The term caste is not originally an Indian word, though it is now widely used, both in English and in Indian languages. The word derives from the Portuguese casta, meaning "race, lineage, breed" and, originally, "pure or unmixed (stock or breed)". There is no exact translation in Indian languages, but varna and jati are the two most approximate terms.
Ângela Barrero Xavier of Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal publised an essay The Spread of "Caste" in the Indian World that refers to a project that she and Maria Elena Martínez put forward in the context of the Research Group "Empires, Colonialism, and Post-Colonial Societies" of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Symposium "Race and processes of racialization in colonial societies" (New York University, April 24, 2015), where a first version of the essay was presented.
She writes:
One of the popular assumptions about Indian caste-system is the intemporality, immobility and rigidity of its castes, and its intrinsic relationship with Hinduism. Apparently extensive to all India, the Laws of Manu, a "Hindu" treatise produced between the first century bce and the second century ce, provided a synthesis of this system. In 1794, William Jones translated into English the accepted original version; a version commonly used by Orientalists in search for the structure of Indian society Laws of Manu exposed the theory of the four varnas (which, in Sanskrit, means color), which stated that Indian society was divided into four main social groups (Brahmans, Kshatryas, Vaysias and Sudras), hierarchized in function of their ethnic origins, their endogamic practices, and their grades of purity.
The in-depth belief in the long-term and extensive nature of the Indian caste-system helps to explain why European social theory considered the Indian society as the "main other" of the European/Western one. Scholars, among whom we can find Orientalists and some founding fathers of sociological knowledge (like Marx, Weber, or Durkheim) considered that while social mobility (and equality and class) characterized the modern Western social systems, India was, instead, encapsulated in a social system based on immutable inequality. The Homo Hierarchicus of Louis Dumont is iconic of this kind of social theory in which caste was a powerful metaphor for inequality, with a strong impact until recently in the scholarship about Indian society, as well as in the ways the majority of Indians perceived themselves.
Alternative to this tradition, another line of scholarship questioned many of the topoi on the fixity and extensiveness of caste in Indian society, downplaying too, the role of religion in it. Inspired by the work of M. N. Srinivas (published in the same year of Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus), this literature has demonstrated that the struggles for upward mobility and status elevation were characteristic of early-modern and modern India, showing, as well, that the experience and the practices of caste were significantly different from their classical forms of textualization. This literature has also stressed the role played by European colonialism in the perception and production of Indian dynamics of caste, in its rigidification (helped by British censuses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for example), as well as in its dissemination throughout all India.
The findings of this literature inspire this essay, which intends to revisit the role played by the Portuguese (Iberian) imperial presence in India in the dissemination of the word caste as the most important social category in the Indian subcontinent, a category that has a longstanding impact beyond India, too. As Lakoff and Johnson have suggested, changes in conceptual systems affect the ways people perceive the world, and therefore, the way they act in the world. The word caste became not only another word in the shared social vocabulary, but also what Koselleck would call a "basic concept", a word that became inevitable. Without it, it is "no longer possible to recognize and interpret social and political reality." Indeed, the word "casta" helped to shape the "ways people perceived the world", as well as "the way they acted in it"
And . . .
How and why did the Portuguese select this word from the available encyclopedia of social vocabulary to identify, compress, and translate into Portuguese terms, a social world that was extremely rich and diversified? Did the semantic features of the word "casta" stimulate its selection in certain historical situations? Furthermore, why was this word (and not another one), later adopted by the English, Dutch and Indians to identify Indian society? Finally, how did the uses of this word affect European and Indian conceptual and social systems?
. . . how and why did a word usually used in the categorization of plants and animals end up being applied to people?
As said before, the frequency of the word was higher in India than in the kingdom of Portugal. The Portuguese living in Portugal used the word, but its use was random. People applied it, as a category, mainly to the realms of plants and animals. The presence of caste was overwhelming, instead, when used as a qualifier of good behavior, like being chaste, a central virtue in the early modern Portugal.
However, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese and other Europeans settled in India commonly applied the word to distinguish certain Indian social groups. It had already become a social category. Furthermore, "casta" was fully incorporated by the metropolitan world as a social category used to identify Indians, as it can be seen by the relevance given to it in Bluteau's Vocabulary (in contrast with what happens in Diccionario de Autoridades, for example). Colonial experience did have an impact in the construction of caste as a common sense social category in the Portuguese world. This category would mainly be applied, eventually, to Indian social groups.
What explains this difference? Why did the Portuguese abroad selected it to perceive and describe humans, while, when at home, this use was not so immediate and obvious? Is the scale of civility that operated in the Portuguese world somehow related with these differences? Since "casta" was initially used to refer plants and animals, was it less appropriated to refer "metropolitan" Portuguese, whose humanity was unquestionable? Inventories of goods, where cattle and slaves were located in the same category of commodities, are very telling about the easy associations established between humanity and beasts. In some of them, the word "casta" also appears. Was there an ambivalence, a hesitation, even an anxiety, that shaped the ways the Portuguese operated in the moment of finding the right words to define new things (Indian social groups)?
So, the caste system, so-called, in India, involves this layer of meaning and use by European colonial actors, the Portuguese, and later the British, where the term "casta" was highly functional and becomes a term that overlays the social realities of India, and transforms, to a significant extent, traditional and cultural forms and ideas to become the caste system in India!
The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic example of caste.
It has origins in ancient India, but has been transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially the Mughal Empire and the British Raj. It is today the basis of educational and job reservations in India.
This Indian concept system consists of two different concepts, varna and jati, which may be regarded as different levels of analysis of this system.
Varna
Varṇa (वर्णः) is a Sanskrit word which means type, order, colour or class.
The term refers to social classes in Brahminical books like the Manusmriti, an ancient legal text among the many Dharmaśāstras of Hinduism. It was one of the first Sanskrit texts which has been translated during the British rule of India in 1794, by Sir William Jones, and used to formulate the Hindu law by the colonial government. Incidentally, Jones was the first to propose a racial division of India involving the notion of there having been an Aryan invasion but at that time there was insufficient evidence to support it. It was an idea later taken up by British administrators such as Herbert Hope Risley, and more to do with a colonialist fantasy than an evidenced history.
The structure and contents of the Manusmriti suggest it to be a document predominantly targeted at the Brahmins (priestly class) and the Kshatriyas (king, administration and warrior class). The text dedicates 1,034 verses, the largest portion, on laws for and expected virtues of Brahmins, and 971 verses for Kshatriyas. The statement of rules for the Vaishyas (merchant class) and the Shudras (artisans and working class) in the text is extraordinarily brief. It has been suggested that this may be because the text was composed to address the balance "between the political power and the priestly interests", and because of a rise in foreign invasions of India during the period it was composed.
These and other Hindu literature classified the society in principle into four varnas:
Brahmins: priests, scholars and teachers.
Kshatriyas: rulers or kings.
Vaishyas: agriculturalists and merchants.
Shudras: laborers and service providers.
This quadruple division of Varna is a form of social stratification not to be confused with the much more nuanced Jāti or the European term "caste".
The varna system is discussed in many Hindu texts, and normally understood as aspirational, representing potentially idealised human callings. The concept is generally traced to the Purusha Sukta verse of the Rig Veda.
The varna verse in the Purusha Sukta is considered to have been inserted at a later date into the Vedic text, by modern scholars such as V.Nagarajan, Jamison and Brereton. V.Nagarajan believes that it was an "interpolation" to give "divine sanction" to an unequal division in society that was in existence at the time of its composition.
He states "The Vedic Hymns had been composed before the Varna scheme was implemented. The Vedic society was not organized on the basis of varnas. The Purush Sukta might have been a later interpolation to secure Vedic sanction for that scheme". Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton, a professor of Sanskrit and Religious studies, state, "there is no evidence in the Rigveda for an elaborate, much-subdivided and overarching caste system", and "the varna system seems to be embryonic in the Rigveda and, both then and later, a social ideal rather than a social reality".
Juxtaposed with these textual classifications are many other Hindu texts and doctrines that question and contradict the Varna system of social classification.
Communities which belong to one of the four varnas are called savarna.
The Dalits and scheduled tribes who do not belong to any varna, are called avarna.
Dalit, meaning "broken/scattered" in Sanskrit and Hindi, is a term that has been used for the castes in India that have been subjected to the stigma of untouchability. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming a fifth varna, also known by the name of Panchama.
The term dalits was in use as a translation for the British Raj census classification of Depressed Classes prior to 1935. It was popularised by the economist and reformer B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), himself a Dalit.
B. R. Ambedkar was also recently voted the Greatest Indian. Upon India's independence on 15 August 1947, the new Congress-led government invited Ambedkar to serve as the nation's first Law Minister, which he accepted. On 29 August, he was appointed Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, and was appointed by the Assembly to write India's new Constitution.
Granville Austin described the Indian Constitution drafted by Ambedkar as 'first and foremost a social document'. 'The majority of India's constitutional provisions are either directly arrived at furthering the aim of social revolution or attempt to foster this revolution by establishing conditions necessary for its achievement.'
The text prepared by Ambedkar provided constitutional guarantees and protections for a wide range of civil liberties for individual citizens, including freedom of religion, the abolition of untouchability, and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination. Ambedkar argued for extensive economic and social rights for women, and won the Assembly's support for introducing a system of reservations of jobs in the civil services, schools and colleges for members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and Other Backward Class, a system akin to affirmative action.
In the 1970s the use of the term dalit was invigorated when it was adopted by the Dalit Panthers activist group. India's National Commission for Scheduled Castes considers official use of dalit as a label to be "unconstitutional" because modern legislation prefers Scheduled Castes; however, some say that Dalit, as a term, has encompassed more communities than the official term of Scheduled Castes and is therefore sometimes used to refer to all of India's oppressed peoples.
Scheduled Caste communities exist across India, although they are mostly concentrated in four states; they do not share a single language or religion. They comprise 16.6 per cent of India's population, according to the 2011 Census of India.
In 1932, the British Raj recommended separate electorates to select leaders for Dalits in the Communal Award. This was favoured by Ambedkar but when Mahatma Gandhi opposed the proposal it resulted in the Poona Pact. That in turn influenced the Government of India Act, 1935, which introduced the reservation of seats for the Depressed Classes, now renamed as Scheduled Castes.
From soon after its independence in 1947, India introduced a reservation system to enhance the ability of Dalits to have political representation and to obtain government jobs and education. In 1997, India elected its first Dalit President, K. R. Narayanan. Many social organisations have promoted better conditions for Dalits through education, healthcare and employment. Nonetheless, while caste-based discrimination was prohibited and untouchability abolished by the Constitution of India, such practices still continue. To prevent harassment, assault, discrimination and similar acts against these groups, the Government of India enacted the Prevention of Atrocities Act on 31 March 1995.
UPDATE
In Sept 2018, in accordance with the order of Bombay High Court, Information and Broadcasting Ministry(I&B Ministry) of Government of India issued an advisory to all media channels asking them to use "Scheduled Castes" instead of the word "Dalit".
Jāti
Jāti (in Devanagari: जाति, Bengali: জাতি, Telugu:జాతి, Kannada:ಜಾತಿ, Malayalam: ജാതി, Tamil:ஜாதி, literally "birth") is a group of clans, tribes, communities and sub-communities, and religions in India.
Each Jāti typically has an association with a traditional job function or tribe. Religious beliefs (e.g. Sri Vaishnavism or Veera Shaivism) or linguistic groupings may define some Jātis. Among the Muslims, the equivalent category is Qom or Biradri.
A person's surname typically reflects a community (Jāti) association: thus Gandhi = perfume seller, Dhobi = washerman, Srivastava = military scribe, etc.
Professor Madhav Gadgil (1983) has described Jātis as self-governing, closed communities, based on his research in rural Maharashtra:
Indian society is even today an agglomeration of numerous castes, tribes and religious communities. The tribal and caste groups are endogamous, reproductively isolated populations traditionally distributed over a restricted geographical range. The different caste populations, unlike tribes, have extensive geographical overlap and members of several castes generally constitute the complex village society.
In such a village society, each caste, traditionally self regulated by a caste council, used to lead a relatively autonomous existence. Each caste used to pursue a hereditarily prescribed occupation; this was particularly true of the artisan and service castes and the pastoral and nomadic castes. The several castes were linked to each other through a traditionally determined barter of services and produce (Ghurye 1961, Karve 1961).
These caste groups retained their identity even after conversion to Islam or Christianity. Each of the caste groups was thus the unit within which cultural and perhaps genetic evolution occurred, at least for the last 1500 years when the system was fully crystallized and probably much longer. Over this period the various castes had come to exhibit striking differences in cultural traits like skills possessed, food habits, dress, language, religious observances as well as in a number of genetic traits.Under the Jāti system, a person is born into a Jāti with ascribed social roles and endogamy, i.e. marriages take place only within that Jāti. The Jāti provides identity, security and status and has historically been open to change based on economic, social and political influences. In the course of Indian history, various economic, political and social factors have led to a continuous closing and churning in the prevailing social ranks which tended to become traditional, hereditary system of social structuring.
This system of thousands of exclusive, endogamous groups, is called Jāti. Though there were several variations across the breadth of India, the Jāti was the effective community within which one married and spent most of one's personal life. Often it was the community (Jāti) which provided support in difficult times, in old age and even in the resolution of disputes. It was thus the community which one also sought to promote.
So, what are the origins of the word class?
English 'class' comes from the French classe (14c.), from Latin classis "a class, a division; army, fleet," especially "any one of the six orders into which the Etruscan King of Rome Servius Tullius divided the Roman people for the purpose of taxation."
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 575–535 BC. Roman tradition held that Servius formed a comitia centuriata of commoners to displace the comitia curiata as Rome's central legislative body. This required his development of the first Roman census, making Servius the first Roman censor. For the purposes of the census, citizens assembled by tribe in the Campus Martius to register their social rank, household, property and income. This established an individual's tax obligations, his ability to muster arms for military service when required to do so, and his assignment to a particular voting bloc.
The institution of the census and the comitia centuriata are speculated as Servius' attempt to erode the civil and military power of the Roman aristocracy, and seek the direct support of his newly enfranchised citizenry in civil matters; if necessary, under arms. The comitia curiata continued to function through the Regal and Republican eras, but the Servian reform had reduced its powers to those of a largely symbolic "upper house"; its noble members were expected to do no more than ratify decisions of the comitia centuriata.
The census grouped Rome's male citizen population in classes, according to status, wealth and age. Each class was subdivided into groups called centuriae (centuries), nominally of 100 men (Latin centum = 100) but in practice of variable number, further divided as seniores (men aged 46 – 60, of a suitable age to serve as "home guards" or city police) and iuniores (men aged 17 – 45, to serve as front-line troops when required). Adult male citizens were obliged, when called upon, to fulfill military service according to their means, which was supposedly assessed in archaic asses. A citizen's wealth and class would therefore have defined their position in the civil hierarchies, and up to a point, within the military; but despite its apparent military character, and its possible origins as the mustering of the citizenry-at-arms, the system would have primarily served to determine the voting qualifications and wealth of individual citizens for taxation purposes, and the weight of their vote — wars were occasional but taxation was a constant necessity — and the comitia centuriata met whenever required to do so, in peace or war. Though each century had voting rights, the wealthiest had the most centuries, and voted first. Those beneath them were convened only in the event of deadlock or indecision; the lowest class was unlikely to vote at all.
Caste, class and community, social classification, taxation, and a census based on division
The Ain-i-Akbari (Persian: آئینِ اکبری) or the "Constitution of Akbar", is a 16th-century, detailed document recording the administration of emperor Akbar's empire, written by his vizier, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak.
The Ain-i-Akbari is the third volume of the Akbarnama containing information regarding Akbar's reign in the form of, what would be called in modern times, administration reports, statistical compilations, or gazetteers. It contains the áín (i.e., mode of governing) of Emperor Akbar, and is, in fact, the administration report and statistical Return of his government. The first volume of the Akbarnama contains the history of Timur's family and the reigns of Babar, the Súr kings, and Humayun. The second volume is devoted to the detailed history of the nearly forty-six years of the Akbar's reign. Since it was written around 1590, it also contains details of Hindu beliefs and practices as well as a history of India.
The Ain-i-Akbari is itself divided into five books. The first book deals with the imperial household, and the second with the servants of the emperor, the military and civil services. The third book deals with the imperial administration, containing the regulations for the judicial and executive departments. The fourth book contains information about Hindu philosophy, science, social customs and literature. The fifth book contains sayings of Akbar, along with an account of the ancestry and biography of the author.
In this third book, that is entirely devoted to regulations for the judicial and executive departments, the establishment of a new and more practical era, the survey of the land, the tribal divisions, and the rent-roll of the great Finance minister, we find the beginnings of the so-called caste system. Abu al-Fadl's Ain-i Akbari provides a historical record and census of the Jat peasant caste of Hindus in northern India, where the tax-collecting noble classes (Zamindars), the armed cavalry and infantry (warrior class) doubling up as the farming peasants (working class), were all of the same Jat caste in the 16th century. These occupationally diverse members from one caste served each other, writes Habib, either because of their reaction to taxation pressure of Muslim rulers or because they belonged to the same caste. Peasant social stratification and caste lineages were, states Habib, tools for tax revenue collection in areas under the Islamic rule.
The origin of caste system of modern form, in the Bengal region of India, may be traceable to this period, state. The medieval era Islamic Sultanates in India utilised social stratification to rule and collect tax revenue from non-Muslims.
"Looking at Bengal's Hindu society as a whole, it seems likely that the caste system – far from being the ancient and unchanging essence of Indian civilisation as supposed by generations of Orientalists – emerged into something resembling its modern form only in the period 1200–1500"Eaton, Richard (1993). The rise of Islam and the Bengal frontier, 1204–1760. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 103.
With the Islamic Mughal empire falling apart in the 18th century, regional post-Mughal ruling elites and new dynasties from diverse religious, geographical and linguistic background attempted to assert their power in different parts of India. Obscure post-Mughal elites associated themselves with kings, priests and ascetics, deploying the symbols of caste and kinship to divide their populace and consolidate their power. In addition, in this fluid stateless environment, some of the previously casteless segments of society grouped themselves into caste groups.
However, in 18th century India-wide networks of merchants, armed ascetics and armed tribal people often ignored these ideologies of caste. Most people did not treat caste norms as given absolutes but challenged, negotiated and adapted these norms to their circumstances.
Communities came together in different regions of India, into a "collective classing" to mold the social stratification in order to maximise assets and protect themselves from loss. The "caste, class, community" structure that formed became valuable in a time when state apparatus was fragmenting, was unreliable and fluid, when rights and life were unpredictable.
In this environment the newly arrived colonial East India Company officials, attempted to gain commercial interests in India by balancing Hindu and Muslim conflicting interests, by aligning with regional rulers and large assemblies of military monks. The British Company officials adopted constitutional laws segregated by religion and caste. The legal code and colonial administrative practice was largely divided into Muslim law and Hindu law, the latter including laws for Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. In this transitory phase, Brahmins together with scribes, ascetics and merchants who accepted Hindu social and spiritual codes, became the deferred-to-authority on Hindu texts, law and administration of Hindu matters.
While legal codes and state administration were emerging in India, with the rising power of the colonial Europeans the late 18th-century British writings on India say little about caste system in India, and predominantly discuss territorial conquest, alliances, warfare and diplomacy in India. Colin Mackenzie, a British social historian of this time, collected vast numbers of texts on Indian religions, culture, traditions and local histories from south India and Deccan region, but his collection and writings show very little evidence on a caste system in 18th-century India.
Although the varnas and jatis have pre-modern origins, the caste system as it exists today is the result of developments during the post-Mughal period and the British colonial regime, which made caste organisation a central mechanism of administration.
Jāti were the basis of caste ethology during the British colonial era
In the 1881 census and thereafter, colonial ethnographers used caste (jati) headings, to count and classify people in what was then British India (now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma).[148] The 1891 census included 60 sub-groups each subdivided into six occupational and racial categories, and the number increased in subsequent censuses.
The British colonial era census caste tables;
"ranked, standardised and cross-referenced jati listings for Indians on principles similar to zoology and botanical classifications, aiming to establish who was superior to whom by virtue of their supposed purity, occupational origins and collective moral worth".Bayly, Susan (2001), Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, Cambridge University Press, pp. 125–127.
While bureaucratic British officials completed reports on their zoological classification of Indian people, some British officials criticised these exercises as being little more than a caricature of the reality of caste system in India. The British colonial officials used the census-determined jatis to decide which group of people were qualified for which jobs in the colonial government, and people of which jatis were to be excluded as unreliable. These census caste classifications were also used by the British officials during the late 19th century and early 20th century, to formulate land tax rates, as well as to frequently target some social groups as "criminal" castes and castes prone to "rebellion".
The population then comprised about 200 million people, across five major religions, and over 500,000 agrarian villages, each with a population between 100 and 1,000 people of various age groups, which were variously divided into numerous castes. This ideological scheme was theoretically composed of around 3,000 castes, which in turn was claimed to be composed of 90,000 local endogamous sub-groups.
The strict British class system may have influenced the British colonial preoccupation with the Indian caste system as well as the British perception of pre-colonial Indian castes. British society's own similarly rigid class system provided the British with a template for understanding Indian society and castes. The British, coming from a society rigidly divided by class, attempted to equate India's castes with British social classes.
According to David Cannadine, Indian castes merged with the traditional British class system during the British Raj. (Cannadine, David (2002). Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. Oxford University Press)
Class systems and theoretical approaches applied to real societies
There are analytical concepts of social class, such as the Marxist and Weberian traditions, as well as the more empirical traditions such as socio-economic status approach, which work with understanding the correlation of income, education and wealth with social outcomes, without necessarily implying a particular theory of social structure.
For Marx, class is a combination of objective and subjective factors. Objectively, a class shares a common relationship to the means of production. Subjectively, the members will necessarily have some perception ("class consciousness") of their similarity and common interest. Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of one's own class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class relations are reproduced through time.
Marxist theory
In Marxist theory, the class structure of the capitalist mode of production is characterized by the conflict between two main classes: the bourgeoisie, the capitalists who own the means of production and the much larger proletariat (or "working class") who must sell their own labour power (wage labour). This is the fundamental economic structure of work and property, a state of inequality that is normalized and reproduced through cultural ideology.
Marxists explain the history of "civilized" societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society. In the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists (bourgeoisie) and wage-workers (the proletariat). For Marxists, class antagonism is rooted in the situation that control over social production necessarily entails control over the class which produces goods—in capitalism this is the exploitation of workers by the bourgeoisie.
Furthermore, "in countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed". "An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and sergeants (foremen, over-lookers) who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist".
Marx makes the argument that, as the bourgeoisie reach a point of wealth accumulation, they hold enough power as the dominant class to shape political institutions and society according to their own interests. Marx then goes on to claim that the non-elite class, owing to their large numbers, have the power to overthrow the elite and create an equal society.
Socialism
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx himself argued that it was the goal of the proletariat itself to displace the capitalist system with socialism, changing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a future communist society in which: "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". This would mark the beginning of a classless society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for financial and banking institutions and money.
The story of socialism in India
Socialism in India is a political movement founded early in the 20th century, as a part of the broader Indian independence movement against the colonial British Raj. It grew quickly in popularity as it espoused the causes of India's farmers and labourers against the zamindars, princely class and landed gentry.
Socialism shaped the principle economic and social policies of the Indian government after independence until the early 1990s, when India moved towards a more market-based economy. However, it remains a potent influence on Indian politics, with a large number of national and regional political parties espousing democratic socialism.
Small socialist revolutionary groups arose in India in the aftermath of the October Revolution in Russia. The Communist Party of India was established in 1921, but socialism as an ideology gained a nationwide appeal after it was endorsed by nationalist leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. Radical socialists were amongst the first to call for outright Indian independence from Britain. Under Nehru, the Indian National Congress, India's largest political party, adopted socialism as an ideology for socio-economic policies in 1936. Radical socialists and communists also engineered the Tebhaga movement of farmers in Bengal against the landed gentry. However, mainstream Indian socialism connected itself with Gandhism and adopted peaceful struggle instead of class warfare.
After India's independence in 1947, the Indian government under prime ministers Nehru and Indira Gandhi oversaw land reform and the nationalisation of major industries and the banking sector. Independently, activists Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan worked for peaceful land redistribution under the Sarvodaya movement, where landlords granted land to farm workers out of their own free will. In the 1960s, the Communist Party of India formed India's first democratically elected communist government when it won elections in the states of Kerala and later West Bengal. However, when a global recession began in the late 1970s, economic stagnation, chronic shortages and state inefficiency left many disillusioned with state socialism. In the late 1980s and 1990s, India's government began to systematically liberalise the Indian economy by pursuing privatisation, aiming to attract foreign investment. Nevertheless, the Congress party continues to espouse some socialist causes, and other major parties such as the Communists, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and several others openly espouse socialism.
India - Diversity and the nation state
Prof. Dr. Anwar Alam, Senior Fellow Policy Perspectives Foundation, New Delhi, considers The Struggle of Identity Politics in India in this paper:
Introduction: Imagining Nation in Plural Form
The phenomenon of a nation is predominantly understood in its singular, homogenised form. The idea of ‘Progress’ is centrally linked to the idea of the homogenised form of a nation state. Thus, the European model of a singular, monolithic, homogenised nation state remains ‘the ideal, perfect model’ to be emulated in other parts of the world. During my research stay in Europe (taking place in Germany, France and the UK from August 2004 to February 2006, thanks to an AVH postdoctoral fellowship) I was often faced with the question: Is India a nation?
He sets out the objectives of the paper thus:
Notwithstanding this desirability of the ruling elites of India, the Indian trajectory of the nation-building process greatly diverges from European experience in which the present form of the nation state was achieved at the cost of brutal elimination of diversity. On the contrary, the maxims of ‘unity in diversity’ and ‘diversity in unity’ have been the guiding principles of the Indian state for conducting the nation building process since its inception; a political process that resulted not only in strengthening the federal character of the nation but also in making pluralism, diversity and democracy essential features of Indian nationhood along with the functioning of India as a multi-ethnic nation state. This is evident from the recent display of apprehensions and concerns among many quarters about the maintainability of the ‘idea of India’ (symbolising pluralism, democracy and diversity) in wake of the decisive victory of BJP, the right-wing homogenising, Hindu nationalist force, in the parliamentary election of 2014.
The multi-ethnic character of the Indian nation state here does not necessarily refer to the horizontal and vertical distribution of power among religious, casts and linguistic groups, a trend though very much visible, but primarily refers to the Indian nation state’s capacity and flexibility to accommodate the diverse cultural, religious and linguistic identities. Within the above frame this paper consists of three parts. The first deals with the definition of ethnicity and its application to the Indian state as well as the constitutional provisions that qualify the multiethnic character of the Indian state. The second part deals with how the identity-centred and flexible Indian democratic process has been successful in integrating the diverse social, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups and communities into the Indian nationhood as well as thwarting successionist movements and managing the threat of Islamic militancy. The last section will shed light on whether the current right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, poses any effective threat to the ‘idea of India’, including the well-being of minority communities, particularly the Muslim community
Identity politics - what are the drawbacks?
Aug 11, 2017 · 09:00 am
Shoaib Daniyal
West Bengal is seeing a surge in the politics of religious identity that has caught many Bengalis off guard.
The past few years have seen a series of low-intensity communal riots and religion acquire a new salience in politics. The Bharatiya Janata Party has conducted armed marches during Hindu festivals and the ruling Trinamool Congress, in turn, has reached out to religious leaders in order to woo Muslims.
So sharp is the rise of identity that it is being spoken of as something unprecedented in a state dominated for decades by the Communist credo of class. Yet, the politics of identity in West Bengal is not a phenomenon that arose in 2017. And the pioneer here is not the BJP – it was, in fact, the Trinamool that used identity politics to dislodge the Left from power in 2011. Even while there are significant differences between the use of identity by the Trinamool and the BJP, the rise of Hindutva has been – inadvertently – facilitated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s brand of subaltern identity politics.
The rise and fall of identity
Historically, Bengal is no stranger to identity politics. Both Hindu and Muslim nationalisms began here. Born in Kolkata in 1863, Vivekanada has been called the father of political Hinduism. Half a century later, in 1906, the Muslim League would be founded in Dhaka city. In 1947, Bengal was divided along religious lines: Muslim East Bengal going to Pakistan and Hindu West Bengal entering the Indian Union. Even Dalit politics was well developed in pre-1947 Bengal – unlike BR Ambedkar, who never saw much electoral success, Dalit leader Jogendranath Mondal fought electorally against the Congress (which he saw as an upper caste formation) during the British Raj. In the end, Ambedkar was elected to the Constituent Assembly not from his native Bombay state but from Bengal, with Mondal’s help.
Identity politics continued after 1947, with a series of riots bloodying West Bengal in the first two decades of its existence. The 1960s, however, saw the rise of the Communists. Caste and communal matters were pushed to the background and the mono-doctrine of class would dominate Bengali politics for the next four decades.
This development had two sides. It gave poor Muslims security and many Dalits land thanks to the reforms undertaken by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Yet, it also meant that the upper caste domination of politics continued – the Left Front’s first cabinet did not include a single Dalit and its MLAs came mostly from the three bhadralok castes of Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas. In fact, there has not been a single Dalit in the CPI(M)’s politburo since its formation in 1964.
Enter Mamata Banerjee
The CPI(M)’s aversion to identity was driven by ignorance – given that its leadership was completely savarna (upper caste), it made them blind to the lived reality of lower caste groups in West Bengal. But there was another factor: it did not need identity to win elections. The Communists had their own cadre that ensured the formation of a “party-society” that broke old forms of hierarchy in the village (often based on caste) and replaced it with dominance by the party (which was itself completely controlled by an upper caste leadership in Kolkata).
Around 2007-08, this party-society would break down over the contentious issue of land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. In stepped Banerjee to oppose the Communists using this plank. However, without any functioning party machine, her new outfit, the Trinamool, turned to identity.
As reported previously in Scroll.in, Banerjee would openly reach out to the Matuas, a religious order populated almost exclusively by Dalit immigrants from Bangladesh. This was a significant change from earlier governments. Like the Congress before it, the CPI(M)’s bhadralok control had meant that Dalit immigrants had got a bad deal under the Left. Although the CPI(M) came to power on a plank of refugee welfare, once it took office it more or less reverted to the Congress position of seeing Bangladeshi refugees as a burden on West Bengal’s resources. This reached a peak in 1979, when the Left Front government ordered the police to open fire on Bangladeshi refugees staying on a Sundarbans island called Marichjhapi.
Banerjee also reached out to Muslims, giving them unprecedented visibility in a state where the community is severely disadvantaged economically. In Darjeeling, the same strategy resulted in development boards for every caste and community, in order to weaken the overall Gorkha identity.
Making caste and community politically salient helped the Trinamool break the CPI(M)’s hold over rural West Bengal and allowed Banerjee to win two Assembly elections, in 2011 and 2016. Yet, it also helped to make space, even if involuntarily, for Hindutva and, thereby, the BJP.
Mamata Banerjee leveraged the agitations against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram to break up the Left Front's 'party-society'. Photo credit: AFP
Unintended consequences
The Trinamool’s courting of Muslims helped the BJP attack Banerjee for appeasing the community. This appeasement included measures such as providing a stipend to Muslim clerics and posters showing the chief minister supplicating in a manner a Muslim would. In another case, the Trinamool government’s scheme to distribute cycles to schoolgirls was misrepresented as a Muslim-only scheme. Last month, the BJP even falsely claimed that Kali puja was disallowed in the state, comparing the situation of Hindu Bengalis to that of Kashmiri Pandits.
The Trinamool’s focus on Dalit politics too has helped the BJP, identified as an upper caste party in North India. The breaking of the CPI(M)’s “party-society” – where your only political identity was as a member of the Left – has meant that Dalits have started to use their numbers and caste status politically. In the case of the Trinamool, this meant the Matuas bartered their votes for development in Matua-majority regions in and around Bongaon in North 24 Parganas district. The Matuas also got the administration to informally ease their road to Indian citizenship. As a result, Dalit immigrants under the Trinamool had far more rights than under the Left.
Seeing that the Matuas are now politically active, the BJP is trying to woo them using Hindutva. Across North 24 Parganas, as reported in a previous story in this series, prominent Matuas have begun to lean towards the BJP. This could benefit the community just as their support to the Trinamool did. The BJP has declared that its policy is to support Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh. In 2015, the Narendra Modi government allowed Hindu Bangladeshi immigrants to stay on in India even if they had entered illegally. The Union government has also introduced a Bill in the Parliament that seeks to award Hindu Bangladeshi immigrants automatic citizenship if they have stayed in India for six years.
This focus on Hindu immigrants – most of whom are from lower castes – means that the BJP in West Bengal is more representative of Hindu backward castes than the Trinamool or the Left. In the state’s border areas, one estimate claims “three out of four of the party’s local leaders hail from the backward castes”.
Getting back
The Trinamool has responded to the BJP’s use of identity with even more identity. Unlike the BJP, which is an ideological party wedded to Hindutva, the Trinamool has no defining creed. It was founded in 1998, forged out of a breakaway faction of the Indian National Congress, and exists almost exclusively on the popular appeal of its chief, Banerjee.
In such a situation, to fight the BJP, the Trinamool has adopted a dollop of Hindu identity itself. For example, in response to the BJP’s Ram Navami marches, some local units of the Trinamool organised functions centred around Ram’s lieutenant, Hanuman, in April 2017. Earlier, in 2015, the Trinamool had even paid tributes to SP Mookerjee, founder of the Jana Sangh (the BJP’s forerunner), and one the most prominent supporters of Bengal’s partition.
The strongest mode of attack for the Trinamool, though, is Bengali identity. With the BJP stepping on the gas with Hindutva, Banerjee has designed a state emblem and is composing a state song, apparently to assert Bengali culture and delineate the state as distinct from North India.
Banerjee has described the BJP’s crackdown on food habits as an attempt to “import an alien culture”, given that 99% of West Bengal identifies as meat-eating. She has even tried to theologically separate the Bengali Hindus. “People here have been worshipping Lord Shiva, Goddess Durga and Kali and others for ages. Here is a party that wants us to worship a particular God,” Banerjee said, referring to the BJP’s Ram Navami marches. This while some units of the party organised functions celebrating Hanuman.
Banerjee has also made the study of Bengali compulsory in the state. In Darjeeling, this set off another movement for a separate Gorkhaland, which was also used by the Trinamool to attack the BJP as anti-Bengali. The BJP had supported the demands for Gorkhaland back when it was a non-entity in West Bengal – a stand that has come back to bite it today.
Only identity
In this bitter clash of identities, the Left – still devoted to its old-style politics – continues to decline precipitously. In April, in Contai South, the BJP came in second in an Assembly bye-poll, comfortably beating the Left Front (the Trinamool won the seat). This, in an area which was once a Left stronghold and where the BJP barely has any organisational strength.
West Bengal’s future, it would seem, rests on some sort of identity politics. Either the Trinamool’s multi-polar emphasis on various subaltern identities or the BJP’s razor-like focus on Hindutva, which has done so well for it in North and West India.
This is the last in a three-part series looking at the factors powering the BJP’s rise in West Bengal and the obstacles holding it back. The other parts can be read here.
5 min read / August 30, 2017
By Stuti Sareen
Following independence, instilling democracy within India became the primary goal of its political leaders – to achieve this, identity politics is undoubtedly involved. Three main goals were set: establishing dignity for the ‘lower castes’, constructing a sense of national unity and eradicating mass poverty.
Although a certain degree of progress has been made in achieving the first two goals, mass poverty and illiteracy remain even after 70 years of democracy. In spite of this, India has increased in rank on the list of emerging economies in the world on account of the GDP it accrues from the rich section of its population- which is relatively small.
One major reason behind this increasing gap between the rich and poor is the presence of identity politics. This has hindered development and growth in the country through electing incumbent leaders who have made policy decisions for their own interests, rather than those of the country.
Politics of Sects
The Indian electoral system is based on the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, in which only a small plurality of votes can lead to the election of the ruling party. With inefficient measures to control the manner of campaigning, politicians have been successful at forging relations with leaders of religious sects with mass followers to achieve this plurality of votes. Most of these sects gain followers by providing minimal compensation and making false promises to the poor in exchange for votes for the campaigning politicians.
There have been several such sects in the country- led by figures such Asharam Bapu, Nirmal Baba, Sant Rampal, Swami Sadachari, to name a few. Dera Sacha Sauda, led by Gurmeet Rahim, is the most recent one brought to light by the massive protests and destruction conducted by millions of its followers in the state of Haryana and parts of Punjab when its leader was imprisoned for rapes and murders. The sect started its political allegiance with the Congress Party and later shifted its allegiance to the BJP when the former lost its influence in the area.
The Rule of Numbers
Democracy is a delicate balance between the rule of law and the rule of numbers. While the rule of numbers is the very pillar of democracy, it should not go against the rule of the law. The judicial court in India has been able to make verdicts in accordance with the latter in spite of pressures from the people and has hence been successful at restoring a balance every time. However, the decade-long delays in its verdicts have led to a loss of resources and poor governance. The riots caused by the Dera Sacha Sauda followers when the 15-year case against their leader was finally rested pertinently evidence this.
The Presence and Absence of Identity Politics
Does democracy require a certain level of socio-economic growth in order to function, if a large number of poor can be influenced and taken advantage of? The answer is no: democracy is the struggle to achieve this level of socio economic growth in itself.
Two states in India – Kerela and Uttar Pradesh – offer a good case study. While both states have similar per capita incomes and poverty rates, Kerala is one of the richest regions in India and Uttar Pradesh is the poorest with regard to the Human Development Index. Analyzing the public expenditure in the early decades of democracy in both states, Kerala allocated 45% of its total expenditure on education and health services whilst Uttar Pradesh allocated as little as 25%.
The quality of services has also been observed to be strikingly better in Kerala – the state has been able to maintain and use its facilities while those in Uttar Pradesh lie barren. In the latest HDI report, Kerala ranked first at around 0.7 and Uttar Pradesh ranked sixth from last at around 0.5. While Kerala’s performance has remained constant, Uttar Pradesh’s has declined further.
Both states started at the same level of socio-economic growth but one has progressed under the same democratic rules while the other has not. This can be attributed to the harmful nature of political competition in Uttar Pradesh. While in Kerala the regional party was able to gain the support of the poorest voters by continuous personalised interactions and maintaining credible promises, the political competition in Uttar Pradesh operated on the basis of clientelism and identity politics.
Conclusion
According to the Economic Intelligence Unit, India is closer to a full democracy than a flawed one. This is based on 60 indicators, such as the voter turnout, the presence of a multi-party system, and active civic groups.
However, for as long as faith and religious interests are conjoined with politics in India, corruption in the political arena will not disappear, and the power of democracy will be used against the peoples’ good.
Good for some?
Indian Court’s Ban on Identity Politics Ruling Will Benefit Hindu Nationalists
Warisha Farasat
Warisha Farasat is a lawyer in Delhi and co-author of "Splintered Justice: Living the Horror of Mass Communal Violence in Bhagalpur and Gujarat."
January 9, 2017, 7:08 PM
It is clear that the aim of the Indian Supreme Court in its recent ruling to prevent political parties from invoking religion, caste or language for electoral gains was to eliminate a protracted problem that is eating into the vitals of India’s democratic system and pluralistic secular fabric. The court’s broad based solution, however, will add to the problem rather than help address it. In fact, the majoritarian forces, who have made use of sectarianism and religion to foment violence and win elections, will be the only parties that won’t be affected by this ruling.
Years ago, the court called Hinduism a way of life of the people of India. The current ruling could protect those who use it as an appeal.In a judgment in 1995, the Supreme Court had termed Hindutva, the philosophy of Hinduism, as a way of life of the people of India. Last week's judgment didn’t revisit the earlier ruling to clarify whether calls for votes in the name of majority Hinduism and Hindutva would be categorized as “use of, or appeal to religion.” And as the previous judgment wasn’t revoked, there is a real danger that the current ruling would be used solely against political parties set up to fight discrimination against religious, caste and linguistic minorities rather than those who actively seek to unify voters using Hindu religious symbols.
For instance, before every election appeal by the ruling Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party, revives its appeal to build a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque in Ayodhya,Uttar Pradesh, that was destroyed by Hindu extremists who claim it was the birthplace of the god Ram. The 1995 decision could allow the Hindu right to circumvent the latest ruling by promoting the Ram Temple a heritage project.
On the other hand, any reference made to the infamous anti-Muslim riots in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh province in 2013, or the lynching of a Muslim man by a Hindu mob on the suspicion, though misplaced, that he stored beef in the refrigerator inside his home in 2015 or speaking for an end to the historical wrongs done to lower castes Dalits (for example Bahujan Samaj Party, an influential political party in Uttar Pradesh champions the cause of Dalits) and other socially, economically and politically marginalized communities, may be wrongly penalized.
Therefore, this judgment has also put further restrictions on the right to free speech especially because issues related to social justice like the fight to end discrimination against Dalits and the persecution of Muslim minority raised by a political party during elections, if not worded properly, can be easily brought within the ampit of corrupt practice.
This criticism of the judgment was, in fact, part of the dissent recorded by three judges among the seven-judge bench. These three judges said the “Electors however, may have and in fact do have a legitimate expectation that the discrimination and deprivation which they may have suffered in the past (and which many continue to suffer) on the basis of their religion, caste, or language should be remedied.” They too, however, avoided dealing with the main flaw at the center of this judgment – unless all religions and communities are put at par, and implemented uniformly, this law won’t serve its intended purpose.
India, both during its struggle for independence and in the decades of freedom has been rocked by periodic episodes of communal violence, mostly taking the form of state-enabled violence, even massacres, of religious minorities. These episodes have been characterised by impunity, or the assurance that those who plan and execute these targeted communal attacks are protected from legal punishment. Scholars in the Centre for Equity Studies mapped through official records the ways in which impunity is accomplished in their book On Their Watch: Mass Violence and State Apathy in India. In this second work, Warisha Farasat and Prita Jha drill deeper into two major communal massacres, of Bhagalpur in 1989 and Gujarat in 2002. Relying not just on official papers but also on in-depth testimonies of many survivors, they systematically chart the troubling failures of India’s criminal justice system to secure justice for survivors of hate violence.
Splintered Justice
Written with both rigorous scholarly insight and engaged compassion, this book is essential reading for all who care about upholding that most sacred pledge of India’s Constitution, of ensuring the equal treatment of all people, regardless of their faith, caste, gender or wealth, before the law of the land.
The same old story - Personal identification and the middle class, but, it's NOT ideology!
But, don't you believe them . . .
SLIPPERY AS EVER
It’s not ideology but aspiration that drives India’s middle class—politicians take note
By Devesh Kapur, Neelanjan Sircar, and Milan Vaishnav December 4, 2017
Whether you follow developments in India closely or not, you have likely heard about the emergence of the “Indian middle class.” The private sector, especially large multinational corporations, view the emergence of a large pool of Indians with increasing disposable income as the most vital consumer market of the future. The McKinsey Global Institute (2007) refers to India’s expanding consumer market as the country’s “bird of gold,” a phrase merchants used thousands of years ago to describe its vast economic potential.
The growth of a middle class is expected to play a transformative role in modernising the Indian economy, create new pressure points on the government to tackle the vestiges of the licence raj, and enable a more propitious environment for private entrepreneurship and job creation (Fernandes 2006). And those who are frustrated with the corruption and cronyism that has characterised Indian politics for decades view the rise of the middle class as a force for positive change, a palliative to the twin vices of identity and patronage politics (Das 2012).
Despite these tall claims, the research on the middle class globally is quite divided on its social and political impact. On the one hand, one strand of the literature argues that the middle class can be a dynamic force for change (Lash and Urry 1987) while on the other hand, some scholars have argued that they can often be a powerful votary of the status quo and traditional social and economic structures (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992).
For instance, while the middle class might desire a reduced role of the state in the economy and a corresponding greater role for the private sector, it also wants better safety and environmental standards across a diverse array of sectors which, ironically, bring the state back in—this time in its regulatory capacity. This is one reason why—as far as India is concerned—the “inspector raj” has replaced the “licence raj” (Chandra 2015, Indian Express 2016).
We asked a sample of Indians from across the country whether or not they would classify themselves as “middle class”…we argue that the notion of “middle class” can be understood as a cognitive identity with some degree of class-consciousness or feeling of belongingness. In turn, this cognition should result in certain distinct views about the world, compared to other social classes. For instance, if the middle class is supposed to be “aspirational,” then being middle class should result in greater optimism about the future.
To preview our findings, we find that almost half of all respondents we surveyed across India identified themselves as part of the middle class. While there is substantial variation across states, which is not altogether surprising, identification is stronger in urban areas when compared to rural ones.
The total sample size of this survey was 68,516 respondents across 24 states and union territories in India.
Aspiration and optimism
The large share of respondents who identify as middle class begs the question as to whether these “middle class” Indians hold distinct world views. Do they have coherent views on the state of the country and the direction in which it is travelling? Are they more aspirational and optimistic about the future or fearful and pessimistic? Members of a first generation middle class, whose parents were poor but whose income has been buoyed by a rapidly growing economy, are likely to be optimistic about the future. But a second (or later) generation middle class whose income has stagnated or declined because of structural changes in labour markets and an anaemic economy is likely to be more pessimistic and fearful about the future.
Urban, middle class respondents are nearly 7% more likely to believe their children will be better off in the future than the respondents are today. The effect is slightly smaller for rural respondents. The effects of education are positive and significant, though at a reduced level. Respondents who are classified objectively as “rich” are, on balance, more positive in their assessment, although the magnitudes are smaller. There is no statistically meaningful effect of belonging to the objectively determined “middle wealth” category.
In other words, the effect of subjective self-identification with the middle class is more impactful than belonging to the middle of the income distribution.
These findings more or less remain when one considers the second outcome of interest: whether the Indian economy is getting better.
As with our measure of social aspiration, middle class self-identification is a strong predictor of economic optimism. Middle class respondents are more likely, in both urban and rural areas (though more so in the former), to have a favourable assessment of the Indian economy. Education plays a modest role while “middle income” is significant and positive, but does not eliminate the independent impact of self-identification. Interestingly, those who belong to the “rich” category are much more optimistic about the country’s economic future. While this is not entirely surprising, we note the much larger effect on economic optimism as opposed to social aspiration. Again, given the deeply stratified nature of Indian society, economic change is relatively easier to achieve than social change.
Since the American Civil War a century and half ago, incomes in the US have increased dramatically, but changes in race relations have lagged. We might similarly expect more rapid improvements in incomes in India, while social change related to caste, gender, religion, and region are likely to evolve much more gradually. There are three principal takeaways from this brief analysis. First, middle class self-identification picks up a lot of the variation in economic optimism and social aspiration that is not picked up by either wealth or human capital. Second, the association between middle class affinity and aspiration are comparatively larger in urban (than rural) parts of India. Finally, while income is positively linked with economic optimism, its impact is smaller on social aspiration.
Conclusion: Don’t take them for granted
Drawing on findings from a large survey of Indians across two dozen states, we find that middle class identification is large—between 40% and 60%—for virtually all demographic groups in the country. It seems likely based on this initial evidence that India’s aspirational middle class may be less ideologically driven and instead more focused on gaining social and economic status in a country where there is a tremendous amount of churn taking place.
As urbanisation picks up pace and human capital levels continue to rise, we can expect the size of the aspirational middle class to continue to expand. While this chapter has emphasised the importance of beliefs in the construction of a middle class identity, it does not provide answers on how these beliefs have been constructed. For the working classes, class struggle and unions played critical roles in developing such an identity. For the upper classes, these identities were constructed by attending specific schools and universities (as in the United Kingdom). Media, especially the electronic media, and the construction of a consumer society are factors that appear to be playing an important role in shaping middle class identities. But how and with what consequences remain open questions.
In India’s 2014 general election, research has found that the middle class (measured in more conventional terms) supported the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, current prime minister Narendra Modi, in large numbers (Sridharan 2014). However, the government would be well advised not to take the support of the middle class for granted, as partisan identification could change rapidly if the aspirations of the middle class are thwarted.
Indeed, some research has shown that the middle class also backed the previous Congress-led government, which had presided over the fastest economic growth rates in Indian history (Jaffrelot and Verniers 2009). Once economic conditions began to deteriorate, particularly toward the final stage of their second term in office, the support of the middle class also began to falter. In other words, it seems logical that the ideological tether of the middle class to political parties will likely remain weak for the foreseeable future—not least because middle class identification cuts across most social groupings.
However, while social bases will continue to matter for politics, as the importance of the aspirational middle class grows, one can expect a concomitant growth in economic voting—although it is as yet unclear whether this voting will take place on retrospective or prospective lines.
This chapter was originally published in the book The New Middle Class in India and Brazil: Green Perspectives? We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.
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