ries, and colonial and postcolonial projects of state classificationplayed an important role (p. 68). In chapter 4, she traces how kinshipstructures were reworked in the process of the vernacularization of
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democracy and how a new ideology of descent was fashioned by theYadav caste-cluster (p. 102). The reworking of kinship has entailedthe restructuring of internal divisions within the Yadav caste: thus,the ideology and practices of marriage and commensality changedand in turn contributed to the remaking of the Ahir/Yadav caste-cluster as Krishnavanshi Yadavs (p. 137). According to Michelutti,the logic of electoral democracy, where horizontal solidarities facili-tates political power, has enabled the imagination and actualization ofa new Yadav kinship.
In chapter 5, Michelutti explores how democratic politics refash-ioned local religious spaces in Mathura and also reworked the rela-tions between ordinary people and their gods (p. 139). To illustrateher point, Michelutti traces the shift over the past 60 years from locallineage deities (kuldevatas) that needed to be appeased through animalsacrifice to the cult of Krishna. Similarly, local female deities (kuldevis)“have been tamed and transmuted into vegetarian vaishno devis” andhave been subsumed by the mythology of Krishna and his companionRadha (p. 139). In this chapter, Michelutti borrows from LouisDumont’s thesis of the religious ideology of caste and argues that theformation of the quasi-ethnic Yadav community has been enabled bythe religious ideology of Hinduism (p 159). Chapter 6 explores therhetoric of contemporary Yadav politics and the depiction of Krishnaas “muscular, democratic, and socialist” (p. 163). In her final substan-tial chapter, Michelutti explores how Mathura Yadavs believe thatthey have an innate ability for politics—to make political connectionsand benefit from state resources (p. 187). Moreover, she also outlinesthe intersection between Yadav caste associations and the SamajwadiParty that is facilitated by the belief that political power will enablethem to enjoy economic benefits and gain social status (p. 186).
In Michelutti’s ambitious study, the importance of caste as a fea-ture of social stratification seems overdetermined and the value ofclass is undermined. For her, vernacularization of democracy does notimply the decentering of a dominant class or language. By vernacular-ization she does not mean the difference between Hindi (vernacular)and English (elite) realms of politics. Neither does she imply a lag intranslation of the universal terms of democracy such as social justice,constitution, and elections. As Michelutti points out, speeches at thenational Yadav caste association are often delivered in English andterms like social justice are used interchangeably in English and in
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Hindi translation. For her then, vernacularization entails that the “keyterms and symbols of democracy are embedded in the language ofcaste, religion, regionalism, ethnicity, and so on” (p. 224). Michelutti’sassumptions about vernacularization and democracy bear unpacking.Her fundamental assumption is that democracy was bound to becomevernacularized as soon as it entered India because of the differentsocio-cultural practices of “ordinary people” (p. 3). The assumptionbetrays an ahistorical understanding of already existing socio-culturalpractices of the people. Similarly, for Michelutti, democracy is synon-ymous with postcolonial India; she pays little heed to what SumitSarkar has called the “historic inheritance” of Indian democracy: espe-cially the anti-colonial, national movements and debates of theconstituent assembly between 1946 and 1949 that were crucial to themaking of a democratic polity. What was it about the colonial periodthat enabled the vernacularization of democracy? Was the colonialcensus that made caste the foundational unit of Indian society the onlypowerful legacy that led to its vernacularization? She does not paysufficient attention to debates or allude to different processes (likeregionalism or dyarchy) that could shed historical light on her argu-ment about vernacularization. Moreover, Michelutti’s conception ofcaste seems deterministic: like Risley and Dumont she seems tobelieve that caste is the most important feature of Indian life and thatindividuals who identify themselves with a caste will also vote for aparty that represents that caste. Moreover, her argument does not payheed to class differences within caste solidarities.
While Michelutti’s analysis of the reconfiguration of the Yadavcaste through practices of democracy reaffirms the centrality of castein postcolonial India, Anupama Rao’s The Caste Question, teases outa paradox of Indian democracy. She highlights the dual impulse of thepostcolonial Indian state to recognize caste and to annihilate itbecause of its commitment to universal models of progress (p. 278).Rao states that the paradox of Indian democracy, where a commit-ment to substantive equality of groups coexists with the recognitionof the politics of caste difference, has created the conditions in whichdalits have been subjected to new forms of political violence (p. 26).Rao positions her work as an alternate history of dalit identity wherethe category “dalit” sheds light on the assumptions implied by thecategory “Indian democracy” and the juridical category of “casteatrocity” (p. 26).
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Rao’s book is structured in two parts. Part I, consisting of threechapters, highlights the historical context in which a politics of dalitemancipation was articulated. Part II focuses on the paradoxical out-comes of dalit emancipation. Chapter 1 centers on the making of theintellectual formation that produced a critique of dalit stigmatization.Rao highlights how the dalit critique of caste borrowed from the radi-cal anti-Brahmin movement in western India in the late-nineteenthand the early-twentieth centuries while also carving its own trajec-tory. The critique of dalit stigmatization, she argues, was enabled byprint journalism that highlighted the disabilities experienced by the“untouchables” (p. 40). This enabled the creation of a dalit publicsphere in the first three decades of the twentieth century, but this wasa masculine public sphere (p. 68). In chapter 2, she focuses on theparadoxical strengthening of caste as a feature of Hindu society whendalits mobilized colonial courts to abolish Mahar vatans, a stigma-tized form of property during the interwar years (p. 81). Rao arguesthat caste custom and private property that undergirded two differentnotions of exclusion got entangled and produced new forms of exclu-sion and spatial segregation (p. 86). Rao posits that caste articulationand the resultant segregation of castes were tactical strategies to coun-teract dalit success in arguing that the denial of access to public prop-erty (temples, water tanks, schools, streets) had material consequences(p. 115). In chapter 3, Rao revisits B.R. Ambedkar’s role in articulat-ing the politics of dalit emancipation and outlines the historicalcontext in which Ambedkar creatively interpreted democratic liberal-ism to craft a minority status for dalits (p. 159). According to her, dalitconversion to Buddhism was also a crucial factor in imagining dalits asa minority, outside the fold of Hinduism (p. 34).
In chapter 4, Rao highlights the ironic outcome of Ambedkar’smove to refashion the dalit self through conversion to Buddhism andby becoming the subject of state guarantees of social justice. Accord-ing to Rao, the making of dalits as a minority with exceptional legalrights, who were defined by their “inherited subalternity,” exposeddalits to more violence. This renewed anti-dalit violence was a symp-tom and an effect of state intervention into dalit identity and has, inturn, further reconstituted social relations and militant dalit selves(p. 180). In chapter 5, Rao outlines the symbologies of violencebetween 1960 and 1979, that is, from the formation of the state ofMaharashtra on linguistic grounds until the violent movement to
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rename Marathwada University after B.R. Ambedkar. Lord Buddhaand Ambedkar became powerful icons in dalit symbolic practices andrepresented dalit rejection of Hinduism and their claims to publicspace (p. 184). According to Rao, symbolic politics became the mostimportant axis of the formation of dalit political subjects becausethey were demographically small and therefore marginalized in theelectoral politics in the region (p. 187). Symbolic politics entailed thepoliticization of everyday life and was central to postcolonial dalitidentity (p. 215). In chapter 6, she extends her argument about sym-bolic politics by highlighting the role of sexual humiliation of womenin postcolonial Maharashtra as a form of caste violence (p. 221). Inreconsidering the legal discourse around the Sirasgaon “caste atrocity”of 1963, she highlights how gender, caste, and sexuality structurecertain forms of violence and humiliation (p. 232). In chapter 7, shefurthers her argument about the intricate connection between sym-bolic politics and political violence by highlighting the murder of adalit police official, Ambadas Sawane, on the steps of a Hanumantemple in the village of Pimpri Deshmukh in 1991. Sawane was appar-ently murdered because he wanted to install a statue of Ambedkarin the village, an act of symbolic reclamation of space, which eventu-ally led to his violent execution by the power holders in the village(p. 243).
Rao expertly brings out the role of dalits in expanding the domainof politics by making visible the relationship between violence andpolitics. She demonstrates convincingly the material effects of sym-bolic politics and the complex construction of dalit subjectivity, andshe teases out the paradoxical role of the state, judicial intervention,and civil rights law in making dalits more vulnerable (p. 275). Herunpacking of the complex strands that lead to the formation of politi-cal subjects and the timely reminder that celebratory histories ofemancipation need to be reconsidered are welcome additions to thehistories of caste in India. Methodologically, her deconstructive read-ing of diverse sets of sources (e.g., archival sources, pamphlets, oralinterviews, legal documents, and Ambedkar’s writings, among othersources), offers substantive insight into the craft of historical anthro-pology and intellectual history. But, Rao is circumspect in suggestingways to navigate and move beyond the paradox of the dalit question.If the politics of emancipation and the symbolic politics of dalits havemade them vulnerable to violence, how have dalits and actors interested
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in the dalit question addressed this conundrum? Rao’s prescriptionhere is tepid: she suggests that the dalit question cannot be resolvedwithin existing forms of political restitution (p. 284), but she does notoffer any alternatives besides a broad suggestion that entails “newimaginations of social justice and dignity” (p. 284). Have the radicalpossibilities offered by extant notions of social justice been exhaustedas Rao seems to suggest? Moreover, she suggests that a creative alli-ance between caste and class and between dalits and other stigmatizedminorities (Muslim and Christian) like the one attempted by UttarPradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, providespossibilities for the future. In western India, such solidarities,though ephemeral, were not uncommon. Rao’s symptomatic con-struction of the paradox of the dalit question, does not offer a sub-stantive discussion of the possibilities these moments offered and whyand how they remained ephemeral.
The three books under consideration, despite their different intel-lectual and methodological approaches—Hasan is a political scientistwho focuses on public policy; Michelutti a political anthropologistwho is interested in grasping the political action of her respondents inthe context of the changing political structure of postcolonial India;and Rao is a historical anthropologist who is also interested in closereading of texts—share some common themes. The ideologies andpractices of Indian democracy and the importance of caste is one suchcommon theme. While Hasan views caste as an important barometerof socio-economic backwardness that shapes state policies andinforms democratic politics, Michelutti sees caste as dynamic but alsoas the central institution of India’s socio-political life. Rao sees caste asa practice of embodied difference that is paradoxically important forIndia’s engagement with universal modernity. Taken together, thesebooks reveal the complex patterns formed by imbrications of castewith Indian democracy, at the level of the quotidian and the everydaylives of people and in the realm of state policies and technologies ofgovernance.
Similarly, the books also reflect different understandings of therelationship between caste and class. For Hasan, caste and class areunits of social analysis that supplement each other and thus divulge amore accurate picture of social and economic backwardness. On theother hand, class is occluded in Michelutti’s account because caste is adetermining factor in the activities and self-definition of the Yadavs of
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Mathura. For Rao, caste and class have different temporalities and arelinked together differently in particular historical contexts. Thus, thecategory of class is endowed with different valence by the threeauthors.
Finally the books help us understand that caste was and is not anunchanging institution but was consistently refashioned in the latecolonial and postcolonial period. Read together, these books offer afascinating account of the formation of political subjects in India andthe important role played by state policies and the processes of Indiandemocracy in the making of these subjectivities. The books also pro-vide the historical context within which to situate the demand for theinclusion of caste in the 2011 Indian census.
NOTES
1. Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, “The Caste Factor.” Frontline, Vol. 27, No. 11 (May 22–June4 2010), http//:www.flonnet.com
2. Herbert Risley, The People of India (New Delhi: AES Publication, 1999), p. 278.3. See Sumit Sarkar’s discussion of Risley in Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Post-
modernism, Hindutva, History (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002), pp. 58–60. See alsoNicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India(New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), pp. 49–52.
4. Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames p. 58. See also Veena Das, “Social Sciences and thePublics,” in Veena Das, Ed., Handbook of Indian Sociology (New Delhi: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2008), pp. 19–40.
5. Bernard Cohn has expertly pointed out the close connection between categories of colo-nial knowledge and colonial rule. See Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among theHistorians and Other Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).
6. According to Dirks the British discarded caste after the 1931 census because of thenumerous claims and counterclaims by various groups contesting their position in theassigned hierarchy. Nicholas B Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making ofModern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), p. 49.
7. Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Politics of OBCs,” Seminar, No. 549 (May, 2005).http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/549/549 christophe jaffrelot.htm. Jaffrelot has traced thegenealogy of the term backward classes to Madras Presidency in the 1870s. According tohim, the British had clubbed together shudra and untouchable castes for the purpose ofpositive discrimination policies. But by 1925, with the creation of the categorydepressed classes for untouchables, backward classes implied castes other than thedepressed classes.
8. V. Ramakrishnan, “The Caste Factor,” Frontline Vol. 27, No. 11 (May 22–June 4 2010).http//:www.flonnet.com
9. See Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes inNorth Indian Politics (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003). See also Yogendra Yadav,“Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge: Trends of Bahujan Participation inElectoral Politics in the 1990s” in Francine R Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava andBalveer Arora, Eds., Transforming India: Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy (NewDelhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 120–145.
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