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Introduction 1
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 ofplanning 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-basedparty? 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
14. Conclusion 492
Select Bibliography 497
Index 501
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