In contemporary politics when political parties talk of vote bank, or of caste dominance, they refer to the electoral constituency—consisting of several settlements—and not to any single village; and quite often they use it for a caste cluster, such as SC votes, Rajput votes, Muslim votes; none of these qualifies as a caste in the sociological sense of the term. It appears that Srinivas tried to explain the then existing pattern of caste-related violence, the oppression of the poor and the lowly by the rich and powerful feudal chiefs or landlords. Coming from the pen of a celebrated sociologist, this package, namely the concept, the attendant terms (such as ‘vote bank’) and some of the despicable practices (such as sexual exploitation of women of the lower strata) had an easy acceptability. The unintended consequences of this uncritical acceptance were not foreseen and the critique of the concept was somewhat ignored.
The message that the concept conveyed, that of the significant role of caste in politics—local and national—was picked up by political strategists and political journalists. The strategists employed tactics to create caste-based ‘vote banks’ and the political journalists and some social scientists used this framework to analyse election results. Caste became an explanatory variable on false premises, but has become a guiding principle in the election strategies of all political parties. Despite all talks of secularism, and despite decrying caste, such efforts have led to the strengthening of caste on frontiers other than the traditional. Caste identities have gained in prominence in terms of the ‘peripheral attributes’ whereas the ‘sufficiently relevant attributes’, have disappeared, and even the core attribute is getting somewhat diluted. In the process, a unity came to be fostered at the level of a caste cluster—the Jat vote, the Yadav vote, or the Brahman vote, forgetting that the real operative caste at the regional level is different from such a cumulative category.
The success of a Jat or a Brahman from a given constituency is generally attributed to the numerical preponderance of that group. What is forgotten is the point that using the same tactics, different political parties put up candidates from the same cluster that is regarded as preponderant. Quite naturally, anyone winning the election will hail from that group, but his victory cannot be attributed solely to the numerical strength of that caste cluster. This is because if there are several candidates from the same caste, each one of them would be getting only a part of that so-called ‘vote bank’ and will have to depend on support from other caste groups. This fact demolishes the myth of the vote bank. It is allright for a political strategist to create a vote bank on the basis of a caste-based unity, but it is wrong to assume that the people who supposedly constitute that vote bank would oblige the strategist.
On the positive side, it can be said that on the political front, where numbers matter, efforts are being made to use the idiom of caste to create solidarity at the level of caste cluster, both regionally and nationally. Such groups emerge as regional or all-India organizations and are supra-caste in character. There have been studies of such organizations and movements focusing on their contribution to the political process and to social reforms relative to caste. If several castes are congregated into a relatively smaller number of caste clusters and become inter-regional in their composition, then the old picture of caste in India will get drastically changed. This may mean a new incarnation of caste.
In the village social structure, one can find ritual hierarchy as well as other forms of stratification based on power and wealth. The same caste may have families that belong to different economic classes. Also, people may maintain their endogamous boundaries but belong to economic strata that cut across castes. Class and caste are, thus, not polar opposites and provide different vantage points for stratification.
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