Caste and democratization in postcolonial India: an ethnographic examination of lower caste politics in Bihar

Abstract

This article examines the case of lower-caste politics in the populous north Indian state of Bihar in order to show the ways in which the liberal democratic model fails to capture the realities of democracy in postcolonial India. In order to explain the rise of lower-caste politics, I examine the ways in which relationships between state institutions, caste networks and locally dominant groups shape contemporary political possibilities, necessitating a re-evaluation of the relationship between liberalism and democracy in India. With state institutions being unable to effectively enforce rights, a caste-based notion of popular sovereignty became dominant – as an idea (the lower-caste majority should rule) and as the everyday rough-and-tumble of an electoral politics that ultimately revolves around the force of numbers. It is inadequate, and actually unhelpful, to simply point out the obvious fact that the enforcement of rights is routinely and systematically undermined in practice and to call for more effective implementation. In fact, I argue that effective implementation in places such as Bihar could only be possible through a radical restructuring of local power that can only come from below, through democratic practice itself.

Keywords:

• caste
• democracy
• postcolonial
• India
• Bihar

Acknowledgements

The Gates Cambridge Trust and the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania funded this research. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Notes

See Diamond and Morlino, Assessing the Quality of Democracy; Zakaria, The Future of Freedom.

For a similar argument, see Koelble and LiPuma, ‘Democratizing Democracy’, 1–28.

Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 2–3. For a similar point, see also Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism, 227–37.

Laclau, On Populist Reason, 167.

Khilnani, The Idea of India, 17.

Michelutti, The Vernacularisation of Democracy.

See Gupta, Interrogating Caste.

Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed, 38.

As Mamdani shows so well for Africa, colonial histories have shaped the contemporary experience of democracy in ways that the liberal democratic model obscures. See Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.

See Goankar, ‘On Cultures of Democracy’; see note 6; Paley, ‘Toward an Anthropology of Democracy’; Paley, Democracy: Anthropological Approaches; Spencer, Anthropology, Politics and the State.

Such an approach requires using a minimalist definition of democratization in order to avoid prejudging the content that emerges from investigation according to normative standards that are bound to reflect personal and cultural biases. By the term ‘democratization’, I simply emphasize increasing popular participation in the political process, uncertain electoral outcomes and at least the potential for substantive transfers of power to occur according to electoral outcomes. See, for example, the minimalist definition of democracy advocated by Lipset and Lakin, The Democratic Century, 19–37, that emphasizes political ‘inclusivity’ (participation) and ‘contestation’ (choice).

‘No major observer denies that India is a democracy, but particularly in states (like Bihar) where corruption, criminality, murder, and kidnapping heavily taint the electoral process, it is an illiberal and degraded one’. Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy’, 28. See also, Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, 111, and the chapter on Bihar in Kohli, Democracy and Discontent.

M.N. Srinivas's influential concept of the ‘dominant caste’ asserted that ‘A caste may be said to be “dominant” when it preponderates numerically over the other castes, and when it also wields preponderant economic and political power’ (Caste in Modern India, and Other Essays, 300). While Srinivas's concept of the dominant caste has been criticized, I believe that the concept is still relevant, not least because the English term ‘dominance’ is popularly used to refer to the strength of groups designated in caste terms within various contexts. See Karanth, Caste in Contemporary Rural India for a more recent account of the dominant-caste concept. See Witsoe, ‘Territorial Democracy’ for an analysis of how caste dominance impacts electoral practice.

See Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries’. See also the volumes Das and Poole, Anthropology in the Margins of the State; Fuller and Benei, The Everyday State and Society in Modern India and Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination.

See Laclau, On Populist Reason, for a detailed analysis of populism. Laclau argues that the ambiguous concept of ‘populism’ is routinely utilized to explain away aspects of democratic practice that liberal theory is unable to comprehend.

Rajwade, ‘Fifty Five Years of a Feudal Democracy’; Desai, ‘India's Feudal Democracy’.

See Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal. On contemporary criticism of the expanding power of zamindars in the late eighteenth-century Patna, see Yang, Bazaar India.

Yang, The Limited Raj.

See Cohn, The Census, Social Structure and Change in South Asia; Dirks, Castes of Mind; Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age.

See, for example, Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics, 160–62, 264.

Gupta, Postcolonial Developments.

The rise of Hindu nationalism can be seen emerging as a reaction to lower-caste political empowerment. See Corbridge and Harriss, Reinventing India.

This was a scandal involving kickbacks from a Swedish defence firm.

See Yadav, Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge. The first ‘democratic upsurge’ began in the mid-1960s with the growing strength of opposition parties.

See Dirks, Castes of Mind, 275–6, for a graphic account of these protests. The decision was stayed by the Supreme Court but eventually implemented in 1992.

For a detailed account of the 15 years of RJD rule and the 2005 elections in Bihar, see Witsoe, A View from the States – Bihar.

Jaffrelot, India's Silent Revolution.

Upper castes make up an estimated 15% and 20% of the population in the major states of North India.

Taken from Chaudhary, Bihar mein samajik parivartan ke kuchh aayam (1912–1990), 316. Translation is mine.

Raj Kamal Jha and Farzand Ahmed, ‘Laloo's Magic’.

The few initiatives that were attempted, such Lalu's innovative idea of setting up charvaha schools in remote areas so that children could attend while grazing cattle (primarily benefiting poorer Yadavs), were not sustained. A notable and important exception was the Indira Awas Yojna that provided poor families with funds to build basic brick houses. Since the funds were provided by the central government, were transferred directly to the poor family (requiring no ongoing supervision) and could easily be monitored by Lalu when he frequently visited the poorest lower-caste hamlets, this scheme was a relative success in Lalu's Bihar.

See Witsoe, ‘Corruption as Power’.

‘Going with the Wind’, India Today, February 28, 1995, p. 100.

See note 32.

See, for example, note 21 and Chakravarty, Social Power and Everyday Class Relations, both based on fieldwork conducted mostly before the lower-caste politics of the 1990s.

Nedumpara, Political Economy and Class Contradictions.

Although the Rajput villagers of Rajnagar themselves have little knowledge of the pre-colonial period, a local historian from a neighbouring village told me that Rajnagar Gahr was the centre of a small kingdom that lasted well into the Mughal period.

See Corbridge, Williams, Srivastava, and Véron, Seeing the State, 192–206.

See note 32, 73–85.

The rate of female labour, however, was half of this rate at 25 rupees per day. In addition, during labour-intensive periods such as harvesting of the potato crop, female and child labourers were brought in from other villages, as far as a 100 km away. The rate given during the potato harvest in 2003 was 5 kg of potatoes per day, which were selling in the village at that time for 3 rupees a kilo (2.5 rupees wholesale), providing a very low wage. This extreme gender bias in wage rate, the use of child labour and the importation of outside labour allowed a partial circumvention of the relatively high adult male wage rates.

Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

This was the main reason given by the respondents to a survey of 100 households that I conducted in Rajnagar in 2010.

See note 32.

By 2007, a survey that I conducted of 400 households found that upper castes in Rajnagar owned less than 30% of agricultural land and most of this was being either rented or sharecropped out.

From 1993–1994 to 2004–2005, the ‘head count ratio’ declined 14% (from 57.2% to 43.1%), compared with an 8% decline in India as a whole (from 37.26% to 29.18%). In contrast, neighbouring Orissa saw a decline of just 2.5% and has now surpassed Bihar as the state with the highest headcount ratio of 47.8%. Even more surprisingly, the headcount ratio of the ‘very poor’ halved in Bihar from 28.3% to 14.7% compared with a 5.7% decrease in India and an actual increase in Orissa. While this improvement was from a very low base, it is still surprising, given the dismal condition of public institutions and the lack of investment in the state during this period. These figures are from the 61st and 50th rounds of the National Sample Survey (the most important source for poverty assessments by the Planning Commission) and are for united Bihar. See Mahendra and Ravi, ‘Poverty and Inequality: all India and States, 1983–2005’.

See also Witsoe (2009).

For an intriguing examination of the role of public spectacles and violence in Indian democracy, see Hansen, Wages of Violence, especially pp. 230–2.

Witsoe, ‘Territorial Democracy’.

Yadav members made up 27% of the state legislative assembly in 2002, more than all other OBC castes combined, and Yadav legislators made up no less than 40% of the ruling party's legislators compared with only 17% from other OBC castes. See Witsoe, ‘Social Justice and Stalled Development’.

See Witsoe, ‘Social Justice and Stalled Development’.

See note 32.

This contrasts with Scott, see note 41, who reports that many villagers in Malaysia wanted a return to the ‘moral economy’ of patronage.

Interview with Jagannath Mishra at his residence in Patna, April, 2003.

For a characteristic account of the media attention lavished on Nitish's Bihar, see Jason Overdorf, ‘From Worst to Near First’.