The George Washington University Institute For Ethnographic Research Anthropological Quarterly

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics, and Political

Modernity in Postcolonial India by Jeffrey Witsoe
Review by: Deepa S. Reddy
Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 269-279
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
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NEW RELEASE BOOK REVIEW
Deepa S. Reddy,
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Jeffrey Witsoe, Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics,

and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2013. 256 pp.
Jeffreyinvestigating
investigating"caste"
Witsoe's
as a "caste" Democracy
determinative forceasina determinative Against
postcolonial Indian de- Development force in postcolonial takes on the Indian task de- of
mocracy. On one level, this appears a familiar project. Several others-
concerned variously with colonial histories, enumerative representational
practices, identitarian politics, and contemporary socio-political upheav-
als-have elaborated on "caste" as a contingent, variable, but nonetheless
enduring dynamic of Indian governance (Bayly 1999; Dirks 1993, 2001;
Reddy 2005). Such works establish the irrefutable modernity of caste: its
constitution as a unified "system" through colonial governance and its
consequent disassociation from politics and alliance with ritual and reli-
gion-which ironically provides rationalization for later political assertions
demanding access to resources, representation, and rights. "Caste" be-
comes thus a powerful organizing element of contemporary Indian de-
mocracy, a "specifically postcolonial version of political society" (Dirks
2001 :1 6). So vital are caste groups to contemporary electoral practice, and
so unapologetically self-interested are their emergent political methods,
that in popular analysis, too, it has become commonplace to reference
caste metrics and mechanics (playing the "caste card," considering the
"caste equation") as indicators of interest-driven politics-as-usual, all en-
acted at the expense of the rationalist, liberal Indian state. The scene is
one of complete disarray: violence, corruption, electoral malpractice, and
dispersed personal and group interests driving politics. It is at this juncture
of analytical break-down, however, that Witsoe's contribution must be lo-
cated. He poses a simple but crucial question: could there be more to the
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1 , p. 269-280, ISSN 0003-5491 . © 2014 by the Institute for
Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.
269
Jeffrey Witsoe | Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics,
and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India
story of lower-caste mobilization than straightforward political manipula-

tion and inevitable state failure?
The book is structured around the work of parsing this single possibil-
ity. What is at stake is nothing more or less than the framework by which
we understand the processes of democratic state-formation in India.
Witsoe takes the case of Bihar, which most commentators point to as
among the most underdeveloped and backward of Indian states, driven
by abrasive lower-caste politics, and the site of brazen electoral miscon-
duct, violence, and crippling corruption: a clear example of a failed state.
However, such an assessment, Witsoe shows, reflects a normative liberal
reading of democracy which abstracts identities, individualizes rights, and
relies on regulated, rational procedures- all in a context in which identities
cannot be abstracted from local structures of dominance and subordina-
tion, entrenched inequalities complicate questions of rights, and rational

democratic process appears either embattled or unsuited to coping with
electorates less concerned with policy than with seizing power. Therefore,
Witsoe suggests, rather than pronouncing the inherently illiberal character
of Indian democracy, switch the frame- and the Bihar case starts not only
to make better sense, but to teach us invaluable lessons about just how
Indian electoral processes constitute distinctive modes of postcolonial
democratic governance.
Witsoe's alternative framework for understanding caste politics in Bihar
begins with the notion of "popular sovereignty" (as opposed to individual
freedom): in practice, the rule of hitherto unrepresented and disempow-
ered caste groups (or alliances of caste groups), determined by electoral
process. Popular sovereignty stems from the experience of local power:
everyday inequalities and routine violations structured by interactions with
state institutions which, created under colonial auspices and never fun-
damentally overhauled, ensure that "rights" exist only in theory or well
beyond local contexts. The result is a state overwhelmingly controlled
by upper castes whose promise of social uplift via development remains
undelivered, a rejection of the development paradigm- Witsoe quotes a
popular slogan, "we need dignity, not development" (19)- and an inter-
pretation of democracy as the rule of lower-caste majorities, actualized by
sheer electoral force. Rights may be external, but the state is not; the ev-
eryday practices of state institutions directly structure local relationships
of dominance and subordination. Popular sovereignty consists, therefore,
of wresting control of the infrastructures of local power; it is necessarily a
270
DEEPA S. REDDY
disruptive form of radical democratic practice that minutely transforms ev-

eryday economic, political, and social life and verily characterizes India'
postcolonial democracy.
The seven chapters of Democracy Against Development document the
context, emergence, and consequences of caste-based popular sover
eignty, moving from colonial historiography to examinations of state-lev
political revolution and institutional/bureaucratic practice, to agrarian and
village contexts. Chapter 1 presents the obligatory overview of the emer
gence of caste as a category of colonial governance and post-colonia
politics, highlighting the processes by which a minority upper-caste elite
was granted control of both state institutions and the agrarian economy.
Witsoe's key contribution here, beyond noting that fluid local identitie
became the stiff ethnic categories of colonial governance, is discussing
the territorial ramifications of such changes. He points to two opposed
shifts. On the one hand, caste was abstracted from local realities and
"deterritorialized" such that once-dispersed groups could find common
identity and cause. On the other, landed agrarian elites (zamindars) were
instituted as powerful local arms of the colonial state- able to transcend
place to access non-local resources, though their transcendence derived
precisely from their territorially-grounded authority (30). The result: state
authority was tied to agrarian power, and emergent lower-caste competi-
tion for influence in state institutions was necessarily bound up with ter-
ritorial struggles over dominance (35).
These contests carried over into the postcolony, which did not so much
dismantle colonial state infrastructures as extend them into such forms
as "development blocks" on the logic that bringing the state closer to the
people would aid in the work of community development. Witsoe argues
that this was tantamount to superimposing new developmental goals os-
tensibly benefiting the laboring classes onto an old infrastructure which
served the interests of the landed elites. And so, he proposes, the "pas-
sive revolution" of the early Nehruvian years was not only bound to fail
for lack of appropriate infrastructures for implementation, but it also cre-
ated the context for the emergence of radically politicized routes to fun-
damental democratic change. The abolishment of th ezamindari system of
land tenure led to the weakening of patronage and feudal relations alike,
and increased the electoral importance of several backward caste groups
(Yadavs, Kurmis, Koeris) whose political ascendance was strikingly at
odds with their pervasive experience of developmental neglect. What was
271
needed, socialist leaders of the time began to aver, was a radically coun-
ter-hegemonic movement to dismantle upper-caste dominance in toto-
not merely political strategies drawing backward caste leaders into upper-
caste controlled institutions or populist appeals pandering to the poor. The
meanings of "backwardness" changed as a result: no longer signifying
Sanskritizing aspirations, but insisting forcefully on the pervasiveness of
caste inequities and the betrayal of democratic promises in order to claim
the right to state resources and reservations (affirmative action provisions)
controlled by landowning castes for so long. Opposition to Congress'
populism and politicking intensified under Jayaprakash Narayan's anti-
authoritarian movement for "total revolution," even as agrarian unrest
spread via the Naxalite movement. The state-directed developmentalist
model of "passive revolution" appeared to have run its course.
What replaced the state-directed development paradigm was lower
caste-led upheaval for democracy. In Chapter 2, Witsoe documents the
rise of "Lalu Yadav's Bihar" and the transformation of Bihari politics under
RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) Chief Minister Lalu Yadav, whose reign lasted
15 years (1990-2005, the last eight years through his wife, as corruption
charges in the "Fodder Scam" [massive embezzlement from the Bihar
state exchequer by procuring fodder for fictitious livestock] mounted). The
dense parsing of historical detail that characterizes the first chapters gives
way to a more accessible narrative about a politician variously described
as rustic, shrewd, opportunistic, colorful, combative, and undoubtedly an-
ti-establishment, and a politics centered on the "radical negation of upper
caste rule, embodied in [Lalu's] own person" (61). If the agents of popular
sovereignty were, in Lalu's conception of democracy, the backward caste
majority, Lalu Yadav represented these groups by identifying with them:
claiming to share their practices and habits (deliberately invoking public
distaste), caring little for English-language media approbation, visiting ne-
glected lower-caste communities, and exhorting the very lowest sections
of society to claim state institutions as their very own. All his efforts were
focused on dislodging the inherently "forward caste system." Bihar under
Lalu was thus poised to capitalize on two movements of national import:
fiery upper-caste protests against the government's decision to implement
the recommendations of the Mandai Commission Report (reserving a per-
centage of government jobs for OBCs [Other Backward Castes]), and an
increasingly strident Hindu nationalism's apparent upper-caste orienta-
tions, which had the effect of alienating Dalits and Muslims. The result was
272
DEEPA S. REDDY
the allegiance of a broad swath of backward caste groups, and what be-
came known as the M(uslim)-Y(adav) backward-secular alliance; both gav
Lalu an unprecedented mass base to dislodge Congressional hegemony.
The peculiarity of Lalu Yadav's three-term 1 5-year reign was that, in
spite of a decisive mandate, there were almost no significant policy ini-
tiatives to effect redistributive programs, or bring about meaningful in-
stitutional change. Nor did Lalu work to develop party organization, bu
rather built and held support based entirely on arguments for social jus
tice and his own personal charisma (69). His was a destabilizing politi
aimed at capturing the state from upper-caste control- but having done
so, producing no viable alternative systems of governance. It was, in th
end, an incomplete revolution. Ironically enough, however, it was no
simply this lack of a policy framework that eventually led to Lalu Yadav
downfall. Witsoe points out that while Lalu Yadav's social justice politics
played out in Bihar, other institutions of the federal polity were beyond
his control, and were themselves turning neoliberal. The opposition Lalu
faced outside the territory which framed his power was compounde
from within by other caste leaders who resented Lalu's monopolizin
control and the Yadav community's disproportionate influence in gov-
ernance. The caste alliances that had once provided Lalu Yadav with
a mass base began to unravel, making it increasingly more difficult to
claim representation of "backward castes" as before.
The backward caste revolution exemplified by Lalu Yadav was thus left
incomplete: curtailed by a failure to bring about structural changes in stat
institutions under the RJD's control and by resistance from federal institu-
tions outside of the RJD's control. Chapter 3 takes this argument further
examining the relationships between the different institutions comprisin
the state in Bihar: the civil service, the judiciary, cooperative societies, di
trict secretariats, district magistrate's offices, and municipal corporations
The RJD's democratic revolution brought a "backward caste" politica
leadership directly into conflict with colonial-style bureaucracies with dif
ferent styles of functioning, still exemplifying the logics of state-directed,
development-focused "passive revolution" and still very much under up-
per-caste control. In such a context, the RJD exerted control in a few differ-
ent ways: by "devastating" norms to privilege lower caste officers (87), b
transferring bureaucrats it did not have the authority to dismiss, and, when
all else failed, by simply allowing state institutions to deteriorate rathe
than ceding to upper caste recruitment (90). Switching frames once more
273
Witsoe prefers to read such moves not as "irresponsible governance" but

as efforts to displace appointed bureaucratic officials, transfer power to
elected politicians, and weaken state institutions as a route to facilitate
lower-caste empowerment. Such moves had a range of consequences.
Upper caste bureaucrats found themselves alternately empowered- the
keepers of administrative skills and procedural knowledge that they use to
engage in corruption- or disillusioned, cynical, and hostile- the keepers
of the development mandate that is blocked by new forms of "democratic"
politics. The judiciary intervened, as guardian of the constitution and the
"colonizing" tendencies of state administration (103), only to reinforce the
idea of an upper-caste controlled "system." Above all else, this chapter
demonstrates in what ways the state becomes an intense and complex site
of political contestation (1 07).
These unresolvable contestations have a profound impact on regional
dynamics; Chapter 4 takes a look at Koilwar, the semi-urban home to the
block-level administrative headquarters in the Bhojpur district. Here, we
begin to meet local political figures who help to complete what are widely
dubbed "caste equations" so that both forward and backward caste votes
combine for electoral victory, particularly in belts where even the larger
caste groups do not apparently command winning majorities. Popular
caste analytics, Witsoe suggests, however, are often exaggerated, based
on rumor and popular perception of caste realities which "systematically
obscur[e] the ways in which territorial dominance, and not the pure strength
of numbers structured political practice" (134). And yet, Witsoe's account
of caste in this section begins also to be recognizable, as we come closer
to everyday "tea shop" discourses about enumerative politicking and the
careful, calculative, self-serving political maneuvering around vote banks
and other local interests. The chapter gives us stories of how regional in-
terests in sand mining and other territorial considerations produce some
fairly common political contradictions: a Rajput (upper caste) MLA who
attracts a critical quotient of Rajput votes for the RJD, an influential Yadav
(OBC) contractor whose "Social Justice Parivar [family]" organization agi-
tates against the Rajput MLA's representation of backward castes within
the RJD, and local leaders who express support for some in the party while
explicitly opposing others. These details are offered not merely as demo-
cratic peculiarities, but- again, switching frames- as substantiations of
the claim that electoral practices are tightly imbricated with contests for
274
DEEPAS. REDDY
power rooted in particular places. The forms democracy assumes are ter-
ritorially determined.
The familiarity conveyed in Chapter 4 owes largely to its movement
beyond institutional contexts and into sites where political figures engage
wider publics: tea shops, voting booths, and campaign circuits. We start
to feel the "territory" of Witsoe's theoretical argument come somewhat
more to life in recognizable local narratives about caste, power, and poli-
tics. Chapters 5 and 6 carry this project forward by bringing us into the
village itself as a space that "mediates peoples' experience of democ-
racy" (140). Witsoe's argument takes two parts. The first considers caste
diversity within the village (of Rajnagar, in Koilwar district); the second
examines a diversity of practices within a community (Yadavs). Both tease
out the mutual impact of caste-driven democracy and in-place relation-
ships, realities, and interests. On one level, these chapters appear set in
the classic mold of ethnographic village studies. On the other, as Witsoe
eloquently notes, the village does more than just contain different caste
groups, organize them by localities, and map political positionings. As the
site of intense grassroots political struggle and the fundamental unit of
electoral victory, the village shapes how democracy happens in the most
basic, everyday practice.
Within this framework, Witsoe makes a few unique claims, all related
to explicating what democratic restructuring has meant for village com-
munities. There is the fact of upper caste (Rajput) agrarian decline, which
owes in part to postcolonial land reform, but which suffers also from the
weakening of development institutions caused by the political capturing
of power and the bureaucratic contestations explored in prior chapters.
When Rajput families, cut off from subsidies and patronage networks,
find labor difficult to control and agriculture no longer profitable, lower-
caste political ascendance combined with more diversified economic ac-
tivities and acceptance of lower profit margins positions communities like
the Yadavs to fill the gap. In other words, institutional decline indirectly
brings about a reconfiguration of agrarian class relations, thereby gen-
erating conditions suitable to lower-casie empowerment. It is also the
case, however, that communities who now cultivate the land as tenants
are unlikely to ever own it (for want of sellers, not funds). Development
investments necessary for continued growth will be equally unlikely, as
a result. The indirect gains from institutional decline are thus limited by
the block to infrastructure development that results from reconfiguring
275
agrarian relations. So we see that the story of caste empowerment is

imbricated with that of class transformation in the countryside, however
unevenly or incompletely.
Yadavs are not the only ones to find new-but-limited paths to power
in changed circumstances. Indeed, there are those among the Rajputs
who align themselves with the RJD more or less forcefully to protect their
local and/or agrarian interests. The rhetorics of democratic revolution
produce new hegemonies that even upper caste members can piggy-
back on, to an extent- though their positions always seem ambivalent or
inherently questionable. Either way, such developments are undoubtedly
signs that "the system for caste mobility had been largely overturned"
(179). Still, more clear evidence of a system overturned comes from an
examination of rituals and other ceremonial practices, which in some
tolas (residential areas demarcated by caste/community) are officiated
by Brahmins. Witsoe insists repeatedly that such practices are not to be
read as "Sanskritizing" emulations of upper-caste practices, but as dem-
onstrations of power in their own right: the village, after all, is constituted
of "multiplied centers of power," whether a Brahman priest officiates in
one tola or a pig is sacrificed in another (1 50).
What the village study approach reveals, in the end, is the complex
diversity and heterogeneity of caste and class practices that are usu-
ally hidden under homogenizing political identity- which is efficacious,
but not ultimately representative. To boot, it relies on the leadership of
self-styled caste leaders, a new class of politicians representing newly
congealed groups and interests, with the larger of these groups (Yadavs)
claiming a greater share of power. So, although the leaders and logics had
changed, institutional dynamics really had not, and true democratization
remained a still-distant ideal. For caste-led democracy was always about
capturing power; it was never at its core deliberative, reflective, or dia-
logic (202). Nonetheless, it was transformative- both positively and nega-
tively changing not only relationships and possibilities in the countryside
but also the possible contours of future politics. Caste politics under Lalu
Yadav's RJD thus set the stage for Nitish Kumar's equally caste-driven
rejoinder to identity politics and democracy: a return to development and
"good governance," which is both a departure from (engaging the media
and neoliberal reform) and an expansion of (addressing the needs of hith-
erto neglected groups- the EBCs, or extremely backward castes) Lalu's
radical democracy. The vote bank is different, but caste equations are still
276
DEEPA S. REDDY
in play, and the development card is back on the table, tilting the balance
of power to still other disenfranchised groups.
Democracy Against Development is to be commended for tackling
popular frameworks for caste analysis, which lament chaos, looting, and
developmental decline without considering the colonial legacies that state
institutions inherit, or the role of popular sovereignty in fundamentally
transforming landscapes from the agrarian-rural to the bureaucratic-polit-
ical. If democracy in liberal formulations claims legitimacy by appealing to
universais (rights, freedoms) but functions via particulars (elections, local
politics), Witsoe's narrative shows just how particular caste experiences
rooted in specific territories displace and reconstitute empty universais.
"Universality is incommensurable with any particularity, and yet cannot ex-
ist apart from the particular," Laclau writes of the definitive paradox of de-
mocracy, so democracy is possible only when "different groups [compete]
to give their particular aims a temporary function of universal representa-
tion" (1992:90). It is the layered detail of such competition in the Indian
context that Witsoe's ethnography documents. Witsoe's other contribution
is to agrarian studies, often ignored in favor of more trendy analyses of
transnational ism, globalization, and neoliberal economies (Aiyer 2007). His
accounts of caste in village life, in particular, are invaluable additions to a
literature that has for too long ignored the grassroots textures of agrarian
dynamics in the wake of caste mobilization and empowerment. And yet,
this is not just a narrative of rural Bihar, but an anthropology of the state
which brings a macro-level account of institutional dynamics to bear on
micro-realities at the village level. The book is an ambitious undertaking,
and one which succeeds admirably on the terms it sets for itself.
But caste is a dense subject, made all the more intense by increasingly
intractable politicking and the range of public discourses, positions, opin-
ions, interests, and more-and-less-passionate critiques that seem consis-
tently to complicate our common understandings of it. Witsoe's packed
narrative carries the weight of our accumulated historical knowledge of
and contemporary information about caste (the backstories, the kin-as-
sociations, the often complicated elements of local intrigue), not neces-
sarily making the topic any more accessible for non-academic or non-ar-
ea-specialist readers. The macro-to-micro structure of the book, although
analytically valuable, in this sense does the author no favors, for the more
engaging narratives come later rather than sooner in the text. These, too,
are inserted judiciously amidst theoretical arguments that obscure a great
277
deal of the drama- and violence, which Witsoe focuses somewhat mildly
on, though it is writ large in Bihar's political history -that is equally the story
of caste as it plays out on the (Bihar) political stage. It feels a shame, that
the classic ethnographic narrative tropes of arrival, acceptance, and ac-
cess and so on are either missing or tucked away in corners of the text. Of
course, there are narrative choices that authors make for various reasons,
but I cannot help but wonder if knowing how fieldwork unfolded scene-
by-broad-scene- how Witsoe gained access to the top leaders in Bihar's
state government, or what the tea shop scene abuzz with political machi-
nation might have been like as a vantage point or point of entry into studies
of politics and state formation- would have helped bring even dry theoreti-
cal arguments more to life. As it stands, Democracy Against Development
seems written for only the most committed of area scholars- though the
several pieces of the text already in published circulation might fare better
in the classroom or for more general audiences.
As I write this review, Lalu Yadav has been convicted and arrested for his
involvement in the infamous "fodder scam"- and, thanks in part to a series
of Congress government gaffes, barred from running for public office for
six years. Narratives about RJD influence are still critical to "caste equa-
tion" calculations at both state and national levels, as ever rife with political
intrigue. Although Witsoe's book does not project caste as the larger-than-
life political spectacle that is often is, its arguments do chalk out a solid,
critical framework in which such evolving narratives can be understood as
more than just peculiarity or democratic abnormality- as a mix of historical
consequence, reaction, and strategy on multiple levels. In this, Witsoe's
readings of caste, power, and institutional and local politics go well be-
yond established colonial historiography to create a conceptual framework
for the evolving present. For those interested in deeply understanding the
transformative and transforming caste dynamics in contemporary India,
the book is thus a must-have critical reference point that marks a vital turn
in anthropological studies of caste. ■
References:
Aiyer, Ananthakrishnan. 2007. "The Allure of the Transnational: Notes o

Economy of Water in India." Cultural Anthropology 22(4):640-658.
Bayly, Susan. 1999. Caste , Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
278
DEEPA S. REDDY
Dirks, Nicholas. 1993. The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University o
Michigan Press.
University Press.
Laclau, Ernesto. 1992. "Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity." October
61 (Summer):83-90.
Reddy, Deepa S. 2005. "The Ethnicity of Caste." Anthropological Quarterly 78(3):543-584.
279

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Review

Reviewed Work(s): Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics, and Political

The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research is collaborating

Jeffrey Witsoe, Democracy Against Development: Lower-Caste Politics,

story of lower-caste mobilization than straightforward political manipula-

tion, entrenched inequalities complicate questions of rights, and rational

disruptive form of radical democratic practice that minutely transforms ev-

Witsoe prefers to read such moves not as "irresponsible governance" but

agrarian relations. So we see that the story of caste empowerment is

Aiyer, Ananthakrishnan. 2007. "The Allure of the Transnational: Notes o

Reddy, Deepa S. 2005. "The Ethnicity of Caste." Anthropological Quarterly 78(3):543-584.

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