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ABSTRACT
This article uses an analysis of the rise of India's New Middle Class (NMC) to develop a class analytics of democratic politics in India. The article locates the politics of India's democracy within the framework of comparative class analytics and integrates class analysis with the politics of caste, religion, and language. The article develops two central arguments. The first is that the dominant fraction of the middle class plays a central role in the politics of hegemony. These hegemonic politics are played out both as attempts to coordinate the interests of the dominant classes and to forge internal unity within the highly diverse fragments of the middle class. But rather than producing the classical pattern of liberal hegemony (in which the ruling bloc actively elicits the consent of subordinate classes) in India these projects have been marked by middle-class illiberalism, and most notably a distancing from lower classes. Second, we argue that the contours of the NMC can be grasped as a class-in-practice, that is, as a class defined by its politics and the everyday practices through which it reproduces its privileged position. Sociocultural inequalities such as caste and language are an integral part of the process of middle-class formation. We argue that the NMC is a tangible and significant phenomenon, but one whose boundaries are constantly being defined and tested. The hegemonic aspirations of the NMC have taken the form of a politics of reaction, blending market liberalism and political and social illiberalism.
Notes
1. See for example Rudolph and Rudolph Citation1987.
2. Reuschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens Citation1992; Luebbert Citation1991.
3. We use hegemony in the traditional Gramscian sense to refer to a specific type of class domination that relies on eliciting consent from subordinate groups (more so than on coercion) through a “political-ethical” project that is effective because it resonates ideologically with the “common sense” of the masses and because it is materially grounded, and specifically that the interests of the dominant group or bloc are “concretely coordinated” with “the general interests of subordinate groups.” Gramsci explicitly contrasts the material interests of a hegemonic class (or bloc) with dominant classes that act in accordance with their “narrowly corporate economic interest.” See Gramsci Citation1972, 182.
4. Social science analyses have tended to neglect the role of the middle classes and have focused primarily on state-capital-bourgeoisie relations. See Chibber Citation2003; Kohli 2004. Exceptions to this include Bardhan Citation1984 and 1993 and Deshpande Citation2003.
5. For a useful critical discussion of attempts at measuring the middle classes, see Deshpande Citation2003.
6. The contrast between the bourgeoisie and the middle class is worth emphasizing. The bourgeoisie has structural power that translates into political power in ways that make it less necessary for this class to mobilize visibly and politically in order to reproduce itself. Its strategy of reproduction is driven by the systemic logic of capital accumulation. The middle class is characterized by a higher degree of structural complexity and uncertainty and exists through itself, that is, through the practices through which it reproduces itself.
7. For culturalist approaches, see Mankekar Citation1999; Rajagopal Citation2001b; for economistic approaches at measuring the middle class, see Sridharan Citation2004.
8. Yadav Citation2000.
9. The Congress has adopted what analysts have called a soft Hindutva approach in recent electoral campaigns. The Congress has also tried to use appeasement and a management of competing religious nationalist groups: see, for example, Rajiv Gandhi's attempt to manage the Ayodhya movement by granting permission to build the temple near the site and his well-publicized mismanagement in the Shah Bano case.
10. Our discussion of Hindu nationalism focuses on the Hindu middle classes because we are concerned with dominant segments of the middle classes that are attempting to draw the ideological and material boundaries of a hegemonic project; for historical discussions of the Muslim middle class, see Hasan Citation1997.
11. Such a comparative perspective is especially important in order to avoid the exceptionalist tendency to view Hindutva as a phenomena particular to India. In fact this politics of middle class illiberalism does not have to take a religious nationalist form and can take the form of a secular illiberalism. This is true both in the Indian context as well as in comparative contexts where middle class illiberalism has centered around political reactions based on race, ethnicity, and nationality (as seen in contemporary middle-class responses to immigration in the United States).
12. Wright Citation1985.
13. Bourdieu Citation1984.
14. See Varma Citation1998.
15. Corbridge and Harris Citation2000.
16. Chatterjee Citation1993.
17. Kaviraj 1988 and Bardhan Citation1998.
18. Gramsci Citation1972, 260.
19. Bardhan Citation1984.
20. Chatterjee Citation1993, 214.
21. See Frankel 1979; Corbridge and Harriss Citation2000.
22. See Hasan, Citation1998.
23. Vanaik, Citation2002. Opposition to the Emergency from segments of the middle class was, of course, strong. The point however, is that aspects of the Emergency, particularly developmental aspects such as slum demolition and family planning, invoked middle-class models of developmentalism and civic order.
24. Khilnani Citation1997; Deshpande Citation2003.
25. Deshpande Citation2003, 139.
26. Kohli Citation2006.
29. Yadav Citation1999.
27. Vanaik Citation2002, 231.
28. In Kerala with its long history of Communist Party mobilization or Tamil Nadu with its anti-Brahminical movements the BJP has made limited inroads. And while the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM) hierarchy in West Bengal has reproduced upper caste dominance, the party has built linkages between middle-class, working-class, and rural interests. Clearly, varying regional class configurations have produced alternative political trajectories that coexist with the broad national patterns analyzed in this article. In Kerala and to a lesser extent West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, redistributive class coalitions, born to varying degrees of social movements, have effectively linked lower-class demands to state policies. It remains to be seen how and to what extent liberalization will change such processes. In Kerala, the CPIM has promoted democratic decentralization as a specific response to liberalization. See Heller Citation2005.
30. Hansen Citation1999; Corbridge and Harriss Citation2000; Jaffrelot Citation1996.
31. Luebbert Citation1991.
32. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens Citation1992.
33. Davis Citation2004.
34. Linz and Stepan Citation1996.
35. Hansen Citation1999.
36. Sridharan Citation2004; Fernandes Citation2000.
37. See Katzenstein Citation1979.
38. Sridharan Citation2004, 423.
39. Scholars of popular culture have analyzed the ways in which advertising images and television programming encode representations of middle-class identity with symbols that invoke idealized representations of family order and Hindu identity. Rajagopal Citation2001b.
40. The middle class presents itself in universalistic terms even as its own practices reproduce various social hierarchies. When middle class discourses (in the media, for instance) specifically speak of caste or religion they do so by naming subordinated social groups as “special interest.” Caste, for instance, only becomes visible when the term is invoked by subordinate social groups making demands through reified bureaucratic categories such as SC and OBC. It is rendered invisible or misrecognized in the politics of the middle classes.
41. Hansen Citation1999.
42. Ibid.
43. Bourdieu Citation1984, 77.
44. See Rajagopal Citation2001a.
45. Polanyi Citation1944, 35.
46. Rudolph and Rudolph Citation2001.
47. Bourdieu Citation2001, 11–12.
48. See Rudolph and Rudolph Citation1987.
49. The figure is for 1998/99. Gragnolati et al. 2005, 1.
50. See Basu Citation2001.
51. The Hindu, AE-2, 20 May 2004.
52. Ibid.
53. Bourdieu Citation1984.
54. Cited in World Bank Citation2006, 8.
55. Tilly Citation1998.
56. Deshpande Citation2003, 115.
57. Chopra Citation2003, 434.
58. Kapur, citing Rosenthal Citation2006, 12.
59. Weiner Citation1991.
60. Chopra Citation2003, 438. Emphasis in original.
61. Bourdieu has made precisely this argument about class and the recalibration of academic credentials in France.
62. Chopra Citation2003, 439.
63. Cited in ibid., 437.
64. Kapur Citation2006.
65. Ibid.
66. Castells 2004.
67. Harvey Citation1990.
68. Sheth, Citation1999a and 1999b.
69. Sheth Citation1999a.
70. Jaffrelot Citation2000.
71. Hasan Citation1998.
72. On Calcutta, see Roy Citation2003; on Delhi, see Harriss Citation2005 and this volume; on Bangalore, see Heitzman Citation1999; on Mumbai, see Fernandes Citation2004.
73. Bhowmick 2002.
74. Note that this type of exclusionary middle-class claim on democratic process can also be seen more broadly in public interest litigation. This form of litigation has been a preserve of NMC politics because it requires knowledge of courts, legal connections, English skills (laws are often not published in the vernacular), and technical skills — the kinds of social and cultural capital we have argued is central to middle-class formation and politics. Thanks to Ron Herring for pointing this out.
75. Kapur Citation2006, Table 1a.
76. Solomon and Bhuvaneshari 2001, 108.
77. See Mehta Citation2006 and Yadav and Deshpande Citation2006.