Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy: An Examination of the Politics of Lower-Caste

Empowerment in North India

Author(s): Jeffrey Witsoe
Source: American Anthropologist , DECEMBER 2011, New Series, Vol. 113, No. 4
(DECEMBER 2011), pp. 619-631
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

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 Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy: An Examination of the
Politics of Lower-Caste Empowerment in North India
Jeffrey witsoe

ABSTRACT With this article, I seek to contribute to an anthropological understanding of democracy through an

examination of the politics of lower-caste empowerment in Bihar, a populous state in north India. I argue that

democracy has to be examined within the context of historical processes that have shaped the larger political

economy within which democratic practice unfolds, revealing the specificities of India's postcolonial democracy.

Caste as political identity extends democratic practice into the relations of everyday life, challenging routine forms of

violence and inequality and collapsing any pretense to a separate "political sphere." An explicitly lower-caste politics

generated political subjectivities based on a notion of popular sovereignty as rule by the lower-caste majority, and

I show the ways in which this disruptive politics transformed village life. This underscores that Bihar represents an

"alternate democracy" but also that we need alternate frameworks for understanding the multifarious experience

of democracy today, [i democracy , postcolonial , caste , India]

had settled on Sunil, a member of a large landowning family.

My rable. initial
rable.I Iwas
was experience observing panchayat
observing village-level of village-level
(village-Indian democracy panchayat was (village- memo- In the past, political competition in their panchayat would
have been restricted to different factions of Bhumihar land-
level governmental bodies) elections in the populous north
Indian state of Bihar in 2001 , which were being held for the lords, but those days have ended, and unity was now per-
first time after a gap of 23 years. It was short-term ethno- ceived as necessary to fend off new political competitors.
graphy lasting only a few months, but in retrospect many I was staying in the Muslim section of the village (tola), in
of the crucial themes that would emerge for me over sub- the house of one of my two research assistants. The process of
sequent years of research were starkly visible. In the days selecting a single Muslim candidate was considerably more
before voting in a panchayat consisting of two villages that complex, reflecting the heterogeneousness of this tola in
I will call Massafarnagar, the activity centered not around terms of class and caste - including upper caste (there is
campaigning to a larger "public" but, rather, on the efforts of caste among Muslims in India), landed Muslim families,
three different groups of voters - Muslims, Bhumihars, and and relatively poor, lower-caste Muslim laborers. With the
Yadavs - to unanimously choose a candidate for the key post imam of the village mosque acting as a unifier, Alam, a
of mukhia (headman) from among their ranks. Each group Muslim from a relatively elite family, was chosen as the
needed to agree on a single candidate to avoid a splitting of consensus candidate. There was a single lower-caste Muslim
their votes that would ensure the victory of a candidate from candidate, however, who refused to "sit down," although
a rival group.1 Two days before the election, I attended most people in the tola came to refer to him as a "dummy
a raucous, outdoor, all-night meeting at which over 200 candidate" and believed him to be financed by the Bhumihars
Yadav villagers - a "middle" caste of small farmers and dairy as a ploy to divide the Muslim tola's votes. And there was
producers - settled on the candidate Krishna Babu, who had truth to this allegation: while I was interviewing Sunil at his
ties to a local Yadav "mafia" politician and was seen by many house, Alam casually entered the house and was handed a
Yadavs as being capable of protecting them from Bhumihar large wad of cash by Sunil.
landlords. The meeting, which continued through the next The night before the election, while I was discussing
night, was also intended to persuade other Yadav candidates election-related events with a group of villagers at a lo-
to "sit down" and to tell their supporters to vote for the com- cal tea stall on the side of the main road running through
promise candidate. The landowning, upper-caste Bhumihars the village, two men from outside the village drove by on

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 113, No. 4, pp. 619-631, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. © 2011 by the American Anthropological
Association. All rights reserved. DOl: 10.1 m/j. 1548-1433.2011. 01374.x

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620 American Anthropologist • Vol. 113, No. 4 • December 2011

motorcycles with AK-47 assault rifles conspicuously visible, asked a member of my Muslim host's family why they did
clearly heading for the Yadav tola. When I awoke the next not file a complaint and seek a reelection, he responded,
morning, I found my coresearchers remarkably unenthusi- "How can we, we are democratic people."2
astic about attending the elections, apparently influenced by Of course, the presence of electoral misconduct here is
rumors of impending violence. They claimed they were ill not particularly novel. What was distinctive, however, was
and preferred to observe the elections from the safety of the way that it was openly, publicly performed and the fact
the house. So I set out alone to observe the voting process that this performance was more or less accepted as part of
taking place in a nearby school in the Muslim tola. Voting the game. Although it would be easy to read this episode
was chaotic, with large crowds of voters thronging the vot- as evidence of Bihar being a "failed democracy," I suggest
ing booths - including many Muslim women with their saris that there is considerably more to this story. The election
covering their faces in observance of purdah - and frequent highlighted the central role of group identifications, not in-
scuffles breaking out among voters as they scrambled to en- dividual citizenship, as the basis of democratic practice. The
sure that they would have the chance to cast their ballot. open and competitive use of deadly violence - a remark-
In the distance, the sound of motorcycles fast approaching ably literal reflection of Michel Foucault' s famous formula
caused me to seek the safety of nearby bushes. As the mo- (inverting Clausewitz) that "politics is the continuation of
torcycles drew closer, the sound of gunfire filled the air, and war by other means" - reflected what the election was really
the ground began shaking as homemade bombs - popular in about: relations of power in the village (Foucault 2003: 1 5).3
Bihar during elections - were lobbed inside the voting This explains both the lack of ideological debates or policy
booths. In the ensuing panic, dozens of voters ran toward platforms and the intensity of contestation. Despite a lack of
my hiding spot, gathering nearby to assess the situation. policy "substance," this election was desperately meaningful
Women voters in particular, adamant that they couldn't for most people. I would suggest, therefore, that to evaluate
abandon "their booths," picked up stones and ran back to this election in terms of its legitimacy as a valid expression of
confront the assailants who, apparently unwilling to fire into "democracy" would miss the point: "the pertinent opposition
the approaching crowd, took shelter in a nearby house. Vot- is not between the legitimate and the illegitimate, but that
ing was halted for a crucial period in the "Muslim booths" and between struggle and submission" (Foucault 2003: 17). And
never resumed its previously vigorous rate, which proved there was a real possibility for transfers of power to occur
to be disastrous for Alam. An older Muslim man remarked
if events had transpired differently. Although the Bhumihar
to me in disgust, "We have lost." landlords did manage to retain control of the panchayat this
It wasn't until later - after interviewing people in var- time, it was not without significant struggle and risk, and
ious areas of the village - that I was able to piece together the election could well have had a very different outcome
what exactly had transpired. Rumors had spread to Krishna if events had transpired differently. The election could not,
Babu that a Hindu -Muslim riot was occurring at the Muslim therefore, be said to simply be "rigged." At the very least,
booths and that Hindus were being slaughtered. This played then, elections such as this changed the means by which dom-
on religious tensions that had emerged in recent years over inant groups were forced to reproduce their dominance, in
land rights to what the Muslim community believed to be the process producing a very public spectacle of the pre-
an old burial ground just outside their village. The two cariousness of their position in a democracy with universal
motorcycle -born gunmen, who had been guarding the Ya- franchise. And in thousands of villages across Bihar, transfers
dav booths, were dispatched to the Muslim booths to handle of power did take place, as we shall see with the case of Ra-
the situation, resulting in the scene that I had witnessed. Af- jnagar examined below. This election reflected the ways in
ter they departed, two unknown armed assailants attacked which Indian politics represents a distinctively postcolonial
the Yadav booths and stole the ballot boxes, throwing them democracy that differs in systematic ways from liberal demo-
into a well. Most villagers believed that Sunil had orches- cratic modes of governance. As such, I argue that we need
trated this whole series of events - that he spread the rumor new theorization to truly understand the complexities and
and hired the gunmen (who else would have hired them?). In potentialities of democratization in postcolonial contexts.
any case, with both of his opponents' booths compromised,
Sunil easily won the election. INDIA'S POSTCOLONIAL DEMOCRACY
What struck me the most when I returned to
The politics of caste reveals important insights about India's
Mussafarnagar a month later was that nobody had filed an democracy that I think are relevant to understanding global
official complaint, and although both Muslim and Yadav vil- democratic experience in the 21st century. The vast major-
lagers were upset at the result of the elections, people with ity of countries now claim to be democracies, even if this
whom I spoke tended to blame the outcome on their own claim is contested in many cases.4 Democracy has become a
gullibility and lack of tactical prowess rather than seeing it global discourse with an internationally endowed normative
as the result of criminal cheating. In fact, I sensed more than force that has become increasingly important in legitimizing
a little admiration for how "clever" Sunil' s tactics had been, a post- Cold War geopolitical order (Paley 2008). The dra-
and I gleaned that for some this perhaps even justified his matic global expansion of democracy in recent decades, how-
victory - apparently the "best" candidate had won. When I ever, has occurred largely in postcolonial countries where

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the introduction of democracy has not always turned out
the way that Western powers and national elites had an-
ticipated. In response, many liberal political theorists have
viewed this as deviation from an implicit norm.5 This line of
thinking - with its clear parallel to modernization theory -
would find it hard to contemplate that so-called "advanced
democracies" could learn anything meaningful from demo-
cratic experience in the rest of the world.
In contrast, a growing body of anthropological work on
democracy explores the multiplicity of democratic experi-
ences.6 Given the global currency that liberal democracy
currently enjoys (at least within elite circles), the central
problematic that anthropological engagement with democ-
racy has to address is how to theorize democratic difference
beyond the liberal democratic framework. This can be seen
as an important variant of the more general problematic of
applying the concepts of Western social theory that under-
lie social scientific analysis to postcolonial realities because
these concepts, although claiming universality, were con-
structed to understand Western modernity (Chakrabarty
2000). Prevailing conceptions of democracy could also be
seen as suffering from a similar "universalized provincial-
ism. w And although the philosophical and theoretical tradi-
tions associated with liberal democracy have undoubtedly
influenced political life in the postcolonial world in impor-
tant ways, they are also insufficient to capture postcolo-
nial political realities. There is an urgent need to produce
"positive" theorization of postcolonial democracy - positive
in the sense of not being reduced to the frameworks of analy-
sis that have emerged from, and formed part of, liberal
democratic modes of governance or even that derive from
critiques of liberal democracy. This article represents an ini-
tial attempt to theorize lower- caste politics on its own terms
and to use this theorization as a window into the specificities
of India's postcolonial democracy.
Seeking to explore "the existence of a broad range of
democracies," David Nugent (2008) examines how an "alter-
native democracy" was constructed by the American Popular
Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) in the Chachapoyas region
of Peru that rejected liberalism, centering instead on a par-
ticular notion of popular sovereignty (which the party called
"functional democracy") that sought to produce a socialism
based on cooperative indigenous communities. Noting that
normative model of liberal democracy emerged from par-
ticular processes of state formation in Western Europe that
differed greatly from processes of state formation in other
parts of the world (and that made the pretense of liberalism
a farce in Chachapoyas), Nugent argues that "we have to
consider the broader political structure within which move-
ments of democratization are embedded" (2008:22). I take
Nugent' s focus on divergent processes of state formation as
an important starting point for understanding democratic
difference .
Building on this work, I argue that the specificities of
colonialism need to be given prominence. If, as Nugent in-
sightfully points out, divergent processes of state formation
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Witsoe • Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy 621
have resulted in the emergence of "alternate" democracies,
we would expect histories of colonial domination to produce
distinct democratic trajectories precisely because the colo-
nial project entailed the construction of very particular types
of state institutions, political alliances, and forms of knowl-
edge. Postcolonial democracies, therefore, require differ-
ent frameworks of analysis: they cannot be situated along
a temporal, developmental trajectory, as "advanced" versus
"emerging" democracies or even as "transitional" democra-
cies, in which the implied transition is to the liberal vari-
ety. This also suggests, however, that we cannot substitute
this trajectory with a cultural relativist vision of a multipli-
city of distinct, incommensurate democratic worlds. I here
follow Fredrick Jameson's (2002) critique of the notion of
"alternate modernities" as obfuscating the subaltern positions
produced by global capitalism by suggesting that "everyone
can have their own modernity" (he urges us to replace the
word modernity with capitalism as a therapeutic exercise).
I therefore argue that the global spread of democracy
cannot be viewed as either the uneven unfolding of a universal
"democracy" (an idea most anthropologists would reject out
of hand) or simply a vernacularization of Enlightenment uni-
versais in which everyone has their own form of democracy.
It is not only that globally circulating democratic concepts
are appropriated and deployed in culturally specific ways
but also, as shall be demonstrated, that democratic possibil-
ities are shaped by global histories of colonialism and their
aftermaths - histories that often introduced these concepts
in the first place. And if processes of state formation are the
key to understanding democratic difference (Nugent 2008)
and, as Immanuel Wallerstein (1 974:402^-03) pointed out,
these processes can be shown to reflect relative positioning
within the "world system," then the operations of global cap-
italism inevitably shape democratic difference.7 This does
not, of course, imply that all postcolonial democracies are
the same: each is shaped by the interaction between specific
colonial regimes, longer histories that predate colonialism,
the particular dynamics of independence movements, their
relative position within global capitalism, and the contingen-
cies of postcolonial political economy. Rather, it suggests
that in those instances in which contemporary democracies
experienced colonial domination, such democracies may be
meaningfully described as "postcolonial."
Nikolas Rose's (1 999) penetrating analysis demonstrates
the ways in which liberal democracy entails novel modes of
governance centered on the discourse of freedom, with as-
sociated technologies of rule that produce "free" individuals.
As he so distinctively puts it, in liberal democracies "we are
governed through our freedom" (Rose 1999:62). Follow-
ing Rose, I suggest that postcolonial democracy should be
analytically situated in relation to modes of governance of
which it forms a central part but that, I suggest, do not nec-
essarily revolve around the discourse of liberalism. "Liberal
democracy" combines a liberalism based on individual rights
with a much older and subversive concept of democracy as
"rule of the people," which in fact represents "a contingent
622 American Anthropologist • Vol. 113, No. 4 • December 2011

historical articulation (Mouffe 2000:2- 3)."8 And as the wherein "techniques of governmentality often predate the
political theorist Ernesto Laclau observes, "Once the ar- nation-state." He explains that formal citizenship based on
ticulation between liberalism and democracy is considered popular sovereignty came a century and a half after the classi-
as merely contingent . . . other contingent articulations are fication, description, and enumeration of population groups
possible, so that there are forms of democracy outside the had been established by a powerful administrative apparatus
liberal symbolic framework" (2005:167). I suggest that the that continued, and even expanded, after independence in
politics of caste reflects a divergent articulation of democ- the name of a national project of development. This leads
racy shaped by colonial and postcolonial processes of state Chatterjee to describe postcolonial democracy as a "politics
formation - with concepts such as "popular sovereignty" and of the governed," contrasting what he calls "political soci-
a caste-based notion of "social justice" taking prominence at ety" with an elite -inhabited "civil society" composed of the
the expense of concepts such as "individual liberty" and "the formal legal -constitutional structure of which every citizen
rule of law." Similar to Rose's analysis of liberalism, I suggest is in theory a member but that he argues is quite different
that democratization in India, especially in the 1990s, has from the realities of political life in postcolonial contexts.
privileged the discourse of popular sovereignty - the oft- That is, if "civil society" refers to the abstract ideals of lib-
invoked "idea of democracy" (Khilnani 1 999) - but also un- eral citizenship, in practice the heterogeneity of "political
folded as a distinctive mode of governance operating through society" is where the rough and tumble of everyday politics
democratic networks. gets done. Chatterjee focuses on the ways in which "polit-
The postcolonial character of Indian democracy be- ical society" operates in the interstices of governmentality,
comes apparent when considering three interrelated factors: with subaltern groups manipulating governmental practices
(1) colonial governmentality, (2) the prevalence of rela- and categorizations, often in disregard of the formal legal
tions of dominance and subordination in the countryside that system, to gain access to development resources and secure
were encouraged by colonial strategies of governance and their often-precarious positions.
that continue to profoundly shape democratic practice, and Although I find Chatterjee' s conception useful for de-
(3) the existence of caste networks, also emerging in re- scribing many aspects of India's political life (or, as he states,
lation to colonial strategies of governance, which continue "politics in most of the world"), I question whether we can
to connect state institutions with local power.9 Members of so easily dismiss the idea of popular sovereignty to the realm
dominant castes were given privileged access to, and support of theory, devoid of practical import. Dipesh Chakrabarty
from, governmental institutions (as long as they were per- (2000) similarly observes that for most people inhabiting
ceived as being loyal allies to the Raj), and caste was utilized postcolonial India, liberal citizenship is perpetually deferred:
to categorize, rank, criminalize, recruit, and divide colonial the subaltern is recast by national elites as a "peasant" (a term
subjects (Bayly 2001; Cohn 1987; Dirks 2001). Caste iden- he uses in a broad sense) who has to be educated and devel-
tities forged relationships between landlords in the country- oped into a proper citizen. But he also notes another moment
side and an expanding, predominantly upper- caste, urban in which the subaltern is always already a citizen and whereby
elite. Although colonial caste identities became instrumen- citizenship is not endowed through individual rights but,
tal for accessing state resources and public employment, rather, enacted through democratic performance - above
privileged access to administrative jobs, in turn, allowed for all, via the act of voting. "The question is: how do we think
patronage relationships that disproportionately transferred the political at these moments when the peasant or the sub-
public resources to already dominant groups. In the process, altern emerges in the modern sphere of politics, in his or her
notions of democratic rights took on specific meanings that own right" (Chakrabarty 2000: 10). This is why, as Mukulika
reflect the ways in which power was structured. As Thomas Banerjee (2008) observes, voting in India takes on a festive,
Hansen (1999) puts it, "Because the paramount issue gov- almost sacred ethos, a vivid demonstration of the privileging
erning the political field in colonial India was (limited) repre-of the logic of popular sovereignty in Indian democracy.
sentation of communities through elite representation, and It is the act of voting then - or, more broadly, the entire
because colonial governmentality had authorized community constellation of practices, organizations, and actors related
as the natural oriental form, the discourse of rights and equal- to party politics and the electoral process - wherein equal
ity was applied almost entirely to collectivities" and democ- citizenship becomes a meaningful reality for most people.
racy was popularly experienced in relation to caste.10 Lucia In Bihar, popular sovereignty has in practice meant the rule
Michelluti (2008), for example, documents the ways in of caste groups, or alliances of caste groups, as determined
which members of the Yadav caste view themselves as a through the electoral process. This responds to the structure
"caste of politicians" and their patron deity Krishna as the of dominance shaped by colonial governmentality but adds
"originator of democracy." This is why, as Hansen points what the democratic theorist Claude Lefort (1988) referred
out, "in spite of the liberal inclinations of the first generation to as the "radical indeterminacy" of an often-unpredictable
of nationalist leaders in India, liberalism never evolved into democratic process, therefore corresponding to at least a
a permanent stream in Indian politics" (Hansen 1999:40). partial displacement of hierarchy within public life in fa-
Partha Chatterjee (2004: 36-37) also notes the impact of vor of new representations of caste as "discreet groups in
colonial processes of state formation on Indian democracy, competition" (Gupta 2000; see also Tanabe 2007).

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 Witsoe • Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy 623

This "radical indeterminacy" of democratic practice in voting turnout by subalterns coincided with a progres-
means that although a focus on processes of colonial- sive increase in the number of members of state legislative
postcolonial state formation is essential for understanding the assemblies and members of the national parliament from
context within which postcolonial democracy operates, it is lower- caste backgrounds. A political watershed occurred
insufficient for understanding the ways in which democratic when V. P. Singh, then prime minister under the National
practice transforms this context over time. In other words, Front government that was voted into power in 1989
the colonial legacy shapes India's postcolonial democracy in what was then only the second non- Congress government
ways that should not be ignored, but it does not predetermine in Delhi since independence - decided to implement th
democratic outcomes. Therefore, I find it useful to combine recommendations of the Mandai Commission (headed by
the focus on state formation detailed above with an emphasis B. P. Mandai, former chief minister of Bihar), reserving a
on hegemonic practice (Gramsci 1975; Laclau 2005; Laclau portion of central government employment for what the
and Mouffe 1985). The concept of "hegemony" - especially Indian constitution designates as "Other Backward Classes"
as developed by Laclau and Mouffe, who stress the indeter- (OBCs), an intentionally broad category that includes lower
minacy of social life and, therefore, the constructed nature castes that did not suffer from a history of untouchability
of political formations that cannot be reduced to preexisting (reservations for the latter, as well as the "Scheduled Tribes,
structures or classes - allows us to appreciate how demo- have been constitutionally mandated since 1950). This de-
cratic movements, articulated in culturally specific forms, cision had an explosive political impact marked by violent
can alter or even displace governing alliances and to grasp protests, including a number of self-immolations by upper
how this relates to the articulation of new identities and caste students, as well as an ensuing upsurge of lower-caste
discourses outside of the liberal framework. political mobilization.13
Combining an examination of democracy as hegemonic By the mid-1990s, OBC politicians dominated the state
practice with an emphasis on processes of colonial and post- assemblies in north India, especially in what were then
colonial state formation necessarily transforms both con- the two most populous states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.1
cepts. Such an approach alters our understanding of the colo- Christophe Jaffrelot (2003) has gone so far as to refer t
nial legacy, enabling recognition of processes of democratic these changes as a "silent revolution" in north India. In Bihar,
change that are significantly modifying colonially shaped for example, in the space of just a decade (from 1985 to
structures of power, identity, and discourse. An awareness of 1995), the number of OBC candidates elected to the assem-
processes of state formation, however, modifies the concept bly more than doubled to 50 percent, while the number of
of hegemonic practice to emphasize the interconnections be- upper-caste candidates more than halved to 1 7 percent, indi-
tween identities and discourse, state institutions, and local cating a profound transformation of political representation
power. Ruling regimes may exercise hegemony through a in the state.15 The explicit appeal to caste identities by the
dominant discourse, but this is only part of the story; within regional parties that emerged in the 1 990s sought to inspire
specific sites, power is rooted in relations of dominance and popular political mobilization that potentially would include
subordination backed by violence and the threat of violence. the vast majority of the population in an attempt to subvert
On one level, it is as if democracy were superimposed on a long history of upper- caste hegemony.
colonial modes of governance - as if popular sovereignty In Bihar, lower- caste politics, as well as what many peo-
were fused with a colonial sovereignty (Mbembe 2001) that ple believed to be the rampant corruption and failings of the
is still operative within local sites. What I seek to show, Bihar government, became for many people embodied in the
however, are the ways in which these two political logics political success of Lalu Prasad Yadav, the charismatic lower-
have transformed each other, resulting in what I refer to as caste leader of the Rashtriy a Janata Dal (RJD) who challenge
"postcolonial democracy." the dominance of Bihar's upper-caste elite. Lalu Yadav's pol-
In the next section, I examine the emergence of a politics itics of caste explicitly marginalized development-related
of lower- caste empowerment that swept north India from issues. A popular RJD slogan was "vikaas nahiñ, sammaan
the 1990s onward, focusing in particular on how this played chahiye" [we need dignity, not development] (J ha and Ahme
out in the populous state of Bihar, arguably the state in which 1995). In fact, he explicitly put issues related to honor and
lower- caste politics had the most profound impact. voice above development. As Lalu frequently commented
"I may not have given them heaven, but I have given them
THE POLITICS OF LOWER-CASTE EMPOWERMENT voice [swarg nahi, swar diya]." Lalu Yadav's core politica
IN BIHAR project was an all-out effort to displace the upper castes
In stark contrast with many liberal democracies, in from
which the center of Bihar's political, social, and economi
life.
subalterns are less likely to vote, popular participation in As
thehe described the fruits of this project to me toward
electoral process surged in north India from the late 1980s of his rule, "The forward castes used to rule Bihar. I
the end
on, especially among people from lower caste and have finished them off' (Witsoe 201 1 ). It might be expected
class
backgrounds. In addition, the area experienced an increasethe RJD government would have pursued an agend
that
in rural participation - a phenomenon that Yogendraof redistributive policies that would have expanded the role
Yadav
of the state, especially in areas such as primary education
(2000) calls the "second democratic upsurge."12 This upsurge

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624 American Anthropologist • Vol. 113, No. 4 • December 2011

and rural health services, which would have benefited the
majority of the lower- caste poor. Instead, governmental in-
stitutions, including education and health, were allowed to
deteriorate, and little in the way of pro-poor policy initia-
tives was even attempted.
Perhaps the RJD government's best performance was in
protecting Muslims from the "communal" riots that swept
much of India in the 1 990s (Hansen 1 999) . But even here
it was not an effectively functioning state machinery that
offered protection but, rather, Lalu's personal vigilance and
intervention whenever Hindu- Muslim violence began to
erupt - he would immediately travel to the sensitive area and
threaten local officials with dire consequences if the violence
was not quelled. And there were clear political imperatives
at work because Muslims formed a crucial part of the RJD' s
By the early 1990s, Bihar and many other state gov-
ernments faced a deepening fiscal crisis caused by the
overstaffing of many state institutions by politicians eager to
provide patronage to their caste constituencies, burgeoning
pension and debt- servicing costs, and more adverse lend-
ing terms from the central government to the states - a
result of IMF-imposed "structural adjustment" following a
payment of balance crisis in 1991. 16 Burdened with severe
fiscal constraints, the newly elected lower-caste leadership in
Bihar had little ability to undertake the difficult institutional
reforms that would have been required to dislodge upper-
caste control of public institutions nor had they interest in
promoting a private sector also owned and staffed almost
entirely by upper castes.
The role of caste identities within state institutions

support base. It was Muslims' electoral indispensability, not and the positioning of state institutions within structures of
the logic of rights and constitutional protections, that enabled power that extended well beyond institutional boundaries -
the successes of the RJD government in preventing Hindu- a legacy of the colonial mode of governance examined
Muslim riots. above - profoundly shaped the experience of democracy.
A primary factor explaining the lack of policy- oriented Although the class character of the bureaucracy has been
governance during RJD rule relates to the role of upper- intensely debated by theorists of the state (i.e., Poulantzas
caste influence within state institutions in reinforcing local 1980), the caste identities of bureaucrats are readily appar-
dominance. In the 1990s, a clear disjuncture emerged be- ent. The politics of caste highlighted the social character of
tween the caste backgrounds of elected representatives and the bureaucracy, undermining its already weak popular le-
that of the bureaucracy. According to interviews that I con- gitimacy and thereby challenging the myth of a neutral state
ducted with officers of the elite Indian Administrative Service apparatus that is a core assumption of liberalism. Without
(IAS) in Patna in 2002, the number of the officers from the the myth of an impartial, autonomous "state idea" (Abrams
now politically dominant OBC castes represented a mere 1988), or even of a corrupt but potentially salvageable state
12 percent of the Bihar cadre. Although 27 percent of the (Gupta 1998), liberalism is an impossibility. If state institu-
members of the state assembly were Yadavs (40 percent tions are publicly revealed as tools of upper- caste hegemony,
of members from the ruling party), Yadavs only made up it becomes inconceivable that they could ever enforce indi-
1.6 percent of IAS officers in Bihar. OBCs had displaced vidual rights in anything resembling an impartial manner.
upper castes within the realm of political representation; But the existence of postcolonial modes of governance that
however, this was clearly not the case within the bureau- interweave the operation of state institutions with the domi-
cracy. The logic of democratic empowerment clashed with nance of local groups also means that the "political sphere" is
the colonial processes of state formation that had long linked not cordoned off from other aspects of life and that political
upper-caste control over state institutions with the terri- change could have far-reaching effects. It follows that, within
torial dominance of upper castes in village and regional such a context, "social justice" could be achieved through
contexts.
aggressive and disruptive oppositional politics aimed not at
The enactment of redistributive policies requiresusing the state as an impartial tool for progressive policies
organi-
zational machinery capable of implementing these but,policies.
rather, at disrupting the ability of upper castes to use
Because almost all state institutions in Bihar were effec- state institutions to reinforce their dominance.
tively controlled by the same upper castes that Lalu Yadav This explains why, instead of seeking to pursue caste
was attempting to displace from power, this made relyingempowerment through redistributive policies and state -
on these institutions precarious. Additionally, weakening directed projects, Lalu's distinctively postcolonial political
upper- caste influence within public life in Bihar often meant
project entailed systematically weakening state institutions.
weakening upper-caste-dominated state institutions. For in- Within this context, a political leadership whose stated goal
stance, a high-ranking official in the state cooperative banks
was the realization of lower- caste empowerment could go a
(which provide credit for agriculture) told me that, at hislong way toward accomplishing this by transferring power
insistence, a college friend who was then a powerful politi-from recruited officials in the state bureaucracy and po-
cian had approached Lalu and attempted to convince him to lice force to elected politicians. Lalu Yadav accomplished
increase investment to the cooperative societies as a mediumthis (1) by centralizing decision-making power in his own
of development in overwhelmingly rural Bihar. Lalu's re-
hands; (2) by posting OBC, Scheduled Caste, and Muslim
officers in key posts in the districts (in 1995, 30 out of
ported answer was direct: "That is a thing of the [upper- caste]
Rajputs and Bhumihars; let it die" [yeh rajput aur bhumihar
50 district magistrates were from these groups) through
ka chiz; marega] (personal correspondence, 2003). very frequent transfers of officials whose loyalty was in doubt

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 Witsoe • Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy 625

(which included many, if not most, Indian Administration Yadav section of the village, he regretfully exclaimed, "Th
Service officers); and (3) by tolerating and even encouraging used to be our servants!" (personal correspondence, 20
political interference in administration and policing at all There was clearly a long history of Rajput power in Rajnag
levels ( India Today 1995). The result was that politicians making the present decline of Rajput dominance in Rajna
became more influential than bureaucrats, and the infor- quite dramatic.
mal criminal networks that politicians effectively controlled The dramatic transformation of political represent
became more central to regulating power than the police. tion and the weakening of state institutions controlled b
While living in Bhojpur, a region with a long history of upper castes examined above did succeed in at least pa
agrarian unrest, I never bothered to even introduce myself to tially displacing upper-caste dominance. Under RJD r
the local police, although I did find it necessary to make my upper-caste landed elites found themselves without ac
presence known to local "mafia politicians," reflecting the to subsidized credit from cooperative banks (most of wh
transfer of power that had occurred. The following sections had become effectively insolvent), cut off from sources
examine the ways in which the new mode of governance patronage and "commissions" that they had long enjoy
that emerged from the 1990s played out within Rajnagar, through the control of development funds, and above
a village in Bhojpur district in Bihar where I lived in 2001 deprived of the connections with politicians and the poli
and 2002 (returning for a few months in 2004 and 2007). I (the latter' s authority seriously weakened) that had enab
show that this weakening of state institutions and shifting of them to effectively control labor, protect standing cr
power from the bureaucracy and police to political networks from theft, and enforce exploitative sharecropping arrang
transformed many aspects of village life. ments. In addition, many lower-caste villagers now had th
own connections to a new class of lower-caste politicians
LOWER-CASTE POLITICS IN RAJNAGAR well as to the criminal networks with which these politici
were affiliated. Not only did upper- caste landlords lose ma
The politics of caste is ultimately rooted in village-level
power relations because the village remains the siteof
at their
whichsources of influence outside the village but also lo
castes gained their own.
caste identities are experienced as distinct, kinship-based
communities interacting on an everyday basis and at Over
which the last two decades, Rajput dominance w
replaced by the emergence of multiple power center
histories of dominance and subordination most powerfully
Rajnagar,
play out. It is crucial to recognize, however, that caste dom- like other Indian villages, is spatially organi
around it
inance is not a reality confined to the village. Rather, caste groupings. There are three Yadav tolas,
is reinforced through the caste networks described above two Musahar tolas, a Rajput tola, and so on
Koeri tola,
attempting
that, since the late colonial period, established linkages be- to understand the many political spaces with
the village,
tween landed elites and the bureaucracy, police, judiciary, I was constantly moving across caste, faction
party,
and politicians - providing protection, control over devel-and territorial boundaries. I spent a lot of ti
roaming
opment resources, and access to public employment andaround the village, making friends and cont
in"disci-
subsided credit as well as facilitating the ability to diverse residential areas and within many different c
pline" labor and depress wages. groups. This was not easy; everyone with whom I interac
In Rajnagar, a large village with a populationknew that I was also in interaction with his or her politi
of 5,086
(according to the 2001 Indian census) in Bhojpurrivals. Still, I eventually managed to gain contacts an
district,
degree of
a profound transformation of village power relations hasconfidence within all of the major party, caste
and factional
taken place over the last two decades. In the colonial past bases within the village.
This multiplication of power centers was vividly a
and well into the postindependence period, Rajput landlords
very
(zamindars) dominated life in Rajnagar, with Rajput publicly
tola oc- demonstrated through the frequent perfo
mance of
cupying the political, social, and ritual center of the vil-bhajans (devotional singing), which not only serv
to mark
lage. Villagers claimed that Rajnagar garh (fort), the sacred geography of the village but also reflec
a rela-
tively wide hill about 100 feet high, was manmade and of power by demonstrating territorial contr
geographies
over garh,
was at one time considerably larger. Around Rajnagar spaces within the village. On many nights, the sound
there are still visible remains of a sizable moat, and Ra- singing - loudly amplified and accompanied
devotional
jput landlords who live at the top of the garhvigorous
told medrumming, clapping, and yelling - reverbera
throughout Rajnagar. Unlike in the past, however, t
that in the past a second moat surrounded the perimeter
Rajputs
of the village. During the colonial period, Rajput and Brahmins of the village no longer domina
zamin-
dars enjoyed revenue-collection rights over most thisoftype
Raj- of public worship. There could not be a m
graphic
nagar as well as over sizable land in nearby villages, representation of recent political change than w
despite
their relatively small numbers. While sitting on thethese bhajans occasionally took place at the small Devi Te
veranda
of his sprawling house, the largest Rajput landlord ple on Rajnagar garh, at the heart of Rajput tola. On a co
proudly
explained to me that the "service castes," as well winter night in Rajput tola, I attended one such bhajan t
as many
lasted
of the laborers and tenants, had been brought to the until early morning and included dozens of par
village
by the zamindars. Pointing toward the politically ipants as well as copious amounts of ganja and alcoho
ascendant

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626 American Anthropologist • Vol. 113, No. 4 • December 2011
blatant, disregard for the "Sanskritic" norms that charac-
terize Brahman-led bhajans. The attendance was usually al-
most entirely from the Yadav caste, including mainly small
kisans (farmers) and laborers. It was truly an unruly scene - I
myself was engaged in minor conflicts with drunken partic-
ipants. Members of other castes, including the Rajput ex-
zamindars whose houses surround the temple, were conspic-
uously absent as they were mostly inside their houses. These
bhajans struck me as a vivid image of Y adav power - farmers,
local politicians, laborers, and drunks roaming the village
freely while most other people remained hidden away. The
overt, even aggressive nature of this performance should be
seen not as an attempt to emulate higher-caste practice, nor
as an assertion of equal status, but instead as an attempt to
demonstrate a new dominance, a performance marking ter-
ritorial control. 17 Although the Yadav bhajans were the most
dramatic, there were also bhajans held by other lower castes
that took place in different areas of the village, demonstrat-
ing the multiplication of centers of power within Rajnagar.
This multiplication of power centers served to profoundly
transform perceptions of the village; democracy didn't just
alter power relations within the village, it reconfigured the
ways in which the village was itself imagined.
These political transformations were also reflected in
the ways in which villagers imagined "democracy." There
were a handful of villagers who expressed overt criticism of
the entire system of democracy. One elderly Brahmin priest
cynically told me that "democracy is rule of the fools, by
the fools, for the fools" - a critique of popular sovereignty
invoking the colonial -era ethic of rule by a "worthy" upper-
caste minority. It is important to note, however, that most of
this critique came from ex-zamindars who had been displaced
from power and whose children had left the village; this was
therefore a marginal discourse. In fact, there were really
no important "languages of power" (West 2008) that were
in opposition to democracy. Rather, anyone who sought
power did so through the medium of democratic practice.
Even Dalit friends who I knew sympathized with the Maoist
movement - the leadership of which, of course, opposes a
democratic system in India - saw democracy as an important
pathway to power and enthusiastically took part in elections,
not perceiving this simultaneous participation in an armed
insurgency against the Indian state and in the democratic
process as being contradictory.18
For many villagers, especially for a small class of
political "brokers" and middlemen (Corbridge et al.
2005 : 1 92-206), democratic practice was about using blocks
of votes to bargain for development resources.19 For
instance, when I asked an elected ward member in
Rajnagar about his relationship with the local member of
the legislative assembly (MLA), he boasted, "If I call, the
local MLA will come at once" (personal correspondence,
2004). He claimed that this was why a new road was go-
ing to be built in his section of the village. Politicians ineconomic ventures and standard of living of Rajput villagers.
Bihar sometimes refer to this as "corruption from below," The presence of diversified income sources from dairy pro-
the feeling of entitlement that a voter has to make concrete duction, casual labor, and remittances sent from villagers
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demands of the politicians that he or she helped to elect,
even if these demands are extralegal or would result in an
unfair distribution of resources. Such maneuvering exem-
plifies what Chatterjee (2004) referred to as the "politics of
the governed."
But a very different conception of democracy emerged
in relation to the politics of caste. Unlike the earlier Congress
regime - which was often seen as "maa-baap, " as a maternal
or paternal patron (Gupta 1998:390) - many lower-caste
villagers conceived of the RJD in terms of intimate iden-
tification. Yadavs in Rajnagar commonly referred to the
chief minister as Lalu bhai (brother). When I asked one Ya-
dav farmer why he votes for the RJD, he pointed to his
house and replied, "I vote for my own family. Why would
someone from another house help me?" (personal corre-
spondence, 2003). As Banerjee (2008:66-67) notes, two
common arguments for explaining why people vote are ei-
ther the rational choice assumption that people do so out
of individual self-interest (as with the "brokers" mentioned
above) or the functionalist assertion that "democracy is really
an untrue but vitally important myth in support of social co-
hesion," with participation in the electoral process acting "as
a necessary safety valve that allows for the airing of popular
dissatisfaction and opinion but ultimately restores the status
quo." Instead of supporting the government because it pro-
vided development patronage, however, Yadavs in Rajnagar
frequently commented to me that the government was their
government, and they would support it regardless of what it
delivered. And instead of ending up reproducing the status
quo, lower-caste politics resulted in significant instability
and violence, yet millions of lower-caste voters continued
to support the RJD. This reflects a radical caste-based no-
tion of popular sovereignty that is less concerned with what
government does than with who does it and with how the
hegemonic formation that the regime expresses shapes local
power.
Within this changed political context, lower-caste peas-
ants, especially Yadavs, progressively took over much of the
active cultivation that upper-caste landlords were increas-
ingly abandoning. Upper castes in Rajnagar frequently com-
plained of crop theft and other challenges to landlord author-
ity. Although these forms of resistance are certainly not new,
the landowners' accounts indicated that by the early 1990s
these "weapons of the weak" (Scott 1985) had escalated into
a profound challenge to the social and economic order in the
village. In the political climate of the 1990s, the landowners
did not have access to the local police and administration
and no longer had the ability to subdue these agitations by
force. In addition, because many lower- caste households
were moving - economically as well as physically - from a
relatively poor economic past that relied heavily on the sale
of labor, these households were able to function, and even
thrive, on profit margins that would be unacceptable to the
 Witsoe • Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy 627

working in factories outside the state (lower- caste circular Perhaps most importantly within the context of weak
migration was a strategy of upward mobility, not despera- ened state institutions and the increased importance of polit
tion) meant that lower-caste households could capitalize on cians and political networks, Yadavs and other populous an
the increasing rate of wage labor while also profiting from politically organized castes enjoyed a distinct advantage whi
smaller-scale cultivation largely dependent on household and many other lower-caste groups were left behind. For i
community labor exchanges. stance, in the two Musahar (a Dalit caste that literally mean
These factors made lower-caste households less vulnera- "rat eater") tolas - without a doubt the most oppressed sec
ble to the effects of the deterioration of state and "semi- state" tions of Rajnagar - people often told me that Yadavs h
institutions such as cooperative banks, many of which were become worse oppressors than the Rajput landlords ev
controlled by Rajputs. In fact, because these institutions pro- were. It is not surprising, therefore, that many people fro
vided sources of rent to the Rajput landlords, the breakdown marginalized lower-caste groups - especially in places li
of these institutions indirectly benefited lower- caste cultiva- Rajnagar, where upper- caste dominance had been displaced
tors in Rajnagar . Without privileged access to state resources by Y adav dominance - expressed a desire for a strengtheni
and state protection (through relationships with the police, of state institutions and an increase in development patro
politicians, and district and block administration), Rajput age. In addition, Muslims - particularly poorer, lower- cas
ex-zamindars were unable to compete with more efficient Muslims who had supported the RJD because Lalu Yadav h
lower-caste family farms.20 proved to be a successful bulwark against the spread of Hind
This is a crucial point: there were many people who nationalism in the state - became restless after the Hindu
actually benefited from the breakdown of state institutions nationalist BJP-led government was voted out of power in
in Bihar. This explains why so many people continued to Delhi in 2004. With less fear for their safety, many Muslim
vote for the RJD government despite its obvious failures: now wanted democratic empowerment and material benef
the weakening of state institutions that followed in the wake as well . If Lalu Y adav had succeeded in producing a new heg
of lower-caste politics succeeded in displacing upper-caste monic formation centered on a caste -based notion of popul
dominance in places like Rajnagar, resulting in a significant sovereignty that combined a broad "backward -caste" identit
restructuring of relations of agricultural production. with Muslim support, this progressively came undone.
All of this profoundly altered local perceptions of who In the 2005 state-assembly election, these discontented
controlled the village as well as of everyday honor and re- groups in Rajnagar, as in villages across Bihar, collec-
spect. On one typical occasion, for instance, I observed a tively mobilized for the first time in alliance with t
Dalit laborer leisurely sitting in the middle of a village path once-dominant Rajputs to support the opposition Nation
while a Rajput landlord was forced to walk around him in Democratic Alliance, which was running on a platform th
the mud, a scene that would have been unthinkable a few promised a restoration of law and order as well as develop
decades earlier (when the laborer would have been expected ment. This led, finally, to the electoral defeat of Lalu Yadav
to stand to the side and bow as the landlord walked past). RJD. Although the return of the upper castes into the rulin
As a Dalit friend who is an activist of the Communist Party coalition could be interpreted as a reversal of the lower- cas
of India, Marxist- Leninist (a party that contests elections politics of the preceding 15 years, upper castes were no
but also has a military wing), in the village put it, "They forced to rally behind Nitish Kumar, a lower- caste politici
[Rajputs] used to beat us frequently. Now they are scared of who had been part of Lalu' s movement in the early 1990s
us" (personal correspondence, 2003). and the election also mobilized smaller, politically weak
castes (termed "Extremely Backward" or "Annexure O
THE END OF RJD RULE Castes" in Bihar) and lower-caste Muslims for the first tim
In many ways, therefore, the election represented a contin
Although it is important to recognize that the weakening
ation, and perhaps even deepening, of lower- caste politics.2
of state institutions controlled by upper castes did facilitate
dramatic transfers of power with wide-ranging effects, it
CONCLUSION
is equally vital to keep in mind the very visible limitations
of this mode of governance. The weakening of the In this article, I have argued that there is an urgent nee
police
produce
and the rise of criminally connected politicians resulted in a positive theorizations of postcolonial democ
In fact, it would be impossible to understand the trans
surge of criminality - including Bihar's infamous kidnapping
industry - that, although often targeting wealthier mations
upper that I have described if we remain restricted b
castes in urban centers, negatively impacted almost liberal
everyonetheoretical framework (1 ) that reduces politics to
choices
(a defunct public irrigation pump just outside Rajnagar, forof individual citizens (and in which caste can
instance, was the site of numerous robberies duringbe understood
this in terms of abstract "identity"), (2) that
period). The absence of a strong party organizationsumes
meantthat policy formulation and legislation are the pri
that, once transfers of power had occurred, the RJDmechanisms
had no for political change (based on the idea of an
partial,
way of consolidating and institutionalizing these gains (as theautonomous state), and (3) that can only per
divergence
Communist Party of India-Marxist had done in neighboring from liberal democratic modes of governan
West Bengal in the 1970s). terms of lack. Once we take adequate account of col

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628 American Anthropologist • Vol. 113, No. 4 • December 2011
and postcolonial processes of state formation that have led
to the emergence of group -based conceptions of democratic
rights - as well as of the linkages between state institutions,
caste networks, and territorial dominance that subvert any
pretense to the state's autonomy or impartiality - the dis-
tinctively postcolonial dynamics of democracy in India be-
come apparent.
However, I have also argued that although the dynamics
and implications of lower-caste politics can only be un-
derstood by situating them within the context of India's
distinctively postcolonial democracy, democratic practice
itself transforms this context over time. Postcolonial democ-
racy, therefore, cannot be reduced to the operations of
postcolonial governmentality - that is, to a "politics of the
governed" (Chatterjee 2004). I have suggested that lower-
caste politics reflects a divergent political modernity shaped
by processes of state formation that resulted in a different
articulation of "provincialized" universais than that under-
lying liberal democracy (Chakrabarty 2000; Nugent 2008),
with the notion of "popular sovereignty" privileged at the
expense of "individual freedom" (Rose 1999). People from
lower- caste backgrounds are, after all, the overwhelming
majority, and an explicitly lower-caste politics generated
radical political subjectivities based on a particular notion
of "popular sovereignty" as rule by the lower- caste ma-
jority. I have shown the ways in which caste as political
identity extends democratic practice into the relations of
everyday life, challenging routine forms of violence and in-
equality and collapsing any pretense to a liberal "political
sphere."
This did not, however, mean that interest- oriented and
opportunistic politics disappeared or that demands for devel-
opment ceased (development remained the main platform of
the opposition that displaced the RJD government in 2005).
Rather, political life in India can be usefully conceived of as
a creative tension between two political logics: a "politics of
the governed" revolving around the development activities
of the postcolonial state versus a politics of caste empow-
erment challenging caste -based hegemony in the name of
popular sovereignty. Caste was at the center of processes
of colonial state formation and of a postcolonial politics
of the governed, but as a broad "backward caste" political
identity, it also served as the basis for a counterhegemonic
political formation that challenged, and even sought to par-
tially dismantle, this entire mode of governance, seeking
to weaken the institutions and discourses of the postcolo-
nial state. Although Bihar during the Lalu period represents
an admittedly extreme (even if very large) example of this
dynamic - wherein lower- caste politics came to be explic-
itly opposed to development - I suggest that a more subtle
opposition between these two political logics is present to
various degrees across India. In fact, the tension between
a disruptive politics centered on the principle of "popular
sovereignty" and a "politics of the governed" is situated at
the heart of India's postcolonial democracy.
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Jeffrey Witsoe Department of Anthropology , Union College ,
Schenectady , NY 12308; witsoej@union.edu
NOTES
1 . Although there were other positions being contested
including 1 2 ward members (representing parts of each village)
and a member of the panchayat counsel (panchayat samiti) -
focus here only on the key position of mukhia.
2. Others, however, conceded that seeking a repoli for the "di
turbed" booths was an option but that after all of the violenc
voter turnout would not be enough to reverse the results. Sunil
had successfully demonstrated his (and his caste's) dominance
3. Opposite his framework for analyzing politics as relations
force, Foucault places a conception that underlies the discours
of liberalism: "power as a primal right that is surrendered, an
which constitutes sovereignty, with the contract as the matri
of political power" (2003).
4. According to Freedom House, there were 119 "electoral
democracies" in 2009 (www.freedomhouse.com).
5 . Diamond and Morlino (2005), for instance, differentiate "ele
toral democracies" from "liberal democracies," with the latte
being the "real" form. Meanwhile Zakaria (2003) cautions about
the spread of "illiberal democracy."
6. See, for example: Banerjee 2008; Bate 2009; Coles 200
Gaonkar 2007; Michelutti 2008; Paley 2002, 2008; Spencer
2007; and West 2008.
7. "One cannot reasonably explain the strength of various sta
machineries at specific moments of the history of the modern
world system in terms of a genetic-cultural line of argumenta
tion, but rather in terms of the structural role a country plays
in the world economy at that moment in time" (Wallerstei
1974:403).
8. For a similar point, see also Wood 1995:227-237.
9. This strategy of indirect rule is what Yang 1989 refers to as a
"limited Raj" in colonial Bihar. See also Guha 1 98 1 . See Prakash
1 990 for an account of the distinct forms of debt bondage that
colonial policies produced in Bihar.
10. See, for example, Rao's (2009) excellent account of the
ways in which Dalit "caste radicalism" shaped colonial lib-
eralism through collective action aimed at creating a po-
litical consciousness of group rights, such as Ambedkar's
movements for temple entry and, later, religious conversion.
Rajni Kothari (1970) and Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1967)
demonstrated the ways in which caste identities became the ba-
sis for new relationships between recently enfranchised voters
and an independent, democratic Indian state - which, particu-
larly for Kothari, had clearly radical implications.
1 1 . See also Hansen's (2001) account of the central importance of
spectacle and public performance in Mumbai politics.
12. The first "democratic upsurge" began in the mid-1960s with
the growing strength of opposition parties.
 Witsoe • Rethinking Postcolonial Democracy 629

13. See Dirks (2001:275-276) for a graphic account of these
protests. The decision was stayed by the Supreme Court but
was eventually implemented in 1992.
14. See Corbridge and Harriss 2000.
15. Although exact numbers are unknown because no caste cen-
sus has taken place since 1931 (although one is planned for
2011), upper castes make up an estimated 15-20 percent of
the population in the major states of north India. Muslims are
16 percent and Dalits 15.7 percent of the population of Bihar
according to the 2001 census, with OBCs making up most of
the remainder (although many Muslims are also categorized as
Scheduled Castes or OBCs).
16. Largely because of political expediency, however, the neolib-
eral reforms that began in 1 99 1 have focused mostly on urban
India and have only indirectly impacted the countryside, where
nearly 70 percent of voters reside (more than 90 percent in
Bihar) . So although neoliberal reforms are producing an urban
middle class that is committed to a withdrawal of the state from
the private sector and that is, not surprisingly, deeply critical
of lower-caste politics, this remains a relatively small segment
of the population.
17. For an interesting comparison, see Hansen's (2001:106-108)
account of the Siv Sena's use of religious performances in the
construction of a militant Hindu-Marathi identity.
18. When I accompanied the RJD district president to a rally in
Bhojpur in 2004, I was quite surprised when two Maoist area
commanders (in what was then the "People's War" faction)
joined us for the trip, visibly excited to see Lalu Yadav speak.
19. See Chandra 2004 for an elaborate model of this practice.
By reducing everything to rational individuals, however, she
obscures the structural dynamics of the process on which this
article focuses.
20. In a survey of 400 households that I conducted in the village in
2007, I found that Yadav farmers enjoyed five percent higher
yields than Rajput farmers (the few left), despite the latter hav-
ing far more resources. In addition, villagers cultivating small
plots enjoyed significantly higher yields than those cultivating
larger plots.
21. See Witsoe in press. Over the subsequent five years, the Ni-
Bate, Bernard
2009 Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic
Practice in South India. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bayly, Susan
2001 Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Cen-
tury to the Modern Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh
2000 Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
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