India's silent revolution : the rise of the lower castes in North India / Christophe Jaffrelot.
- Format:
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- Author/Creator:
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- Contributor:
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- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
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- Physical Description:
- xiv, 505 pages ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Columbia University Press, [2003]
- Summary:
- Since the 1960s a new assertiveness has characterized Indias formerly silent majority, the lower castes that comprise more than two-thirds of the population. Today Indias most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is controlled by lower-caste politicians, as is Bihar, and lower-caste representation in national politics is growing inexorably. Jaffrelot argues that this trend constitutes a genuine "democratization" of India and that the social and economic effects of this "silent revolution" are bound to multiply in the years to come.
- Contents:
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- The North-South opposition 5
- The two ages of democracy in India 6
- Part I. Congress in Power or India as a Conservative Democracy 11
- 1. The Gandhian sources of Congress conservatism 13
- Reformism and social organicism in Gandhi's thought 14
- The conflict between Gandhi and Ambedkar 19
- The conservative influence of Gandhi on the Congress in North India 25
- Congress and social transformation: an empty discourse? 31
- The thwarting of land reform: the case of Uttar Pradesh 32
- The problem of planning and the agricultural cooperatives 45
- 2. The Congress: party of the intelligentsia, or party of the notables? 48
- The Congress intelligentsia
- unevenly progressive 52
- Congress 'Vote Banks' politics 64
- 3. The Congress Party and the Scheduled Castes: reservations and co-option 89
- The reservation policy: the smokescreen of the egalitarian discourse 91
- What party for the Scheduled Castes? 102
- 4. Indira Gandhi, the populist repertoire and the aborted reform of Congress 115
- Towards a new Congress? 116
- How to transform Congress into a cadre-based party? 131
- The Emergency: suspending democracy, a condition for social reforms? 136
- Part II. The Uneven Emancipation of the Lower Castes: Non-Brahmins in the South, OBCs in the North 144
- 5. Caste transformations in the South and West: ethnicisation and positive discrimination 147
- The non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra: an ideology of empowerment 153
- From non-Brahminism to Dravidianism in Tamil Nadu 166
- The Non-Brahmin as a bureaucratic creation: the quest for empowerment 172
- Caste federations: the case of Gujarat 180
- 6. Were there Low Caste movements in North India? 185
- The Kayasths as Chandraguptas 185
- Sanskritisation and Division among Yadavs and Kurmis 187
- The North Indian Untouchables, Sanskritisation and bhakti 199
- 7. Caste as the building block of the 'Other Backward Classes': the impact of reservations 214
- How to discriminate positively? The constitutional debate 215
- The first 'Backward Classes' Commission or the partial concealment of caste 221
- The AIBCF and the quotas: an ephemeral low-castes front 229
- Reservation policies: the North-South contrast 237
- Part III. Quota Politics and Kisan Politics: Complementarity and Competition 254
- 8. The Socialists as defenders of the Lower Castes, Jat politicians as advocates of the peasants 254
- The Socialists and the Low Castes 256
- Kisan politics and the mobilisation of the Jat farmers 271
- Charan Singh's marginalisation within the Uttar Pradesh Congress 289
- 9. The quest for power and the first Janata Government 305
- The BLD: a joint venture 305
- The Janata experiment 309
- The Mandal Commission: the reservation issue revisited at the Centre 320
- When the North lags behind: reservation policies outside the Hindi Belt in the 1980s 324
- The Lok Dal fighting for Mandal 327
- 10. The Janata Dal and the rise to power of the Low Castes 335
- Quota politics takes over 335
- Caste polarization around Mandal 343
- The electoral fallout of the Mandal affair 349
- Geographical unevenness 352
- Are the OBCs a social and political category? 363
- 11. The renewal of Dalit politics: The B.S.P. party of the Bahujans? 387
- Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Samaj: from interest group to political force 388
- Towards a 'bahujan' front? 396
- Using Ladders to Attain power... and Consolidating the Dalit vote bank 409
- Part IV The Upper Castes' Political Domination on Trial: The Congress(I), the BJP and Mandal 426
- 12. The Congress(I) and the 'Coalition of Extremes' revisited 427
- The end of a catch-all party 428
- The Congress accommodating strategy in Madhya Pradesh: a new version of the 'Coalition of Extremes' pattern 435
- 13. The Hindu Nationalist division of labour: Sewa Bharti and the BJP between Sanskritisation and 'social engineering' 453
- The welfarist strategy of Sewa Bharti 454
- The BJP from Sanskritisation to graded 'social engineering' 462
- 1.1. Distribution of operational holdings in India by size group, 1953-72 44
- 2.1. Caste and religion of delegates to the Annual Sessions of the Congress, 1919-23 49
- 2.2. Profession of Delegates to the Annual Sessions of Congress, 1919-23 50
- 2.3. Caste and community of non-Muslim members of the assembly of Bombay Presidency, 1920-37 51
- 2.4. Caste and community of Uttar Pradesh Congress MLAs, 1952-62 67
- 2.5. Caste and community of Congress Cadres in Uttar Pradesh, 1964-8 68
- 2.6. Caste and community of members of the Uttar Pradesh Government, 1937-67 70
- 2.7. Caste and community of Congress MLAs in Bihar, 1957-62 72
- 2.8. Caste and community of members of the Pradesh Congress Committee of Bihar, 1947-60 73
- 2.9. Caste of Congress candidates to the Rajasthan Assembly, 1952-67 75
- 2.10. Caste and community of Congress MLAs and in parentheses of all MLAs in the Rajasthan Assembly, 1952-67 76
- 2.11. Caste and community in the Congress Government of Rajasthan, 1952-67 77
- 2.12. Caste and community of Congress MLAs and (in parentheses) of all MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, 1957-67 81
- 2.13. Caste and community of members of the Congress Government in Madhya Pradesh, 1953-67 82
- 2.14. Caste and community of Congress MPs and (in parentheses) of all MPs elected in the Hindi Belt, 1952-67 83.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 497-500) and index.
- Local Notes:
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- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edith E. Clark Endowment Fund.
- ISBN:
- 0231127863
- OCLC:
- 50064516
- Online:
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