Kathinka Froystad - Blended Boundaries - Caste, Class and Shifting Faces of Hinduness in A North Indian City

BLENDED BOUNDARIES
Caste, Class, and Shifting Faces of

'Hinduness' in a North Indian City
KATHINKA FR0YSTAD
OXFORD
UNIVBlt.SITY Plt.BSS
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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Hamlet: Do you see y<mder cloud, that's almost in shape

of a camel1
Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a came~ indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks, it is like a weaseL
Polonius: It is badred like a weaseL
Hamlet: Or, lilre a whali?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
-William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Original from
Digitized t Go<.. ·gle UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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Contents
Note on Transliteration x
Preface XI
.
Glossary XIII
1 . Introduction 1
Intersecting Hindu nationalism, Hindu-Muslim
relations, caste, and caste politics 4
Politics and everyday life 15
Ethnicity 18
Multiple domains, multi-temporal
fieldwork, and generalizability 21
Structure of argument 25
2. The setting, the people, and the fieldwork 33

Uttar Pradesh 34
Kanpur 38
Mohanganj 48
The core families 53
The fieldwork 57
3. AL home: Master-servant relations and

upper-caste superiority 63
Master-servant relations and everyday practices 66
Servants and upper<aste avoidances 68
Servants and untouchability 76
0191u, d by Google Original from

VIII • Contnats
Live-in servants: Three cases 80

Two models: market and patronage 89
Conclusions 92
4. Outside: 'Good' people and 'small' people 94

Local idioms of class 95
Venturing out: The good, the small, and the big 97
Complexion 100
Clothing 105
Movement, bodily stature, and health 109
Sweet speech 113
The features combined 116
Conflating class with caste 119
Class and closure in public arenas 122
Conclusions 126
5. Social ties: A web of 'good' and upper-caste people 129

Kinship relations beyond the household 132
Intra<aste relations beyond kinship 135
Friendship 14-0
Contacts 151
Conclusions 157
6. Ties with Muslims 159

Religious identification and classification 160
Neither Shia and Sunni, nor ajliif and asraf 164
Interreligious marriage 169
Interreligious friendship 175
Dietary friction 181
Ties with 'small' Muslims 186
Conclusions 190
7. 1992: Essentializing and foregrounding Muslims 193

Patterns of news consumption 197
Three conversations about the Muslim Other 198
The 'nature' of Muslims 206
Riots and their effects on interaction with Muslims 213
Conclusions 223
8. 1997: Essentializing and foregrounding Dalits 226

News themes in 1997 227
Four conversations about Dalits and caste politics 231

UNIVERSITY OF MICHiGAN
Contents • ix
Gender, intelligence, and inaccuracies 241

Effects on interaction with Dalits 250
Balik-at the other side of embeddedness 257
Conclusions 262
9. Conclusion: Blended boundaries and

shifting politicization 265
Everyday caste, class, religious
boundaries, and blendedness 267
Politicization and shifting notions of Otherness 271
Later shifts 275
Analytical reflections 277
Afterthoughts on violence 281
Epilogue 28S
Re.fermas 287

-
Note on Transliteration
This book follows a slightly simplified version of the standard

transliteration of Hindi. Vowels with lines over (a, i, u) are long
and vowels with tildes over (ti, i etc.) are nasalized. Consonants
with dots under (t, th, {l, {lh, ~. r. and rh) are retroflex, that is,
pronounced with the tongue flapping forwards. The only excep-
tion used in this book is ~. which is a transcription of <11f>,
an sh-sound pronounced with the tongue bent backwards. The
sh-sound pronounced with the tongue in front of the mouth,~>.
is transcribed as S. For the sake of readability, I have tran-
scribed both <<r> and <JJ> as ch, but compounded the conjunct
consonant <'!O'> as chh, as in acchii
Words in Hindi and Sanskrit are italicized and used for want
of English equivalents. As a rule, these words will be translated
and explained the first time they appear unless they disturb the
flow of the ethnography. Names of persons and places are
written in the most conventional anglicized form. So are the
names of the four va~as. In the case of ju.tis, however, I retain
the Hindi translation as a guide to pronunciation-hence Brah-
1nin and Kshatriya, but Chaturvedi and Khatri.

-
Preface
This book explores the interconnections between caste, class,

and religious boundaries as maintained by a loosely connected
group of upper-caste Hindus in Kanpur, a city in the Indian s tate
of Uttar Pradesh. Besides examining how each boundary is
reproduced in everyday life, this study' investigates how they
influence each other, how they become locally politicized and
how upper-caste notions of Otherness change salience from one
group to the other, with particular emphasis on a shift of atten-
tion from Muslims to Dalits in the 1990s.
This book is a revised version of my doctoral thesis in social
anthropology, which was submitted to the University of Oslo in
2000. Those who have contributed most to' this study are those
I write about: the families and persons in Kanpur who accepted
my presence, let me stay with them, and patiently answered my
questions. I am deeply indebted to them all, though consider-
ations of anonymity render it impossible to me ntion them by
name. In Kanpur I am also indebted to Dr Upadhyay, former
Vice-Otancellor of Kanpur University, for initiating the process
that gave me access to upper-caste family life, and my friends
Robin Malhotra, Girish Kumar Srivastava, and Mohit Mehra for
help with numerous practical matters. In New Delhi I am in-
debted to Professor Dipankar Gupta for the guidance he pro-
vided while I was affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Social
Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University UNU), and to Assistant
Professor Aswini Mohapatra for assisting me with practical
matters and advice wh.e n in Delhi and at JNU.

xii • Prejaa
At the stages of analysis and writing, I have benefited greatly

from guidance from my supervisors, first from Ingrid Rudie
(1991-4), then from Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Jean-Claude
Galey (both 1996-2000) . I am also deeply indebted to Pamela
Price for fruitful comments and encouragement over the years.
Others who have provided valuable comments at various stages
include Signe Howell, Arild Engelsen Ruud, Unni Wikan, Sarah
Lund, Anne Waldrop, Theo Barth, 'Anne Leseth, Rune F1ikke,
Bente Ni~olaisen, Jan-Kare Breivik, and Astrid Anderson at the
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, and
Victoria Einagel, Henrik Syse, Heidi Fjeld, Dan Smith, J'Bayo
Adekanye, Gregory Reichberg, Inger Skjelsbrek, Anthony
McDermott, and Kristian Berg Harpviken ·at the International
Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRlO). In addition, I would like
to thank Paul Brass, Jonathan Spencer, Ashutosh Varshney, and
Inge Fr0ystad for invaluable comments to earlier drafts, and
David Gilmartin, Lars Martin Fosse, Ruth Schmidt, Jamshed
Masroor, Finn Thiesen, and Amit Shrivastav for useful informa-
tion. I am also deeply indebted to my former Hindi teacher, the
late Knut Kristiansen, whose enthusiasm for South Asian lan-
guages and thought was so contagious that his classes, which I
initially attended just for fun, became the seed of my profes-
sional interest in India.
The research on which this book is based was funded by
scholarships from the Norwegian Research Council (1993 and
1996-9) and the Sasakawa Foundation (1993 and 1995), as
well as a 15-month salary from PRlO, where I held office through
the writing period. The book was completed at the Department
of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. I am thankful to both
institutes for making this book possible.
An abbreviated version of Chapter 3 has been published as
'Master-servant relations and the domestic reproduction of
caste in Northern India' in Ethnol· 68 ( l) .

-
Glossary
accha, acchi, acche good .(m, f, pl)

ahir jati with cow herding and cultivating as
traditional occupations, classified as
an OBC in Uttar Pradesh
ajlaf descendants of low-caste converts to
Islam
alt a red dye that women use to colour the
contours of their feet with on certain
religious festivals
alu potato
amir log rich people
ap you (polite, used when addressing se-
niors)
arzal low-class Muslims
asraf descendants of Muslim migrants from
areas West of India
aya children's nurse, nanny
baba respectful term of address used for

elders and religious teachers
babii term of address used for elders, se-
niors, and patrons, especially if highly
educated
bacchi little girl
bad mas villain, hooligan
bakra, bakri goat (m, f)
• Digitized by Google Original from

xiv • Glossary
Balmiki see Bhangi

bandh closure, strike
Bani ya upper-caste jati held to be Vaishyas,
with trade and moneylending as tradi-
tional occupations
baniyan vest, singlet
hara, bafi, bare big (m, f, pl)
barfi sweetmeat made of thickened milk and
sugar
Barhai jati of carpenters, classified as an OBC
in Uttar Pradesh
be gar unpaid or bonded labour
Behera an SC jati in Orissa
bera bearer, domestic servant working as a
waiter
bh[g narcotic made of hemp
bhaiya brother (used as a term of address)
Bhangi jati with scavenging and sweeping as
traditional occupations, classified as
an SC in Uttar Pradesh
bindi mark, normally a red dot, that women
wear on their forehead
Boriya jati classified as an SC in Uttar Pradesh
Brahmin the highest of the four vari:ias, the
priestly caste
burqa long overcoat with veil worn by some
Muslim women when in public places
chacha father's younger brother

Chamar jati with leatherwork as hereditary oc-
cupation, classified as an SC in Uttar
Pradesh
chamcha yes-man, lackey, literally spoon
chapati round flat unleavened bread usually
made of wheat and eaten with most
warm meals
chappal flip-flop, rubber sandal
chaprasi boy or man employed to run errands
and do odd jobs
cha~ spicy snacks

Glossary • xv
chaukidar gate-keeper, guard

chikan a traditional kind of embroidery on thin
cotton with flowers and vines as its
main motifs, a speciality of Lucknow
chota. choii. choie small (m, f, pl)
chunni thin long shawl that accompanies a
salvar kurta, dupana
churidar tight trousers with long, puckered'1p
legs
dahi fresh curd

dalan washing-section of a mosque, courtyard
darghah shrine or tomb of a Muslim or Sufi saint
\ihaba inexpensive roadside restaurant
dhobi washerman, jati whose traditional oc-
cupation was to wash other peoples'
clothes, classified as an SC in Uttar
Pradesh
divaIi festival of lights that marks renewal,
commonly associated with Lakshmi,
the goddess of prosperity
dost friend (about boys or men)
dosti friendship
diidh milk
dudhiya milkish of colour
diidhvale milkmen
dupat ta thin long shawl that accompanies a
salvar kuna, chunni
gali narrow lane

ganda, gandi, gande dirty, bad, foul (m, f, pl)
gandagi din
gazal poem or song of a particular metric
type, most common in the North-West-
ern pan of the Indian subcontinent
gehua wheatish colour
ghar house, home
ghar ka nam nickname, name used in familial con-
texts
ghi clarified butter

XVI • Glossary
gora, gori, gore fair complexioned (m, f, pl)

go st meat
gram village, collection
gram pradhan village leader
gut;i (as in rajogui:i. sattvagui:i. and tamogui:i)
property, substance, one of the three
con-stituents of nature
bully, person involved in organized
cnme
harijan God's people, Gandhi's term for un-

touchables
havan ritual of fire sacrifice
holi festival marking the transition to spring
by lighting a bonfire, the playing with
coloured powder, and partial inversion
of societal norms
idli steamed rice cake, a South Indian spe-

ciality
ikka carriage pulled by one horse
imam Muslim religious leader
jajmani pertaining to the agricultural system of

exchange betweenjatis of different he-
reditary occupations
jal water, in Uttar Pradesh most commonly
referring to water from the Ganga
jamadar(in) sweeper
janeii sacred thread that men of the three
upper vari;ias are entitled to wear to
indicate their twice-born status
jati caste, community, kind, type
jhogar makeshift arrangement (colloquial)
jhopfi small hut built of earth, clay, or rubble
jira cumin seed
jo parha-likha nahi illiterate people
kala black, dark-complexioned

karor ten million

Glossary • xvii
karorpati one who owns ten million nipees, rich

person
ka~ori small bowl, usually of steel
kat~a country-made pistol
karvachauth festival in which women pray for the well-
being and longevity of their husbands
Kayastha jati of ambiguous van,a status but nor-
mally acknowledged as an upper caste,
renowned for their work as scribes and
accountants for Hindu kings, Moghul
emperors, and the British colonial gov-
ernment
Khatik jati whose traditional occupation was
to rear pigs, classified as an SC in
Uttar Pradesh
Khatri upper-caste jati of traders, usually ac-
knowledged as Kshatriyas
koi any, some
Kori jati traditionally working as weavers,
classified as an SC in Uttar Pradesh
Kshatriya the second of the four vari:ias, the caste
of kings and warriors
kulfi sweet dish that resembles ice cream
kuna-pajama male clothing consisting of knee-long
shirt over straight trousers, normally in
white cotton
lac;lc;lu sweetmeat made of chickpea flour or

drops of deep fried batter
lakh hundred thousand
lathi wooden sticks, often used as weapons
by the police
lodhi jati of agriculturalists with OBC status
in Uttar Pradesh
lungi cotton cloth tied around the waist like
a skirt, in North India most commonly
worn by Muslim men
madras a Islamic school

mama maternal uncle

xviii • Gwssary
mandir temple, place of worship

mangalsiitra auspicious necklace worn by married
women, usually consisting of two strings
of black beads with a gold pendant
mehri female domestic servant employed to
do the dishes
milan gathering, meeting
mi~ha, miihi sweet (m, f)
mi~hi bha~a sweet speech
muhalla urban neighbourhood, usually in the old
part of a town
miirti idol, usually made of clay or stone
namaz Muslim prayer, ideally offered five

times daily ,
namkin salted snacks, usually dry and spicy
navab title used for local rulers and noble-
men during the Moghul empire
neta leader, particularly in political contexts
OBC Other Backward Classes, an adminis-

trative category of disadvantaged but
generally not untouchable jatis, which
gives right to preferential treatment in
employment and education in state in-
stitutions
pa gal mad, insane, foolish

pahlwan wrestler, strongman
pakka genuine, proper
pakora snacks made by deep-frying sliced veg-
etables dipped in batter
pan mouth. freshener made of betel leaf
and nuts
pana, pano SC jati from Orissa traditionally sexv-
ing as washermen
panda! huge tent erected to house weddings
and certain religious festivals
pal).c;iit priest, honorific title for Brahmins re-
gardless of actual occupation

Glossary • xix
papa father (in familial contexts)

paraµia flat bread shallow fried on a griddle,
occasionally stuffed
parha-likha person who can read and write, literate
paµian ethnic community living in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
phulka puffed up chapati
pradhan leader, headman
puja ritual of worship
rajasik dominated by rajoguQ

raJOgtll) one of the three gtiQas, a substance
that produces activity, passion, egoism,
and selfishness
raj put upper-caste jati held to be Kshatriyas,
reputed for their past as kings, sol-
diers, and warriors in present-day
Rajasthan
rakhi protective band that a sister ties around
the wrist of her brother in the annual
festival of rak~a bandhan, a ceremony
that can also generate classificatory
brother-sister-relationships
ristedar relative, kin
roii unleavened flat bread
rum al handkerchief
rumali roii very large and thin roii
sabzi vegetable, vegetable dish

sadhu ascetic, one who has renounced worldly
pleasures, holy man
sahib term of address used for male superi-
ors
saheli, saheliya female friend (sg, pl)
sakh conch shell, often used in major piijas
sampark contact, connection
sandes sweetmeat made of curdled milk and
sugar
sattvaguQ one of the three gu.,as, a substance that
generates goodness, purity, and joy

xx • Glossary
savla brown, of dark complexion

SC Scheduled Caste, an administrative cat-
egory of jatis traditionally held to be
untouchable, which gives right to pref-
erential treatment in employment and
education in state institutions, as well
as in electoral politics
sharif noble, respectable
Shudra the lowest of the four varr:ias, the caste
of servants and workers
sindiir vermilion powder that married women
apply to the parting of their hair
subh nam auspicious, formal name of a person
tamasik dominated by tamogur:i

tamogur:i one of the three gur:ias, a substance
that generates darkness, ignorance,
and laziness
tempo van used for public transport
Thakur upper-caste jati of landowners, held to
be Kshatriyas
ihar:idai a cooling drink containing spices,
seeds, and occasionally bhag
tilak orange or red mark applied to the fore-
head following a puja or in an engage-
ment ceremony
tin patte 'three cards', a poker-like card game
tonga carriage pulled by two horses
topi small cap, also used about caps worn
by Muslim men
tum you (when addressing equals and sub-
ordinates)
tii you (when addressing juniors, some-
times with contemptuous overtones)
Vaishya the third of the four van:ias, the caste

of traders
Valmiki see Bhangi
van:ia one of the four castes described in the
Vedas

Glossary • xx1
vrat religious fast in which one abstains from

certain kinds of food, most commonly
wheat and cereals
Yadav branch of Ahirs, a jati with cow herding

as traditional occupation, classified as
an OBC in Uttar Pradesh
zari thin threads of gold or silver used in

weaving and embroidery

Original from
Digitized t Go<.. ·gle UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
I
-
Introduction
In the early 1990s, as the Hindu nationalist campaign for 're-

claiming' the 500.year-<>ld Babar mosque in Ayodhya to 'liberate
the birthplace of Lord Ram' was reaching its peak, academics
worldwide turned their attention to the self-assertive political
Hinduism that had emerged as a serious threat to Indian secu-
larism and peaceful religious coexistence. What happened in
1992 can now be looked up in any recent book that covers Indian
politics: in December that year, the Babar mosque was razed to
the ground, evoking frustration that culminated in nationwide
riots between Hindus and Muslims. The riots left at least 2000
people dead, and the question that everybody seemed to ask was:
how could this happen? During this turbulent period I was in
Kanpur, the most populous city in Uttar Pradesh. I had been
there since August 1992, conducting anthropological fieldwork
on local expressions of the Hindu-Muslim controversy among
upper-cas te Hindus in the city. Though I had familiarized myself
with the controversy through newspapers, political journals, and
academic texts during prior visits to India, I could not help being
shocked at what I heard in the months prior to the demolition.
Virtually all· the upper-caste Hindus I met characterized the
Muslim minority--over 100 million people, almost as diverse as
Hindus-as a homogeneous group of violent invaders, dirty illit-
erates, child-breeding fundamentalists, and poor Pakistan loyal-
ists. Again and again I was told that it was high time Muslims
were forced to choose between adhering to the 'Hindu way of life'
and getting out of India, out of Hindustan.

2 • Blended Boundaries
To my surprise, however, my upper<aste acquaintances'

denigration of Muslims subsided soon after the riots, even
though they unilaterally-but fallaciously, as Brass ( 1997)
shows-blamed Muslims for the violence. It was as if the riots
made their preoccupation with Hindu-Muslim-related issues
lose its fizz. All they seemed to want was a rapid return to
normal conditions. When I revisited the city in January 1994 and
October 1996, my upper<aste connections were still as disin-
terested in Hindu-Muslim questions as they had been in the
months that followed the riots. This time around most of their
political conversation revolved around a different issue, namely,
the political assertion of Dalits and backward castes. When
I returned to do a second fieldwork among my upper<aste
acquaintances in 1997, caste politics came to dominate their
political attention completely. How could one and the same
group of people who were so intensely preoccupied with the
Otherness of Muslims in the early 1990s so easily bracket their
misgivings about Muslims and turn their attention towards
Dalits and backward castes instead? This book is the result of
my attempt to understand such shifts. As such, it takes its point
of departure in a research question that differs from that which
appears to underpin most other studies of Hindu nationalism
and interreligious relations in India. By relating the Hindu-
Muslim boundary to other social boundaries, and by examining
the processes that bring about alternations in their local accen-
tuation, this book shifts the attention from factors that nurture
anti-Muslim sentiments to factors that make the intensity of
such sentiments fluctuate.
In order to understand shifting salience of Otherness of the
kind I observed in Kanpur, this book aims to demonstrate the
necessity of going beyond institutional politics. Certainly, part of
the explanation lies in changes of government, policies, organi-
zational campaigns, and political discourses at the macro level.
But such changes do not necessarily translate into local shifts
in notions of Otherness in themselves. When they do, I argue, it
is because the macro level politics resonate with local values,
knowledge and everyday practices. My upper<aste acquaintan-
ces would probably neither have become so preoccupied with
the Otherness of Muslims nor with the Otherness ofDalits unless
religious boundaries and caste were already of significance in

/nlroduaion • 3
their everyday lives. Thus, the second pan of the explanation lies
in the local significance of these boundaries. Examining in what
ways caste and religious boundaries were expressed and main-
tained in everyday life, then, constitutes a major pan of the
explanatory model in this book. To limit this investigation to
local comments on macropolitical controversies and policies
would have resulted in a circular argument, given the research
question. Hence, this book devotes considerable space to the
ways in which upper-caste Hindus in Kanpur maintained caste
and religious boundaries beyond commenting on the Muslim or
Dalit Other. As such, the book becomes a case study in the
expression and reproduction of caste and religious boundaries
among upper-caste Hindus in a Nonh Indian city towards the
turn of the millennium. Besides investigating what kind of inter-
action my upper-caste acquaintances had with Muslims and
Dalits, it examines the social forces, values, and beliefs that
promoted such interaction in some contexts while minimizing it
in others. ·
Going beyond institutional politics also enables a comparison
between local discussions about Hindu-Muslim relations and
caste politics on the one hand, and the way these topics were
reflected in the public sphere, on the other. Cenainly, the local
conversations were strongly influenced by contemporary politi-
cal events and debates, as well as their coverage in the news.
It would have been an easy task to use selected utterances from
upper-caste conversations about Muslims or Dalits in Kanpur to
exemplify how anti-Muslim arguments forwarded by Hindu-
nationalist ideologues and politicians, or anti-reservation argu-
ments that circulated in the predominately upper-caste elite,
were manifested locally. To do so, however, would have been to
fall prey to what Claudia Strauss ( 1992) terms 'fax theo1;es of
internalization', which vinually analyse local manifestations as
imprints-whether exact or imperfect--0f discourses and argu-
ments that originate elsewhere. But, as many communication
theorists point out, meaning is not inherent in news repons
or other kinds of 'messages'. On the contrary, meaning arises
from the resonance that a message evokes in the recipients,
thereby attaining considerable flavour from their prior knowl-
edge, values and expectations. This book suggests that the local
reception of Muslim- and Dalit-related news was governed by

4 • Blmded Boundaries
similar processes. It argues that, while the news coverage about

Hindu-Muslim relations largely revolved around specific con-
troversies such as. the Bahri Masjid, the status of Kashmir and
the divided Civil Code, local conversations were dominated by
essentialist statements about the 'nature' of Muslims. And while
the news about Dalit politics largely revolved around the policies
initiated by the .state government and the opposition parties'
critique of them, the local conversations were dominated by
exaggerations of the reservation policy and essentialist state-
ments about Dalits and their assumed inherent personality
traits.
While keeping one eye on upper-caste remarks about macro-
politics and the other on what everyday practices and small talk
might reveal about other ways in which caste and religious
differences mattered to upper caste·s , I noticed that the adjec-
tives acchii. (good), choµi (small) and gandii (dirty) often cropped
up when upper-caste Hindus distinguished themselves from
others. In everyday talk these concepts served as class idioms
with inherent expectations of caste, but when discussing
macropolitics, these concepts were also used to imagine the
Muslim Other as 'small' or 'dirty'. In this sense, these class
idioms appeared to mediate between caste and religious bound-
aries-as upper-caste constructions. For this reason, I will also
take these class idioms into consideration in this book. It follows
that, rather than studying the upper-caste maintenance of caste,
class, and religious boundaries as neatly separable social bound-
aries, this book emphasizes the interconnections between them
and the way models from one boundary spill over to the others-
thus the title, Blended Bqundarie.s. Held against the shifting sa-
lience of Otherness that triggered my examination of social
boundaries, the overall argument of this book may be summa-
rized as follows: whereas caste, class, and religious boundaries
are deeply entangled at the everyday level, they contradict one
another in their politicized forms.
INTERSECTING HINDU NATIONAUSM, HINDU-MUSLIM

RELATIONS, CASTE, AND CASTE POLmcs
This is not a book about Hindu nationalism as such. Nor is it
a book about Hindu-Muslim relations, caste, or caste politics.

lfttroduaion • 5
Making any of these claims would have required a sharper focus

on one theme at the expense of the others. Nevertheless, this
book touches upon all the four themes, as it weaves them all into
one and the same case study. To indicate how my treatment of
Hindu nationalism, Hindu-Muslim relations, caste and caste
politics relates to earlier research on these themes, this section
will give an overview of what I see as the main trends that have
dominated the study of each, devoting most space to Hindu
nationalism, the ideology that triggered the events that the present
study originally was motivated by.
With a few exceptions, the academic interest in Hindu nation-
alism began in the late 1980s, when the movement started to
gain political momentum, and has been carried forth by scholars
from a variety of disciplines, particularly historians, ·political
scientists, and sociologists. To claim that the studies published
after the riots in 1992 made their point of departure the question
'how could this happen?', which I did above, is, of course, a
simplification. Even so, it seems fair to suggest that they seem
motivated by a desire to understand how the Hindu nationalist
movement could grow as fast as it did, and why its ideology came
to acquire such a.strong appeal. This motivation, combined with
the disciplinary orientations of the scholars, is probably why the
study of Hindu nationalism has centred around its origin, growth,
ideological expressions, and organizational core.
The focus on the origin and growth of Hindu nationalism
has been so dominant that it permeates several of the titles (cf.
Bhatt 2001; Freitag 1989; Ghosh 1999; Gopal 1993; Graham
1990; Hansen 1997; Lele 1995; Malik & Singh 1994; Wirsing
& Mukherjee 1995) and opens the introductions of yet other
studies. While all trace the origin to the late nineteenth century,
their emphasis is on different phenomena.. Some stress the
cross-fertilization of the national awakening in Bengal and the
Hindi-speaking areas with the establishment of the Arya Samaj
and other reform movements aimed at defending Hinduism
against foreign impulses (Hansen 1999, Klimkeit 1981). Others
draw our attention to the emergence of a public sphere that
mediated between the state/king and the citizen/locality-
Baily ( 1983) by showing how state rulers and merchants spon-
sored religious ceremonies; van der Veer ( 1994) by showing how
religion became institutionalized; and Freitag (1989, 1996) by

6 • Bl.entkd Boundarie.s
exploring the cow protection movement, whose ideas remain

fhndamental to contemporary Hindu nationalists.
Studies that explore the growth of Hindu nationalism from the
late 1980s onwards, seek to identify developments that paved
the ground for the movement. Many emphasize the decline of
the Congress party, both at the national level (e.g. Kohli 1990,
1996; Manor 1997), and in Uttar Pradesh, where the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) first came to power
(Hasan l 998a). Other scholars emphasize the cadre-based
stn 1cture of the Hindu nationalist ·organizations and parties,
most elaborately described by Jaffrelot (1996 (1993]), the suc-
cessive debates and campaigns that brought the Hindu-Muslim
divide to the forefront, starting with the Shah Bano aontroversy
in the early 1980s (Hasan.1998b), the controversial decision to
unlock the Bahri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1986 (Panikkar 1993; van
der Veer 1994), the telecasting of the Ramayai:ia serial (Richman
1991; Farmer 1996), the ban of Salman Rushdie's S<itanic Verses
in 1998 (van der Veer 1994), and the heightened feelings of
cultural loss that arose with rapid modernization (Chakrabart.y
1996; Weiner 1989: 29). Several scholars (including Basu 1996;
Brass l 993a; Kothari 1997) also point out that the decision to
expand the preferential treatment policy in 1991 made the upper
castes turn to the BJP, which countered reservation on the ap-
parent grounds of principle.
The third field of gravitation pertains to the ideology of the
movement, which is most commonly documented in the texts
produced by its frontal figures. Savarkar's Hindutva-Who is a
Hindu 1 ( 1922) is an obvious source as it was the first lengthy
account of politicized Hindu revivalism, and as it discusses the
criteria for inclusion in the category of ' Hindu', a theme that
many scholars of Hindu nationalism have chosen to pursue (e.g.
Bhatt & Mukta 2000; McKean 1996; Misra 1999; Pandey 1993;
Sarkar 1996; Sharma 2003). Many scholars have also discussed
the books by M.S. Golwalkar, erstwhile leader of the Rashtriya
Swaya1nsewak Sangh (RSS), which praise German Nazism and
argue that Muslims and other religious 1ninorities in India de-
serve 'no privileges, far less an} preferential treatment, not even
citizen's rights' unless they respect and revere Hinduisn1 and
the Hindu nation. Interestingly, Deendayal Upadhyay's lnugral
Humanism is not as frequently referred to, though this is the text

Introduction • 7
that formed the official ideological basis of the BJP and its
foren1nne1·, the Jan Sangh. 1
The fmal trend in the study of Hindu nationalism is its gravi-
tation around its organizational core. Among the studies that
direct their attention to the RSS, some emphasize its origin and
organizational structure (Anderson & Damle 1987; Basu et al
1993;Jaffrelot 1996 (1993)), while others explore its upper-caste
bias (e.g. Bhatt & Mukta 2000; Hansen 1999: 120; Lochtefeld
1996), emphasis on morning drills and wrestling (Alter 1992;
van der Veer 1994), dramatization of masculinity (Alter 1994;
Banerjee 1999, 2000; Hansen 1996; Sharma 2003), or roles in
riots (Brass 1997). Several of these themes are also pursued in
the studies of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). In addition,
the scholarship on the VHP also explores its ability to integrate
different sects to an extent formerly unknown in Hinduism
(McKean 1996: 102), its modern form of Hinduism (Helhnann
1993), and its (re)conversion oftribals and untouchables from
Christianity to Hinduism (D'Souza 2000; Sarkar 1999; Satyakam
Joshi 1999; Viswanathan 1995, 1998, 2000). The political parties
that carried the Hindu nationalist movement forward have also
received due attention, starting with the Jan Sangh (Baxter 1971;
Graha1n 1990), and continuing with the Bharatiya Janata Party
(Ghosh 1999; Hansen & Jaffrelot 1998; Malik and' Singh 1994)
and the Shiv Sena in Mumbai (Gupta 1982; Hansen 1997).
My own understanding of Hindu nationalism has benefited
strongly from the studies 1nentioned above. Yet my treaunent
of it diverges fro1n them in at least three ways. First, as I have
already 1nentioned, I make a different research question my
point of departure. Rather than asking how the movement origi-
nated and came to power, I follow Varshney ( l 995a) in exploring
the constraints that Indian polity and society may pose to Hindu
nationalism. Second, this book is positioned well outside the
core of the movement. Rather than directing its attention to any
of the parties or organizations-or their representatives or me1n-
bers-this study follows in the footsteps of people whose only
involve1nent is that they agree with the ideology of the movement
and vote for the BJP. Finally, this book is more ethnographic than
1
h1/.l'J,rrt1l Humanism has been accessible through the BJP's home page
on the Internet (http:/ /www.bjp.org) throughout 1ny work with this hook.

8 • Blend«I. Boundaries
those that constitute the trends above in the sense that it is

based on long-term panicipant observation in a single locality
rather than on interviews, texts or voting behaviour. As such, this
book may serve as an ethnographic commentary on Hindu na-
tionalism alongside the works of Alter ( 1992) , Hancock (1995),
McKean (1996), Mines (2002), and Peabody (1997).
The study of Hindu-Muslim relations is largely a side-effect
of the scholarly interest in Hindu nationalism. Since much schol-
arship on Hindu nationalism discusses the essentialization of
Muslims and the instigation of violence between the two com-
munities, there is a close overlap between these themes that well
courd have warranted a classification of these works as a fifth
field of gravitation in the study of Hindu nationalism. When I
distinguish them as a separate field, it is panly because their
emphasis is on Hindu- Muslim relations rather than Hindu
nationalism, and panly because there are several studies of
Hindu-Muslim relations that limit the mention of Hindu nation-
alism to a few introductory notes about the phenomena that
motivated the study.
The study of Hindu-Muslim relations appears to cluster around
two main themes, the commonest being violence between the
religious communities. While Brass· (1997, 2003) directs his
attention at the electoral gains that politicians expect by insti-
gating or nunuring Hindu-Muslim riots from time to time, Kakar
( 1996) tries to understand what motivates 'big men' and pahlwans
(wrestlers) to panicipate, and Breman (1993, 1994; cf. D'Monte
2002) traces the connection between Joss of employment and
riot panicipation. Varshney (1995b, 1997, 2002) compares pairs
of largely similar cities where riots entpted in one but not in the
other, in order to identify conditions that prevent riots. Finally,
t.h ere are those who direct their attention to riot victims and their
suffering, such as Das (1990). I also include Roy's account
( 1994) of Bangladeshi Hindu and Muslim villagers who tussled
for so many years that they hardly remembered what they had
originally disagreed about except that it had penained to 'some
trouble with a cow'.
The other theme that studies of Hindu-Muslim relations cluster
around is the antithesis of riots, as it were. Many of these works
seem motivated by a desire to challenge the Hindu nationalist
claim that Hindus and Muslims are intrinsically different and

Introduction • 9
unable to coexist peacefully, and seek to pose an alternative to.

the scholarly focus on riots and violence. Those who go back in
time often draw attention to the fact that, for most of the popu-
lation in the Indian sub-continent, clear-cut religious identities
such as 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' did not crystallize until well into
the nineteenth century, as in Bengal (Ahmed 1981)-or even
later, as with cenain communities in Rajasthan (Mayaram 1997) .
Studies from contemporary India tend to focus on societies in
which Hindus and Muslims live peacefully side by side despite
the interrcligious violence that has raged elsewhere, such as
Gottschalk (2001) . Amiable relations between the religious
communities are also frequently referred to in works that prima-
rily discuss other themes than Hindu-Muslim relations, such as
in recent research on Vaishnav Bauls in West Bengal (Hanssen
2002). .
The treatment of Hindu-Muslim relations in the present book
shares many features with the studies mentioned above. Like in
most of these works, my exploration of such relationships is
propel.led by a desire to understand conflict between these
communities, though my focus is on fluctuations rather than on
emergence. ThcmaticaUy, my treatment of Hindu-Muslim rela-
tions spans across both the orientations outlined above, as it
combines an interest in how interrcligious animosity is expressed
and transmitted with a focus on how interreligious ties and
relations are constituted in times without political controversies
that stir local passions. Methodologically, this book falls in line
with those that arc based on long-term fieldwork in one locality
or among one group of people. However, while the studies men-
tioned predominately rely on verbal data such as interviews or
oral histories, the present study also applies network analysis
and the extended case method to get an overview of the extent
and nature of social relations between upper<aste Hindus and
Muslims.
The study of caste has a far longer history than the study of
Hindu nationalism and interreligious relations. It is even older
than the social sciences, as it originated with British colonial
and missionary efforts at understanding the socio-political struc-
ture of the society they governed and worked in. Given the
centrality of caste to Indian social organization, it has been
discussed by academics of most disciplinary shades. Yet it is

10 • Blmd«i Boundaries
social anthropologists and sociologists who have produced most

of the standard reference works on caste, as it is they who most
thoroughly have scrutinized its constituting principles-to the
· extent that caste came to serve as a gate-keeper for the anthro-
pological understanding of India well into the 1980s (Appadurai
1988).
Given that the study of caste covers so many decades,
disciplines and problems of investigation, I will refer to Susan
Bayly's comprehensive work on caste and caste studies (1999)
for a broad overview of the field. For the purposes of the present
book it suffices to note what I see as key positions in the
anthropological pursuit of caste, as it shares their disciplinary
orientation. These positions are methodologically rather than
thematically constituted, and that with the longest pedigree is
the classical village fieldwork which explored how each caste
within the village maintained its rank or attempted to increase
its status vis-a-vis the other castes. It includes works as dispar-
ate as Mayer's analysis of the exchange of services, food, and
beverages (1960) and Raheja's study of the role of gifts and
prestations in generating hierarchy and caste (1988). The
second position anchors the understanding of caste in religious
scriptures. Its most prominent proponent is Dumont (1966),
who combined his insights from fieldwork with a search for the
underlying values that structured caste, an approach which led
him to consult people versed in the religious scriptures. Dumont's
work became a turning point in the understanding of caste, but
it also attracted· considerable criticism for interpreting caste
almost solely according to Brahminic values. Davis' study of the
three 'qualities' that constitute rank (1976, 1983) falls in line
with the .'book view' of caste, though Davis arrives at a different
understanding than Dumont and has more modest explanatory
ambitions.
In the 1980s an increasing number of anthropologists started
to opt for fieldwork in urban settings instead of villages. Gwen the
large population of Indian towns and cities, it became impossible
to sustain a bird's eye view of how all the castes represented
within the setting related to one another. Hence, the urban turn
generated two new vantage points in the pursuit of caste. One was
to focus on a panicular caste or caste segment, as when my
predecessor~ in Kanpur studied the Koris' involvement in factory

Introduction • 11
work (Molund 1988) and the pig-rearing Kh~iks and their bristle
trade (Bellwinchel-Schempp 1998, 2003). The other was to limit
the field site to a smaller unit such as a work-place or neighbour-
hood, where caste may be examined alongside other issues. For
an example of the latter approach see Parry et aL ( 1999).
The treatment of caste in this book attempts to revive the kind
of questions and methods that characterized the classic village
studies and apply them to an urban setting. True, like other
urban anthropologists, I limit the unit of study. I use the hybrid
method of concentrating on a particular caste segment (though
not on a single caste) and limit the fieldwork to neighbourhoods
with similar characteristics. The influence from village studies
lies in my effort to try to identify the practices and beliefs that
were most significant for reproducing caste as a principle of
differentiation. Since urban settings lack the complex agricul-
tural exchange and prestations known from village studies, and
since the correspondence between caste trade and present
occupation is weaker in urban than rural settings, the processes
that reproduce caste in urban settings are bound to differ from
those that have been argued to reproduce it in the countryside.
Initially, my search drew me towards the frequently voiced as-
criptions and self-ascriptions that associate each caste with
certain looks, preferences, and behaviour styles. Yet, agreeing
with village anthropologists that the bottom line of caste is likely
to lie in interaction and exchange rather than in stereotypes, my
attention switched to contexts in which my upper-caste acquain-
tances interacted with low castes and untouchables. 2 Of these
contexts, I argue that domestic master-servant relationships
were of prime importance in reproducing caste ideology, and
that the 'qualities' outlined by Davis came into play here as well.
This argument may also hold relevance for the thesis that caste
2 Despite its derogatory connotations, I follow Mendelsohn & Vicziany
( 1998) in employing the term 'untouchables' when discussing upper-caste
practices of distancing, as this is the referent that best captures the notions
that govern such practices. However, I will shift to more neutral terms
such as Scheduled Castes (SCs) or Dalits when discuss~ng affirmative
action and politicization. This book will also have to make use of certain
caste names with derogatory connotations, as these names frequently crop
up in upper-caste discourse, which I see as impoftant to exemplify and
discuss.

12 • Bl.ended Boundaries
is becoming 'ethnicized' or 'substantialized' (Dirks 1998; cf.

Fuller 1996) as it documents a field persisting interdependence.
In stark contrast to the study of caste, the study of caste
politics is dominated by macr0-<>riented approaches. This is
probably inevitable given the emphasis on politics, but it is also
reinforced by the strength of political scientists and historians
in the field. A classic on caste politics is the anthology Caste in
Indian Politics (Kothari 1970), which puts the main emphasis on
caste associations and their role as political pressure groups,
but which pursues several other intersection points between
caste and institutional politics as well. Another classic topic of
investigation pertains to how politicians activate caste networks
and caste loyalties to attract voters (Hasan 1989; 1998a; Mayer
1966; Pal 1994). A third field of inquiry pertains to the policies
intended to curb caste discrimination and raise the social and
economic status of untouchables and low castes. Since this is
the kind of caste politics that holds relevance for the present
study, it may be useful to discern the most common approaches
through which it has been studied.
Virtually all the works include a section that summarizes the
laws against caste discrimination and the reservation policy that
secures underprivileged castes a certain quota in electoral
politics, employment, and education. Beyond this, I find it useful
to distinguish between policy-0riented, actor-0riented and con-
sequence-Oriented studies. The policy-0riented studies empha-
size the levelling policies themselves and the ways in which they
came into being. They include works such as Galanter's law-
oriented study (1984) and Nesiah's comparison of the different
forms of positive discrimination that have been implemented by
different countries (1997). Actor-0riented studies direct their
attention to those who designed, demanded or implemented the
policies in question, such as Zelliot's work on Ambedkar and the
Ambedkar movement (see, for example, 1970, 1996 (1972)).
They also include numerous works on pre-Independence reform-
ists such as Gandhi and Phule, as well as on persons, parties,
and organizations that spearhead the Dalit movement today
(see, for example, Mendelsohn & Vicziany 1998, Chapter 7).
The actor-0riented approach may also be said to incorporate
J affrelot's <let.ailed documentation of the speed at which the
proportion of low-caste political representatives has grown (2003).

Introduction • 13
Consequence-oriented studies explore the outcomes of the lev-

elling policies. They include works such as Ram's study (1988)
of social mobility among state-employed SCs, and Kirpal &
Gupta's account (1999) of how reserved category Indian Insti-
tute of Technology (llT) students who were admitted without
minimum qualifying marks were too underqualified to keep up,
something that suggests that the reservation policy can have
adverse effects for its beneficiaries. Mendelsohn & Vicziany
(1998, Chapter 6) remind us of the many Dalits whom the
levelling policies fail to reach, such as untouchables who toil
under slave-like conditions in the stone quarries. Shah ( 1996)
discusses the argument that reser\iation fosters bureaucratic
inefficiency, while a number of scholars comment on the effects
of caste-based reservation on the social institution of caste as
a whole; suggesting processes of transformation or reinvention
(Fuller 1996; Panini 1966) .
The examination of caste politics in this book falls in line with
the studies that examine social and political outcomes. But,
rather than exploring outcomes for intended beneficiaries or the
social institution of caste, this book directs its attention to the
kind of people whose social, economic, and political dominance
the levelling policies were designed to reduce. My documenta-
tion of strong upper-caste disagreement with these policies will
hold little surprise, as most people resent policies that erode
their privileges. Besides, as several scholars have pointed out,
the Hindu nationalist ideology that my upper-caste acquaintan-
ces supported did not only pertain to Hindu-Muslim relations; it
also entailed a tacit defence of the caste hierarchy and a clear
upper-caste bias in its imagination of the ideal Hindu (see, for
example, Hansen 1999;Jaffrelot 1993 (1996}; Lochtefeld 1996;
Pandey 1993). In this sense, upper-caste resentment of policies
intended to reduce caste inequality can be seen as another
aspect of Hindu nationalist leanings and upper-caste change of
attention from Muslims to Dalits as an alternation between
different faces, or phases, of local Hindutva. 111e main contribu-
tion of this book to the study of caste politics, therefore, does not
lie in documenting upper~aste resentment, but in examining the
forms that this resentment took. Besides arguing that upper
castes tended to exaggerate the scope of the reservation policy
and scoff at the need for anti-discrimination laws, I argue that

14 • Bkrukd Boundarns
they increasingly used reservation and the political ascent of

Dalits to justify their own practice of securing employment and
admission to educational institutions through the back door, and
of accessing state benefits by illegitimate means. As such, this
study indicates that caste politics possibly may reinforce the
corrupt and nepotic practices that mar Indian state-society
relations today.
All in all, this book holds the potential to contribute to each of
the four fields discussed above--caste, caste politics, Hindu-
Muslim relations, and Hindu nationalism- by virtue of being an
ethnographic case study that holds relevance for each of these
topics. Yet its main contribution probably lies in integrating these
four fields in a single study in an effort to capture at least some
of the complexity of the social differentiation that characterizes
urban India today, and at least a few of the political implications
that this complexity may have.
One reason I started to look into Hindu-Muslim conflicts in
1991-2 was my concern about the anti-Muslim sentiments inher-
ent in Hindu nationalist rhetoric and over the occurrence of riots.
I have no more sympathy for the caste ideology that my analysis
came to include or for the petty corruption it touches upon.
Beyond influencing the point of departure for this study, however,
I will attempt to keep my own ethical values away from the
analysis. Like D'Andrade, I believe that research which is strongly
guided by 'moral models', as he terms it, is often 'counterpro-
ductive in discovering how the world works' (1995: 402) as it
tends to steer us towards information that supports the conclu-
sions we would like to draw and make us overlook information
that points in other directions. While I share this conviction with
most scholars of caste and caste politics, it makes me diverge
from several of those who have authored books and articles on
Hindu nationalis1n. Rather than challenging the ideologies and
practices I examine, by directing all my attention to their most
negative tenets or giving them negative labels such as 'funda-
mentalism' or 'oppression', I believe that the ethically neutral
curiosity that a methodological relativist position has to offer is
a better suited platform for an open-minded examination of the
processes that make upper-caste Hindus think of Muslims and
Dalits as 'Others '. In the same way as the novelist Mark Behr
(1996 (1993)) describes how his white South African family

Introduction • 15
'loved him into' contempt for the blacks, this book aims to
understand the kind of life-worlds that foster similar attitudes
in India. Understanding these life-worlds from within, I believe,
requires that the observer bracket her own ethical and political
values.
POLITICS AND EVERYDAY LIFE

The main framework in this book relies on the assumption that
it is possible and productive to make a distinction between
politics and everyday life. While this distinction may seem self-
evident to some, one could also argue-as many contemporary
anthropologis ts would be inclined to do-that, when government
decisions affect and seep into the day-to-<lay living of the people
we study, as in this book, a separation between these domains is
unwarranted. In many ways I agree with the latter viewpoint,
which implies that the life-worlds we study must be understood
and presented as seamless wholes. Yet, while this can generate
fine-grained descriptions of local life-worlds, I am less certain of
its potential to generate analytical arguments. Unless we 'slice
up' the world we study in some way or other-as when we employ
broad categories such as 'religion', 'kinship' or 'work' -1 fail to
see how we can systematize our empirical observations, let
alone relate them to each other afterwards in order to construct
an argument. Without employing some kind of distinctions, at
least implicitly, I fear that our observations would become so
entangled that it \VOUld short-circuit our analytical efforts.
Defending distinctions for analytical purposes, however, does
not free me from problematizing the particular distinction that
underpins the main argument of this book, namely that between
politics and everyday life. One problem is that it is debatable
whether it exists or holds relevance 'out there', in the local
societies we study. Another is that both these categories have
been used in fairly different ways by different social scientists,
depending on their disciplinary background, theoretical inclina-
tion, and topic of investigation. The term 'politics', for example,
has been used in at least four different ways. Most commonly
it is used to refer to activities in parliaments, parties, and state
administrations and, by extension, to public debates about these
activities. This is the delineation of politics that dominates the

16 • Blended Boundarns
study of modem, complex societies. In political science it meets

limited competition, as this is the kind of societies that political
scientists usually study. In social anthropology, however, the
concept of 'politics' was originally used in reference to local
leadership in societies located so far beyond the influence of any
state government that they were held to be stateless. It was such
societies that the first generations of anthropologists directed
their attention to, and by analysing local leadership and regional
integration in terms of politics, they were able to juxtapose the
nation-state with other forms of large-scale social organization.
The poststn1cturalist turn brought forth a third delineation. Rather
than locating politics in decision-making structures, it was now
taken to refer to all kinds of processes that reproduced, legiti-
mated, or challenged existing power structures. Understood in
this way, politics is not a social field in itself, but an aspect of
other fields. Consequently, products ofpoststructuralist thought,
whatever their disciplinary background, are frequently entitled
'the politics of gender', 'the politics of religion' , and so on.
Finally, there are the anthropologists who advocate an emic
approach, arguing that we must base our analysis on the local
connotations that the term 'politics' or its local equivalents have
in the society we study. Despite the long tradition for emic
concept delineation in anthropology, the effort to apply it to
politics is fairly recent (e.g. Spencer 1997).
The category of 'everyday life'- which is also referred to as
'everyday practices' or merely 'the everyday'-has rarely been
explicitly discussed. Nevertheless, these terms have become
increasingly common, especially in contemporary anthropology.
Usually they are employed to contrast other categories, be it
formal education (Palsson & Helgason 1999), harvest festivals
(Senft 1996), dancing and poetry (Heath 1994), or carnival
(Lewis 2000) . This makes Lewis (2000) suggest that 'the every-
day' is 1nainly a residual category. He acknowledges that this
makes it somewhat vague, but argues that this is a strength rather
than a drawback, as the vagueness contributes to make the
category suitable as a background for the main topics the scholar
wishes to examine, at the same time as it enables it to be used
as a repository for phenomena that do not fit into the spotlighted
categories. Nevertheless, everyday life is not necessarily a re-
sidual category; it may also be used to designate a broad arena

Introduction • 17
in which observations classified elsewhere are played out. For

example, Scheper-Hughes (1992) uses it to subsume her study
of violence, mourning, family ties, and patron-client relations in
Brazil, while Gullestad (1989) employs it to subsume her study
of class, equality, home decoration, and babysitting in Norway.
Whether the category of 'everyday life' is used to contrast or to
subsume, it is generally located in or near people's homes,
represents the trivial and non-spectacular, and is continuous in
the sense that it has no beginning and no end, but simply flows
by-day after day, month after month, and year after year.
With at least four different delineations of 'politics' and two
usages of the 'everyday life' category, it should be clear why none
of these categories, nor the delineations, are self-evident. Let me
therefore clarify the delineations on which this book is based.
'Politics' will mainly be used in the institutional sense, that is,
about activities that occur at different levels of governance, as
well as public debates that seek to reflect or influence these
activities. It might seem odd that an anthropological study such
as this draws on a conventional political science understanding
of politics, even though its alternatives hold higher anthropologi-
cal currency. However, there are several reasons for this. Most
imponant, the society and people I write about in this book live
in the bean of a modem state and are strongly influenced by its
governing institutions. Besides, they live in a democratic country
with lively public debate and critical news coverage. Since they
followed the public debate through the news, at least to some
extent, they were aware of most imponant developments in
governing institutions. This also made them adopt the way in
which the term 'politics' was generally used in the public sphere,
a usage which overlaps quite closely with the institutional delin-
eation. In this sense, the understanding of politics in this book
is fairly close to the emic understanding, though both my infor-
mants and their political representatives tended to add a nega-
tive flavour to this word, as Ruud (2000) also noted in West
Bengal.'
My interest in how parliamentary decisions and public de-
bates trickled down to and affected those I lived among during
' It is not uncommon to hear Indian politicians blame one another for
making 'politically motivated' moves, as if the word 'political' were deroga-
tory in itself.

18 • Blended &ntndaries
fieldwork could also have justified a framework that merges

politics with the everyday. Nevenheless, the research questions
I want to explore necessitate that the activities in the governmen-
tal institutions are kept strictly separate from local interpreta-
tions of the1n. Rather than conflating these levels in the sa1ne
tenn, I follow my informants in locating politics outside their own
actions and interpretations. For them, politics was something
that evolved in institutions and buildings they had never entered,
and something they had no influence over beyond the votes they
cast every alternate year or so. 'Their sense that politics was
'elsewhere', beyond the realm of their own day-to-day living, has,
I think, three aspects. In terms of.scale, they conceived of most
important political activities as occurring at national or state
levels rather than locally. In terms of place, they conceived of
them as happening in New Delhi or Lucknow, the state capital,
rather than in Kanpur-let alone in their own neighbourhoods.
Finally, in terms of information source, they conceived of politics
as so1nething that 1nainly reached them through newspapers or
TV, in contrast to most other phenomena, which reached them
through direct experience or face-to-face encounters. In this
sense, 1ny localization of politics as something beyond the ev-
eryday lives of 1ny informants is even closer to an e1nic under-
standing than my delineation of politics itself.
From the arguments above, it 1nay seem as if this book
employs the everyday life category as a vague residual to politics.
To some extent this is true, as it takes the everyday to include
a wide range of issues that fall outside the 'politics' category.
Mainly, however, this book treats the everyday as a subsuming
category. Most of the chapters will consider it as an arena in
which people enact caste, class, and religious boundaries as
they go about their daily routines. Herein lies the value of the
'everyday' as an arena for the study of local interpretations of
politics, and of the feedback these interpretations may have-
or perhaps not have-on the day-to-day enactment of caste and
religious boundaries.
ETHNICITY
This book is also a case study of ethnicity, or 1nultiple ethnic
identities, depending on how \Videly or narrowly one defines

ImroduaUm • 19
ethnicity. While few South Asianists make use of the ethnicity

concept except when referring to tribes and other communities
outside the cultural mainstream, this is the term comparative
anthropologists tend to use when discussing local consciousness
of cultural differences, whichever the communities concerned.
In his overview of anthropological perspectives on ethnicity and
nationalism, Eriksen summarizes ethnicity as 'an aspect of
social relationship between agents who consider themselves as
culturally distinctive from members of other groups with whom
they have a minimum of regular interaction' (2002: 12). Within
this understanding, the Hindu-Muslim boundary is ethnic be-
cause the two communities live side by side and interact, while
having clear notions about how they differ from one another.
These notions are by no means limited to religi9us dissimilarity,
but refer just as much to traits such as dietary habits, clothing,
prescriptive marriage rules and, as I will discuss towards the
end of the book, essentialist notions about physical looks and
intrinsic personality traits. Caste has strong aspects of ethnicity
as well, as intercaste interaction often coincides with notions
of difference beyond those rooted in hereditary occupation. It
is the strengthened imponance of such notions that is referred
to as ethnicization of caste. However, since people generally
only hold such notions about members of other castes if their
respective castes are either fairly similarly or very differently
ranked, it would probably be misleading to use such notions to
argue that caste per s~ is a form of ethnicity in Eriksen's sense.
Yet the upper-caste attention to Dalits and their intrinsic person-
ality traits, which I discuss towards the end of this book, would
cenainly be so.
If E1iksen's understanding of ethnicity appears too inclusive,
let me return to Barth's groundbreaking work from 1969, which
contributed to dismantling the view of ethnicity as a product of
cultural differences. For Banh, as for Eriksen and others who
stand on his shoulders, ethnicity primarily penains to ascription
and self-ascription of group membership and cultural character-
istics. However, Banh seems to have implied that for ascriptions
and self-ascriptions to be ethnic, they must also include some
ideas about the origin and background of each of the commu-
nities (Banh 1969: 13). Even if we narrow the ethnicity concept
by adding this criterion, the ethnicity concept would still be

applicable both to Hindu-Muslim relations and caste, at least
when examined on the basis of the ascriptions and self-ascrip-
tions of upper-caste Hindus. Whether in Kanpur or beyond, upper
castes are clearly influenced by the Hindu nationalist 'sons of
the soil' argument, which depicts .Hindus as originating in the
Indian subcontinent and Muslims as descending from uninvited
foreigners and 'invaders' from regions funher west. Interest-
ingly, sudden recollections that most Indian Muslims descend
from Hindus who embraced Islam-which is common knowl-
edge both in Hindu nationalist and non-organizational upper-
caste circles-do not dismantle the sons of the soil argument;
it merely transforms it from penaining to biological roots to an
argument about religious homeland (or 'holyland', as Savarkar
termed it) and political loyalty. This preserves the notion that
Hindus and Muslims are of different origin, something that
makes upper-caste constructions of the Hindu-Muslim bound-
ary qualify for the Banhian understanding of ethnicity as well.
The case of caste is more complicated, as the notions of origin
and background inherent in caste ascriptions are more hetero-
geneous. Only some penain to territorial origins, such as the
view that link Khatris to Punjab. Others are based on mythology,
such as the Brahminical belief that Kayasthas descend from the
son of a Vaishya father and a Shudra mother (cf. Gupta 1991:
123). Yet others draw on ethnohistorical speculations about how
the hereditary occupation of each caste evolved, something that
would have rendered caste ethnic by default had it not been for
the unevenly distributed notions of cultural difference noted
above. It seems evident, though, that caste does not tally less
with Banh's understanding of ethnicity than with Eriksen's,
though the former is narrower.
There exist a number of understandings and definitions of
ethnicity besides the two I have mentioned, but it would be mean-
ingless to hold Hindu-Muslim relations and caste up against
them all. The preceding examination has already shown that
both Hindu-Muslim relations and caste entail several phenom-
ena that closely resemble those that have been analysed in terms
of ethnicity in other pans of the world. This is why I hold the
examination of religious boundaries and caste in this book to be
a case study of ethnicity and multiple. ethnic identities. Even so,
I have decided not to make use of the ethnicity concept in the

JntroduaWn • 21
chapters that follow. Nor will I employ much comparative ma-

terial from the world beyond South Asia as analytical crowbars.
This choice is neither a consequence of general scepticism of
broad comparative endeavours, nor an effort to cater to a read-
ership that might feel uncomfortable with interpreting Hindu-
Muslim relations and caste in terms of ethnicity. My reason
for leaving the ethnicity concept out of this study is the risk of
reductionism, that is, of overemphasizing aspects of Hindu-
Muslim relations and caste that seem analogous to phenomena
that have been analysed in terms of ethnicity elsewhere, while
downplaying or overlooking the many features that make caste
and Hindu-Muslim relations in India unique. Another.aspect of
reductionism would come into play if I were to interpret both
caste and Hindu-Muslim relations-which are social bound-
aries of very different kinds-in terms of the same analytical
concept, as this might have led me to exaggerate their similari-
ties and downplay their differences. An additional reason for not
employing the ethnicity concept is the likelihood that it would
have pulled the discussion in the subsequent chapters towards
topics of inquiry that are a little on the side of those I would like
to discuss. Having said that, anthropological perspectives on
ethnicity still come into play in an implicit way, as they were part
of my anthropological training and thereby influenced my pre-
conceptions as well as my empirical inquiry. For exa1nple, my
close-up examination of boundary maintenance and my refusal
to take any boundaries as givens, are undoubtedly outcomes of
my anthropological socialization into the Barthian perspective.
Refraining from employing anthropological perspectives on
ethnicity in a more explicit way, I believe, enhances the possi-
bility of thematizing processes that have received little anthro-
pological attention under the ethnicity label, and if so, this book
holds potential to expand the field further.
MULTIPLE DOMAINS, MULTI-TEMPORAL

FIELDWORK, AND GENERALIZABILITY
An additional aim of the present study is to illustrate the fruit-
fulness of studying people across different domains or social
fields. Domain-crossing has long been an ideal in social anthro-
pology as it enables the discovery of connections between phe-

22 • Blenlkd Boundaries
nomena that seem unrelated on the surface. Furthermore, it

reflects that people live 'whole' lives in the sense that they move
from field to field with ease, often without recognizing their
domain shifts. It is the effon to reproduce this wholeness tex-
tually that results in what I referred to as 'seamlessness' above.
The main reason why this book spans several domains is that
it seeks to identify the everyday contexts and values that were
most significant for reproducing upper-caste notions of caste
and Muslim Otherness, something that requires an open-ended
approach. Yet it also enables me to trace some unanticipated
connections, such as the caste expectations inherent in cenain
class idioms and the use of anti-reservation arguments to legiti-
mize nepotism and corruption.
That all domains cannot be given equal weight goes without
saying. Those I have selected for scrutiny are to some extent
suggested by the research questions. Yet they are just as much
a product of the links that suggested themselves as the fieldwork
progressed as well as of what my informants were willing to let
me observe and take pan in. The book opens by examining two
spatially defined domains that I found to be crucial for the
enactment and reproduction of upper-caste notions of caste and
superiority, namely the domestic sphere and public places. It
continues by pursuing kinship, friendship, and other social ties
in order to 1nap the pauern of social relations and its capacity
for boundary-crossing. The final chapters return to the domestic
domain to examine discourses of Otherness. Here the political
domain will also be drawn in, given its strong influence on
the notions of Otherness that were expressed · domestically.
Work, however, will play a marginal role in this study-at least
if conceptualized as a physical space away from home that is
regularly visited to secure an income. Only a few of my infor-
mants had work of this kind, and those who did were too busy
to want my company more than a few times, if at all. The
religious domain hardly comes into play in this book either,
something that may seem odd in a study of religious boundaries.
However, none of the misgivings I heard about Muslims per-
tained to their religious beliefs and practices, and I was unable
to pinpoint any significant connections between my upper-caste
acquaintances' ritual life and their notions of Otherness. Con-
sequently, the religious domain provided no clues to the topic

Introdudion • 23
of investigation pursued in this book apan from demarcating the

boundary between Hindus and Muslims.
When this book moves from one domain and chapter to
another, it often changes analytical perspective as well. The
examination of domestic relations will be dominated by the
theory of practice, the study of movement in public places by
analysis of local idioms, the exploration of social relations by
network analysis, and the discussion of notions of Otherness by
a hybrid of conversational analysis and discourse analysis. Each
of these approaches will be presented before being employed,
but in most of the chapters, the presentations will be limited to
a paragraph that strikes the chord, so to speak. This, I hope, will
prevent the domainwise analytical presentations from overshad-
owing the main perspective of this book, which is the recipient
approach of communication that I sketched in the beginning of
this introduction. This perspective, however, will not come clearly
into view before the final chapters.
To undertake a study that spans several domains, is largely
inductive in its search for systemic connections, and builds
more of its explanatory model on what people do than on data
that can be counted, tape-recorded, photocopied or merely read,
requires considerable time. This is why anthropologists spend
a long time in the field-often more than a year. While most
anthropological monographs are based on Jong-term fieldwork
over a continuous period of time, this book is based on two
fieldworks of six to eight months each, as well as a series of
shorter visits between and after. Altogether, the visits span a
twelve-year period (1992-2003), with the major stints in 1992
and 1997. Thus, the fieldwork on which this book is based is
longitudinal and multi-temporal, something that has provided
valuable insight into matters of continuity and change. While its
longitudinality enabled the observation of stability in social
relations, values and attitudes, its multi-temporality-leaving
and returning after a year or more--enhanced the discovery of
changes. These changes include the shift of salience in upper·
caste notions of Otherness without which this book would not
have come into being.
Besides demonstrating the value of this kind of fieldwork to
the understanding of social boundaries and their politicization in
India, this book makes a case for the continued relevance of suc h

24 • Blnukd Boundaries
a research 1nethod to social anthropology in general. Throughout

my work with this book, most of the methodological debates in
anthropological journals and conferences have concerned alter-
natives to the archetypical long-term fieldwork in a single local-
ity. The method that has attracted most attention is what Marcus
(1995) terms multi-local fieldwork. Conducting several short
fieldworks in different localities instead of a long fieldwork in a
single place has given new impetus to the study of people,
objects, and discourses on the move and enabled anthropolo-
gists to examine the broadness of the topics they study rather
than limiting themselves to one of its local manifestations. As
such, the expansion of the methodological repertoire is a wel-
come development. Nevertheless, a multi-sited fieldwork will
inevitably lead us to downplay local context and make it difficult
to integrate different domains from below. I believe, therefore,
that long-term fieldwork in a single locality entails some valuable
qualities that no other me.thod can replace. With this book I hope
to show its persisting relevance in its own right, as well as t_he
potential of its extension-multi-temporal fieldwork-for the
study of phenomena that involve change, here exemplified by
changes in local political attitudes.
A monograph based on a fieldwork such as this may come
across as myopic, something that begs the question of
generalizability. One form of generalizability arises when the
people on which a study is based can be substituted with other
people who share certain pre-defined characteristics without
causing major alterations in the empirical findings and argu-
ments. For such an endeavour to be meaningful, the minimum
characteristics we 1nust make invariable are the urban, upper-
caste, and Hindu factors. Next, we may ask whether this book
would have been substantially different if it had been based on
fieldwork elsewhere in Kanpur, or in another city or state. From
what I have gathered from Indian news coverage, other aca-
de1nic studies·, and encounters with upper castes in other parts
of India over the years, I suggest the following. Whereas the
intense negative essentialization of Muslims in 1992 was evident
all over India but strongest in the Hindi belt and Maharashtra,
the intense negative essentialization of Dalits in 1997 was largely
confined to Uttar Pradesh, as it was triggered by Mayawati's
chief ministership in this state. Consequently, the sharp change

Introduction • 25
in notions of Otherness that forms the point of departure for this

book holds limited generalizability beyond Uttar Pradesh, though
one certainly encountered similar argu1nents against Muslims
and Dalits elsewhere too. Much of what I write about master-
servant relationships can be recognized in other parts of India
as well, though their caste aspects seem stronger in Uttar Pradesh
than in most other places I have been to and read about. My
examination of class idioms and portrayal of social networks
also appear to have wide relevance, at least judging from my
impressions of the upper castes I have 1net elsewhere in North
India. At the end of the day, however, this fonn of generalizability
can only be ascertained by other studies.
A looser form of generalizability pertains to the extent to
which processes described in one setting can throw light upon
similar processes in other settings though the composition of
people, patterns of social relations and political context may
differ. Within this line of thinking, we may ask which of the
processes described in this book can be expected to hold larg-
est applicability elsewhere-also outside an Indian context.
One would probably pertain to the ways in which coexisting fault
lines may spill over to one another and 'blend', so to speak,
though only one can be politicized at the tiine. Another would
pertain to the role of media coverage in generating a discursive
pressure that reinforces animosities and generates xenophobia.
A third would concern the processes through which news is
locally digested and passed on in ways that resemble the trans-
mission of rumours and urban legends. A fourth would concern
the processes that 1nake essentialist notions and stereotypes
immune to counte1information, at least as long as the news
coverage that nurtures them remains intense. The description
of these and other processes in the following chapters will
c_ertainly have a distinct Kanpur flavour, but it is nevertheless in
these processes that I believe this study to have the wi~est
applicability.
STRUCTURE OF ARGUMENT
The chapters may be grouped into four segments. The first,
which only .consists of Chapter 2, provides background informa-
tion for the chapters that follow. Having explained why the study

26 • Blended Buundaries
is localized to Kanpur, it moves on with a brief presentation of

Uttar Pradesh, the state in which Kanpur is located. Uuar Pradesh
is India's most populous state, but lags behind the rest of the
country in several developmental respects. Kanpur is its largest
city, and my introduction to the city begins with its expansion
from the small village of Kanhpur in the 1700s to the industrial
city of Cawnpore in the early 1900s, and finally to the stage of
industrial decay and growing unemployment during my field-
work in the 1990s. It also historicizes the relationship between
Hindu and Muslim inhabitants in the city, which largely has been
peaceful, though there have been JYeriods of tension and riots.
The middle section of the chapter portrays the kind of neighbour-
hoods I lived in during my stays in Kanpur, which I have amal-
gamated in a fictitious neighbourhood, Mohanganj, to protect my
informants from recognition. This move does not result in
much loss of information as their neighbourhoods shared the
characteristics that they were somewhat withdrawn from the city
centre and dominated by upper-caste Hindus, with scattered
clusters of low castes !ind Muslims. Chapter 2 also introduces
my four core informant families, which were Khatris, Baniyas,
Punjabis and Brahmins respectively. The final part of the chap-
ter presents the course of my fieldwork in further detail, now
focusing on the large and small events-many of which were
beyond my control-that contributed to shape the direction of
my fieldwork and thereby also of this book.
The second segment, which consists of Chapters 3 and 4,
grew out of my search for everyday processes and arenas that
reproduced upper-caste .notions of caste and other forms of
stratification. 'fhe search eventually led me towards do1nestic
master-servant relations, and whereas Chapter 3 investigates
the caste-ideology inherent in such relations, Chapter 4 exam-
ines how my informants positioned strangers when moving about
in the streets, markets, and other public places. Thus, this book
analyses the domestic domain as an arena for the reproduction
of caste, and public places as a domain dominated by class
positioning. It should be noted that, though Chapters 3 and 4
investigate differenl domains, the selection of domains was
secondary to the search for arenas and contexts that reproduced
upper-caste notions of superiority. An open-ended examination
of the social boundaries reproduced in home co1npounds and

/fllrodudiqn • 27
public places, respectively, would have had to give more weight

to multiple hierarchies and boundaries.
The examination of master-servant relationships in Chapter
3 argues that these relations reproduced upper-caste notions of
caste and untouchability in several ways. One was the practice
of employing different servants for different tasks. Servants of
'untouchable' background were never employed for work requir-
ing access to the kitchen, and the tasks for which a servant was
appointed corresponded fairly well with his or her caste, particu-
larly in the case of sweepers and washennen. Another caste-
reproducing practice, I argue, was the avoidance of untouchable
servants. Not only did my upper-caste informants avoid physical
proximity, but when giving them food, tea, or water, they always
did so in separate utensils. Given the political incorrectness
and embarrassment of admitting one's own caste inhibitions,
however, these practices were referred to in terms of gandagi
(dirtiness, badness) rather than untouchability, and further ra-
tionalized in terms of hygiene ifl attempted to pursue the matter
further. This chapter further argues that the patronage inherent
in caste ideology-but not unique to it-was reproduced through
my informants' relations to their live-in servants, who generally
were of lower-caste, but not untouchable, background. On the
basis of three cases I suggest that a patronage model resem-
bling that described in several village studies remains a salient
ideal, though I also had informants who aimed to make their
servants work as much as possible for the lowest possible salary.
All in all, this chapter concludes that master-servant relations
were crucial in reproducing upper-caste notions of caste and
untouchability because they enabled caste to be enacted more
openly than in any other context, and because they socialized
upper-caste children into a world in which certain relations were
structured according to caste.
In Chapter 4 I follow my upper-caste informants out of the
gates and walls that protected their home compounds from the
outer world, and into streets, markets, and other public places.
Though most of the people they encountered in such spaces were
complete strangers, my a cquaintances had c lear notions about
whom they should behave respectfully towards, whom they could
ignore and whom they should maintain a distance from. Chapter
4 is devoted to visual and other traits that enabled upper castes

28 • Blenlkd Boundaries
to manoeuvre among strangers and to the verbal idioms they

used when distinguishing between inferior and equal strangers.
I argue that my acquaintances mainly positioned strangers
according to their complexion, height, body shape, clothing and
speech. Those they held to be most inferior-looking were re-
ferred to as cho!e log (small people) and had dark skin, short and
slender bodies, poorly maintained clothes, and a mode of speech
that revealed rural origins and low education level. Those they
held to be on a par with themselves had fair skin, well main-
tained clothes, tall and rounded bodies and 'sweet' speech, and
were referred to as acche log (good people). I funher argue that
the principle of stratification elucidated in this chapter is an
upper-caste construction of class that is entirely different from
caste, but that nevertheless is influenced by caste models given
the strong expectations that 'good people' were of upper-caste
background and 'small people' of low-caste or untouchable
background. This was also reflected in the tendency of 'good'
upper castes to maintain distance from 'small people' and to
minimize their presence in public places wherein many 'small'
people were present.
The third segment of the book, which consists of Chapters 5
and 6, continues the examination of my upper-caste acquaintan-
ces' everyday social relations. However, these chapters shift
attention from spatially defined domains to social networks and
from servants and strangers to other kinds of relationships. In
Chapter 5 I aim to give an overview of my upper-caste acquain-
tances' 'social worlds', as I term it. Beyond household members
and servants, those they maintained stable ties with were usually
relatives, caste fellows, friends or so-called 'contacts', and this
chapter examines the potential of each of these relationship
categories to transcend boundaries of caste and class. While
kinship relations were caste-clustered due to endogamous mar-
riage practices, they still held potential to integrate people with
different economic means-though not the boundary between
'good' and 'small' people, given their common caste back-
ground. None of those I knew spent much time on caste fellows
beyond those they counted as relatives, but they often encoun-
tered caste fellows at weddings and could therefore approach
them if they wanted to-which usually would be if they were rich
or influential in some way. Friendship, however, had potential to

Introduction • 29
transcend both caste and class, but only did so to a limited

extent. While friendship integrated people from different jatis
and va711as, it did not go beyond the upper-caste segment of
'good' people, something I explain in terms of uneven access to
schools, colleges, and other venues where the seeds of friendship
were most commonly sown. It was only contact relationships,
that is, instrumental ties to people in influential government
positions, that brought my upper-caste informants in touch with
Dalits and low castes other than their servants and the undiffer-
entiated mass of 'small people' in public places. Consequently,
Chapter 5 will conclude that my upper-caste infonnants lived in
an overwhelmingly homogeneous social world with respect to
caste and class, something that had vital effects on their sense
of normality and Otherness.
Chapter 6 re-examines public places and social ties to gauge
the extent and manner in which Muslims entered the everyday
lives of my upper-caste inf~rmants. In public places, I argue,
some Muslims blended into the mass of 'small' and 'good'
strangers, while others were recognizable as Muslim by their
clothing or appearance, something that adds another dimension
to the categorization of strangers discussed in Chapter 4. In
terms of social ties, however, this chapter argues that upper-
caste tics with Muslims were just as much regulated according
to the 'good'-and-'small' logic as other social ties. Since educa-
tional institutions brought my acquaintances together with mor.e
Muslims than lower castes and 'small' people, interreligious
friendship, romance and love marriages were more common
than similar relations across wide gaps of caste and class. For
vegetarian Hindus, however, interreligious relations could also
cause discomfort, as many feared that food served by Muslims
might contain traces of meat or even beef. The push and pull
of inter-religious relations is exemplified by presenting a friend-
ship case in some detail, something that also illustrates how
commonalty of class facilitated interreligious relations. The
final part of Chapter 6 examines upper-caste ties with 'small'
Muslims. Many upper castes assumed that low class-looking
Muslims were descended from low castes or untouchables and
consequently minimized their contact with them similar to the
way in which they avoided proximity to 'small people' of Hindu
denomination. Though Muslims were barred from work as

domestic servants, stable upper-caste relations with Muslim

milkmen, meat-sellers and tailors was not uncommon, and when
hiring labourers or semi-skilled workers, religious background
seemed insignificant as long as the work did not require access
to the employer's home. All in all, Chapter 6 concludes that
interreligious ties are just as strongly regulated by class as by
features ascribable to religious differences, and that similarity
of class makes interreligious boundaries more easily bridgeable
than wide gaps of caste.
The fourth segment, which consists of Chapters 7 and 8, shifts
the attention from the everyday to the political and politicized
and from actual social ties to discourses about the Other. 111e
first of these chapters is devoted to the intense negative upper-
caste attitudes to Muslims that preceded the demolition of the
Babri Masjid in 1992. Summarizing the news debates that put
Muslims on the agenda in the media and outlining the pattern
of media consumption among my informants, this chapter pre-
sents three conversation extracts to illustrate how the Muslim
Other emerged in the upper-caste discourse in Mohanganj that
year. These extracts show that the local upper-caste discourse
was no mere reflection of the public discourse. While the latter
largely revolved around specific controversies, my upper-caste
acquaintances were predominantly preoccupied with assumed ·
Muslim personality traits. Among the frequently mentioned fea-
tures was that Muslims were illiterate, child-breeding, and dirty,
which suggests that upper castes imagined the Muslim Other as
an inversion of their own self-image as 'good people'. In other
words, this chapter argues that local class categories also
cropped up in the construction of the Muslim Other. Chapter 7
further argues that the hostile essentialization of Muslims ac-
quired a temporary status as a 'transcendent truth' according
to which past interreligious experiences were restructured and
reinterpreted, and contradictory information filtered out or dis-
missed as 'pro-Muslim'. The final part of the chapter examines
the effect of the anti-Muslim discourse and the riots that fol-
lowed the Babri Masjid demolition on interreligious ties. Though
resulting in considerable mutual distrust and distancing, I argue
that the riots also catalysed compassion, as Hindu assistance
to Muslim riot victims suggests. I further argue that stable
interreligious ties were only temporarily affected, something I

lntrodudion • 31
substantiate by following up one of the Hindu-Muslim friend-

ships I examined in Chapter 6. ·
Chapter 8, which revisits Mohanganj five years later, exam-
ines how and why my upper-caste acquaintances' preoccupation
with Muslims came to be replaced by frustration over the alleg-
edly Dalit-oriented policies implemented by. Mayawati during
her chief ministership in 1997. Having summarized these poli-
cies and the country-wide reservation policy they drew on, this
chapter repeats the pattern of Chapter 7 by presenting a few
conversation excerpts as an empirical basis for discussion. As
these excerpts suggest, the preoccupation with caste politics
and Dalits had much in · common with the foregrounding of
Muslims in 1992, not the least that they were triggered by
political events and their coverage in the news, and their reso-
nance with everyday social boundaries. Chapter 8 also reflects
on differences between the ways in which Muslims and Dalits
were foregrounded and essentialized. Whereas the foregrounding
of caste entailed 'digitalization', since it was the boundary
between those who were eligible for reservation and those who
were not that was politicized rather than distinctions between
the multitude of jatis, the boundary between Hindus and Mus-
lims was already a question of either-or. I further argue that
upper castes routinely exemplified beneficiaries of reservation
with Chamars (leather workers) and bhangis (sweepers)-the
prototypical local untouchable castes. Yet they did not project
the 'smallness' of these castes back to the entire Dalit commu-
nity in the same way as they projected the smallness of some
Muslims back to the Muslim Other. The essentialization of
Dalits drew less on class idioms than on ascriptions of corrup-
tion, laziness, and stupidity, something that will bring me back
to the ethnotheory of gu!las (qualities) from Chapter 3. The final
part of Chapter 8 examines the effects of upper-caste essential-
ization of Dalits and understandings of caste politics on actual
inter-caste ties. I argue that master-servant relations remained
largely unchanged, and that resolutions to boycott Dalits in
private employment were voiced, but not carried out. In fact,
political efforts to fill the reserved quotas in the state adminis-
tration forced my upper-caste acquaintances to step up their
contact-building with Dalits. Yet their reduced educational and
employment opportunities augmented upper-caste solidarity and

provided a new source of legitimation for securing admission,

employment and state benefits by illegitimate means, thereby
apparently reducing the level of Dalits and Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) in non-reserved positions even further.
Finally, Chapter 9 lifts the gaze from the case material that
forms the empirical basis of this book in order to offer some
reflections about later shifts of salience of upper-caste notions
of Otherness and the differences betweecn caste violence and
'
Hindu-Muslim violence. It also elucidates some further thoughts
concerning the analytical process of writing this book, its depen-
dency on theoretical eclecticism and, once again, ethnicity.

..
2
The Setting, the People,

and the Fieldwork
When I planned this study, my initial interest was to examine the

effect of the Ayodhya controversy on Hindu-Muslim relation•.
With such a point of depanure, Uttar Pradesh appeared a self·
evident state in which to localize the fieldwork. This was the state
in which the Hindu nationalist movement got its political break·
through with the landslide victory in the elections to the 11tate
assembly in 1991. It was also the state in which Ayodhya and the
disputed mosque were located. And, on the practical side, the
Hindustani spoken in Uttar Pradesh was fairly close to the Hindi
I had learned at university. The choice of opting for a c:ity or town
also appeared as a given since the Hindu-Mu.'llim polari:r.ation
I wanted to study was predominantly an urban phenomenon.
Choosing a city in Uttar Pradesh to localize my fieldw'1rk prt1Vr:<l
more difficult. I had no connections that mack r1ne city m'1rr:
attractive than ochers. I staned by eliminating l.AU;kn1Jw, thr:
state capital, as it was too close to the p'11itical e~bli~hrnent,
Then I eliminated cities that attracted many fr1reign v1uri.'lf..-.,
fearing that my fieldwork woold be hampered by t.hr: r:rllilt:'l'I
offers of carpets, silk, and Kanja <marijuana, that rny fair 'Ile in
and blond hair tends to attract al<Jng the ·1,,,,,,,1, Pl/Jnrl trail'. 'f l :1'1
ruled OUl •.\gra and Banaras. Finall~·. I eliminau:ti <.itit:., w1~h ~-:;{ti
~·els of ~~~lim ,;,,1encc in u.r: rt:<.cnt J>'d.'ol.• Ha,,-.;, I
nded OUl ~teen.a, ~fr,radabad, .-\ligarh, AJlahat..atf, awl A;·'"'1r.;.a
as well. Ha\"ing encircled all tht:Y.: name'! r;r, a rroap, rr•1 ~11;

34 • Blemkd Boundaries
suddenly fell on an unencircled name written with large letters,

obviously reflecting the size of the city, Kanpur. A second glance
at the riot literature assured me that there had not been any
large-scale riots between Hindus and Muslims for decades
despite strong interreligious tension. All my travel guide said
about Kanpur was that Western travellers who found themselves
there had probably got off the train at the wrong station. Yes, I
thought to myself, this is where I'll go. Admittedly, this method
of selecting a fieldwork location may seem arbitrary in many
respects. Nevertheless, I believe that, within the given param-
eters, Kanpur is as suitable as any other city in Uttar Pradesh
as a venue from which the inter-connectedness of social bound-
aries and political shifts may be studied from below. This chap-
ter provides some general background information on the field
location and the fieldwork. The first half introduces Uttar Pradesh
and Kanpur, while the second zooms in on the neighbourhood in
which the fieldwork was conducted, presents its inhabitants and
describes the process of carrying out fieldwork among them.
lTITAR PRADESH
The largest and most populous part of Uttar Pradesh is the
Gangetic plains in the middle, named after the river Ganga,
which floats slowly towards the southeast. This region is known
for its flat, endless landscape dotted with agricultural fields,
villages, towns, and cities, one of which is Kanpur. The Gangetic
plains hold a pivotal position in the history of India. The events
narrated in the Ramayai:ia and Mahabharata are associated with
geographical locations, most of them linked to towns or areas
in this region. These plains were also a central venue for Muslim
expansion in India. For about 600 years, starting from the end
of the twelfth century, Uttar Pradesh was ruled by one Muslim
dynasty after another, most centred in or near Delhi. The Mughal
Empire, centred in western Uttar Pradesh, laid the foundations
for a composite culture manifest not only in architecture, music,
and literature, but also in the formation of new sects influenced
by Islam and Hinduism alike. During the eighteenth century,
the East India Company started to expand in the region. Terri-
tories wrested from the navabs (local governors, rulers) were
first placed under the Bengal Presidency, then separated to form

Setting, Ptople, Fieltiworlc • 35
the Agra Presidency in 1933. When the British annexed Awadh

('Oudh' or 'Oude' in colonial English) from the navab in Lucknow,
they united it with the Agra Presidency under the name of United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, shortened to United Provinces. Its
outer boundaries remained unchanged after Independence, 1 but
the name was changed to Uttar Pradesh, which literally means
'northern federal state'. While the new name signalled a break
with the past, the initials and boundaries remained as before.
The only territorial change since then was the carving out of
Uttaranchal, the hilly region in the north, as a separate state in
November 2000.
The religious composition of the population in Uttar Pradesh
reflects the past in that the percentage ofMuslims-17 per cent-
exceeds the Indian average of 12.1 per cent. 2 This is below the
percentage of Muslims injammu & Kashmir (about 65 per cent),
West Bengal (23.6 per cent), and Kerala (23.3 per cent). Even
so, Uttar Pradesh is home to almost a fourth of India's Muslims
due to the sheer size of its population. With 139 million inhabit-
ants, Uttar Pradesh is not only India's most populous state, it is
also nearly two and a halftimes as populous as Great Britain, its
former colonizer. The remaining population of Uttar Pradesh
consists of 81.5 per cent Hindus and minuscule percentages of
other religious communities (0.49 per cent Sikhs, 0.23 per cent
Buddhists, 0.14 per cent Christians, and 0.13 per cent Jains) .
Classification by religion conceals caste divisions, which have
not been officially recorded since the 1931 census. The 1931
census states that 20.5 per cent of the population in Uttar Pradesh
were 'elite castes', 43.5 per cent 'middle/backward castes',
and 21 .0 per cent 'Scheduled Castes'. 3 An unofficial 'rapid
census' from 1994 suggests that the caste composition is virtu-
ally unchanged, estimating that the upper castes constitute nearly
1 Two additional autonomous states-Tehri-Garhwal and Rampur-

were incorporated into Uttar Pradesh in 1947. However, both were within
the outer borders of Uttar Pradesh.
2
All the figures in this chapter are from the Census of India 1991 unless
otherwise indicated, as these are the figures that best capture the com-
position of the population at the time of fieldwork.
'CensusofIndia, 1931, UniUdPruuincesofAgra andAwadh, cited in Brass
(1993b}.

36 • Blmd«l Boundaries
20 per cent of the population and OBGs constitute 42 per cent.•

The SCs (21 per cent) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) (0.21
per cent) are already covered in the official census. However,
neither the 1931 census nor the 1994 rapid census give reasons
for categorization of certain jatis as either 'upper caste' or
'backward' and can thus be questioned (as Hasan [1989] and
Brass [1993b] did for the 1931 census), and the categorization
might well have undergon-e adjustments from 1931 to 1994.
Uttar Pradesh is reputed to be a •caste-ridden' state, matched
only by Bihar. This expression epitomizes the hegemonic posi-
tion that Brahmins and other upper castes have. However, the
nature of their dominance differs between the eastern and western
pans of the state. Zoya Hasan summarizes the difference as
follows:
In the eastern and central districts, Brahmin, Thakur and Bhumihar
zamindars [landowners] controlled the major share of land from the
time of Akbar, with others drawn primarily from high status Muslim
groups. In western UP, on the other hand, their control was weakened
from the middle of the nineteenth century by the challenge of Jats and
Gujars, who along with Bania moneylenders, made major inroads into
landed propeny. . . . The differences between the two regions were also
reflected at a social level. In the eastern region, members of the upper
castes did not cultivate land themselves. This taboo, however, was not
rigidly observed in the western pan on account of difficulty of obtaining
labour (Hasan 1998a: 124-5).
Hasan's summary is in the past tense, but the distinction be-
tween eastern and western Uttar Pradesh remains significant.
It is frequently referred to in contemporary studies, as well as
by non-academics living in the state.
Within the development discourse, the reputation of 'caste-
/
riddenness' is often linked to underdevelopment. Compared to
the average Indian literacy rate of 52.2 per cent, Uttar Pradesh
is far below with 41.6 per cent. Only Bihar scores lower with 38.5
per cent. Moreover, the pattern of literacy reflects a strong gender
and caste bias: only 11 per cent of SC women in Uttar Pradesh
know how to read and write, as compared to 23.8 per cent for
India as a whole. The gender bias is also reflected in the
4
Rapid Census, Government of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, 1994, cited
in Hasan (1997: 123).

Setting, People, FUldworlc • 37
.
1nale-female ratio: 879 in Uttar Pradesh as against the national
927 girls per thousand males. Yet, female foeticide is linked to
improved health care rather than to underdevelopment. Female
foeticide is reportedly on the increase in Uttar Pradesh as mobile
vans with mini ultrasound machines access remote villages.~
With a birth rate of 38.0 (per 1000 pop.), death rate of 13. 7 (per
1000), infant mortality rate of 102 (per 1000 live births), and life
expectancy of 56 years for men and 55 years for women, Uttar
Pradesh is not merely below the Indian average, but also below
the average for rural India.
The failed social and economic development ofUttar Pradesh
is more than a reflection of the fact that as much as 80.2 per cent
of the population lives in rural areas. As Hasan points out,
development efforts never reached the backward sections, but
benefited the rich and middle peasantry in the rural areas, as
well as the upper and middle classes in the urban areas (Hasan
1998a: 45) . There have been many attempts to explain why.
Hasan blames the successive state governments that never
made sufficiently strong efforts to overcome the 'societal logic'
that constrains state intervention. Lieten & Srivastava (1999)
argue that the much-hyped decentralization merely delegated
power to non-functioning panchayats who could neither empower
the poor nor reduce their poverty.Jeffrey & Lerche (1999) argue
that local government representatives are actors in a nexus of
local interests and pressures, thereby reproducing inequality
rather than reducing it. Whatever the explanation, it can hardly
be disputed that Uttar Pradesh is a state with severe social and
economic inequality.
The rurality of Uttar Pradesh is reflected in the fact that agri-
culture occupies 78 per cent of the workforce. The fertile Gangetic
plains make Uttar Pradesh the largest producer of foodgrains
(rice, wheat, and pulses) in India, and among the largest produc-
ers ofsugar cane in the country. However, not all industrial activity
in the state is linked to agriculture. .Other industries include oil
refining, aluminium smelting, production of edible oils, leather
works, automobile tyres, cement, chemicals, textiles (particu-
larly cotton) , and glass/bangles. Moreover, numerous small-scale
:. 'Female foeticide on the rise in UP', The Times of India (Lucknow

edition). 2 February 2000.

38 • Blnwkd Boundaries
industries provide work for people in villages, towns, and cities,

though their contribution to the state economy is modest.
A rule of thumb within Indian politics has long been that
whatever happens in Uttar Pradesh is likely to affect the whole
country. Due to its large population, Uttar Pradesh controls 80
of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha. Several of the most influential
political leaders in post-Independence India hailed from this
state, or were elected from constituencies here. Among them
are the Gandhis, who still remain faithful to the Rae Bareli and
Amethi constituencies, and Atal Behari Vajpayee who contests-
and wins-elections from Lucknow. The image ofUttar Pradesh
as a political crystal ball has its limitations, but it is not too
far-fetched for the Hindu-Muslim polarization that motivated
this book.
KANPUR
Kanpur is located a little south of the geographical centre of
Uttar Pradesh, about 400 km southeast of Delhi and 90 km
southwest of Lucknow. The location in central Uttar Pradesh
makes cultural positioning vis-a-vis the eastern or western part
of the state difficult-if at all relevant for a city with inhabitants
from all parts of the state, and even beyond. The location of
Kanpur is also central in the sense that it can hardly be bypassed
when travelling through Uttar Pradesh. It is one of the major
cities along the Grand Trunk road (or GT Road) which goes all
the way from Peshawar in Pakistan to Calcutta in West Bengal,
and along which a steady stream of trucks pass day after day
and night after night.
Kanpur is also one of the main railway junctions in Nonh
India, and a major station on the route from Delhi to Banaras,
Patna and Calcutta. Kanpur is also close to the river Ganga,
though no longer on its banks as the river staned to shift its
course towards the nonh in the 1960s.
Unlike many other Indian cities, Kanpur's origin is not linked
to any epic or deity. None of those I met took much interest in the
city's past, and most written sources-if commenting on the
matter at all-flatly state that it was founded by Hindu Singh
Chandel, the rajii (King) of Sachendi, around 1750. The origin of
the name, however, is a different matter. One legend holds that

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Setting, People, Fieldwm* • 41
Kanpur was named after Karna, a great warrior in the Mahabharata

(Awasthi 1989: 2). Another legend holds that it was named after
Lord Krishna. One version of this legend claims that the village
was named after Krishna's earlobe-piercing ceremony, which
was performed at one of the riverbanks here (ibid.). The most
credible version, however, is that Hind~ Singh named the village
Kanhpur or Kanhaiyapur in honour of Lord Krishna (also known
as Kanha or Kanhaiya) as an act of penance for his misdeeds
(Yalland 1987: 20). With the passage of time, the name was
simplified to Kanpur. ·
Like many other cities in India, Kanpur was only a village until
the British expanded eastwards from Bengal. The navab of
Awadh initially had an interest in the troops from the East India
Company, as both he and the British were keen on preventing the
Mahrattas from expanding their territory north of the Ganga.
The first British soldiers settled down in the small hamlet of
Kanhpur in 1770-'living in leaking ruins of huts, dying of sun-
stroke, rum and boredom', as Yalland (1987: 21) phrases it.
However, the number of soldiers grew, and the village became
a base camp in the Mahratta wars. This attracted numerous '
adventurers in search of work, including people from the sur-
rounding villages and European traders from Bengal. The village
grew. In 1801, after the Mahrattas were defeated, the British
gained formal administrative control over the town by signing a
treaty with Navab Sadaat Ali Khan of Awadh, who stood in heavy
debt to the East India Company. The wives and daughters of
British administrators and soldiers ·Started to arrive from En-
gland, encouraging the construction of assembly halls, theatres,
schools, a church and so forth . Yet, until Kanpur (or Cawnpore
in colonial English) was connected to other Indian cities by
railway, the town was mainly a provisioning depot for the Bengal
army and a commercial satellite of Calcutta (Bayly l 975b, in
Molund 1989). Its industry was limited to production of saddlery,
footwear, and other military equipment.
In 1857, Kanpur was to become the epicentre of an event that
rocked the whole country, if not the rest of the world: the uprising
termed 'the first war of Independence' in Indian historiography
and 'the Indian Mutiny' in British historiography. While its causes
and exact sequence remain disputed, there is little doubt that the
Indian soldiers in the British Indian army-the 'sepoys '-wanted

42 • Blend«J, Boundaries
to overthrow the British, possibly in order to reinstall the last

Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II. Starting in Meerut, the upris-
ing was caused by a growing suspicion that the British intended
to destroy the caste and religious faith of their subjects and
soldiers. This suspicion had grown gradually with the advent of
missionaries, churches, and schools. It was further triggered by
the discovery that the rifle cartridges, which had to be opened
with the teeth to expose the powder to ignition, were greased with
tallow made from beef and pork, and hence polluting to Muslims
as well as to (upper-caste) Hindus. The rebellion was evidently
pre-planned, as Nana Rao (or Nana Sahib), the Peshwa (Mahratta)
king living in exile in Bithur a little further up the Ganga, had
circulated chapatis (unleavened bread) in advance, an old tech-
nique of preparing the peasantry for upheaval (Ward 1996: 80).
From Meerut and Delhi the uprising spread westwards. What
followed in Kanpur that summer was a fierce battle in which most
of its British community was wiped out. At least 500 people lost
their lives , including many civilians who were massacred and
du1nped in a well. When this ghastly event reached the headlines
in Europe, it s erved to increase racial hatred and to symbolize
the white man's burden (Molund 1989: 34-5). Similar attitudes
permeate early Western accounts of the uprising in Kanpur.
Trevelyan (1992 [1865)) and Forrest (1905), for example, de-
scribe the horrors of the British and the barbarism of the rebels
without giving much consideration to the humiliations that turned
sepoys into rebels. In Indian historiography, however, the events
of 1857 are often portrayed as a heroic resistance against British
troops who 'looted, burned and killed as they advanced towards
the city' (as paraphrased by Molund 1989: 35). Ward's detailed
historical novel (1996) does much to merge these perspectives
despite the scarcity of non-British written sources.6
Besides being a turning point for British India, the uprising
of 1857 changed the course of Kanpur's development. As soon
as new British troops arrived, the production of saddlery and
leather-work expanded. Two cotton mills were put up, Elgin Mills
6
This could also be said about J.G. Farrell's novel about the Indian
Mutiny- The Siege of Krishnapur ( 1973) . Though dealing almost exclusively
with the British, he describes their Victorian lifestyle and ignorance about
the local setting with biting irony. Farrell won the prestigious Booker prize
for this book in 1973.

Seuing, P«1ple, Fieldworlc • 43
in 1864, old Muir Mills in 1874. A number of additional factories

and mills sprang up in the following decades, almost exclusively
owned and controlled by the British. The first local industrialist
was J .K. Singhania, who established two cotton mills, a jute
mill, an oil mill, and a steel-rolling mill during the 1920s and
1930s (Molund 1989: 37). The industry in Kanpur kept expand-
ing during World War II, not least due to the ordnance factories
in the city. Several authors describe Kanpur of 1920-70 as 'the
Manchester of India' or 'the Manchester of the East', though
several other cities staked claim to the title as well.
The rapid industrialization of Kanpur resulted in a sharp
population increase. The growth was panicularly rapid during
the first half of the twentieth century. While the first decade saw
a decline in population due to epidemics, the population almost
doubled between 1931 and 1941 and increased by another 44
per cent the next deca<:fe, following the industrial boom during
the war and the influx of Hindu refugees from Pakistan after
Panition. Leaving aside the latter, most of those who settled
down in Kanpur were poor villagers in search of work in the
factories. A considerable ponion of th,is new urban proletariat
consisted of low castes and Muslims (Gooptu 1997: 885, 2001:
44-5; Holmstrom 1984: 63;Joshi 2003: 78-82; Newell 1996), the
significance of which I return to in Chapters 6 and 7.
TABl.t:2.1
Kanpur Populalion Growth 1901-91
Year Population % growth
1901 202.797
1911 178.557 -11.9
1921 216.436 +21.2
1931 243.755 +12.6
1941 487.324 +99.9
1951 905.383 +44.7
1961 971.062 + 31.l
1971 1.275.242 +31.1
1981 1.624.000 +27.2
1991 2.037.333 +25.5
Suurces: Census of India 1951-1981, ciled in Awasthi
(1985: 7-9); Census of India 1991.

Kanpur surpassed l..AJcknow as the most populous city in Uttar

Pradesh. Unfortunately, the city also expanded in a rather hap-
hazard manner, with arbitrary city planning and poor sanitation.
About 67 per cent of the households have no more than a single
room to live in (Babu & Kumar n.d.), an increase from 61.9
per cent in the 1970s (Awasthi 1985: 23). There have been
improvements, however. The percentage of literacy in the city
increased from 39 per cent in 1951 to 62 per cent in 1991. Not
only do a growing number of children go to school, the percent-
age of Kanpurites with college education increased from 1.4
per cent in 1951 to 9.2 per cent in 1991. 7 A third of these are
post-graduates within teaching, engineering/technology and
medicine. Some are educated within the prestigious educational
institutions in Kanpur-the medical college and IIT-which
attract students from all over India.
Educational improvement notwithstanding, the reputation of
Kanpur remains as bad as it was prior to the 1857 uprising, when
British visitors-presumably already acclimatized to conditions
in Bengal-described it as dusty, hot, poorly drained, and bar-
barous (Ward 1996: 4). Today, middle-class people all over
North India refer to Kanpur as a ganda (dirty, bad) city with poor
and rowdy inhabitants, numerous civic problems, nothing to see,
and even less to do. Molund reports s imilar views from the 1970s
(1989: 32-4). The reputation worsened with the industrial de-
cline that started in that decade. The textile mills were particu-
larly badly hit, as their mode of production grew increasingly
outdated and inefficient. Years of loss made the owners attempt
to rationalize the workforce in the 1980s. However, stiff resis-
tance from trade unions blocked the rationalization efforts, with
the result that the nine trade mills in the city closed down or
phased out their production. JK Cotton Mills closed in 1989;
Elgin Mills reduced its production gradually, eventually to nil in
1995. By then, Kanpur was already known as 'a dying city' and
an 'industrial graveyard', and though some mill workers re-
mained on the payrolls, most were forced into other livelihoods
such as rickshaw-pulling, selling pan (betel leaves/ nuts) , fruit
or vegetables, begging, or joining the ranks of casual labour
7
This is a rough comparison, as the system of classifying education
types and levels changed both in 1961 and 1971 (Awasthi 1985: 74).

Setting, People, Fieldworlt: • 45
(ChitraJoshi 1999, 2003), and deprived of the pension they were

entitled to (the Times of India, 18 Febn1ary 2000). Since the
closing of the mills, local trade unions fought for their reopening
and local politicians made lofty promises, but in July 2002 it was
finally announced that the mills in Kanpur would never be re-
opened (the Times of India, Lucknow edition, 24 July 2002). By
then it was already long since Kanpur was seen as an attractive
place to start new ventures, and during the 1990s the industrial
epicentre ofUttar Pradesh shifted to Noida and Ghaziabad,just
across the Yamuna from Delhi.
The closing of the mills sent many workers into unemploy-
ment and despair. Yet, it increased the inventory in other sec-
tors. The number of cottage industries grew rapidly, and leather
production was further intensified. Unfortunately, the numerous
leather tanneries, concentrated around the satellite townJajmau,
did little to improve Kanpur's reputation as a filthy city. The
tanneries discharged highly polluting waste into the Ganga, and
the resulting pollution, smell, and filth made numerous newspa-
pers and visitors refer to the holy river as 'an open sewer'. High
Court orders andfavelopment aid projects have succeeded in
making some tannery-owners agree to pre-treatment of the waste,
but the implementation is limited and delayed and has not
caused much improvement (the Times of India, Lucknow, 23
February 2000). To top it all, local newspapers and development
reports frequently complain over Kanpur's new reputation as the
'tuberculosis capital' of India. They also lament civic problems
that by no means are unique to Kanpur, such as increasing air
pollution, insufficient public transport, erratic garbage collec-
tion, and shortage of electricity, the latter causing regular, day-
long powe r cuts.
Such reputations do not prevent Kanpur from holding an
attraction for people from less hospitable backgrounds, some-
thing I was 1·eminded of when reading Mala Sen's biography of
Phoolan Devi (Sen 1993) . Phoolan Devi, whose only prior expe-
rience was from her poor village and the inhospitable Chambal
ravines, described Kanpur not only as a haven of anonymity and
proper health care, but also as a place in which she could play
cards, listen to children playing, and enjoy the general hustle
and bustle. Even before the advent of neon lights, Kanpur had
a certain 'neon-light attraction' by virtue of being a large city.

46 • Blemka Boundaries
Moreover, I soon discovered that even those of its inhabitants

who lament the overcrowding, pollution and civic collapse are
genuinely fond of Kanpur, wans and all. Though considering it
far less sophisticated than Delhi, Bombay, and Lucknow, they
appreciate that Kanpur is not a place in which life ,is 'fast'. Not
only can they lead their lives without paying too much heed to
the clock, its comfonable conservatis1n also protects them from
the most severe pressures of fashion and what they see as
im1noral trends. How it is to live in Kanpur-at least for a
segment of the inhabitants-will hopefully become clearer through
the course of this book. ·
According to estimates generally agreed upon in political
circles, the inhabitants of Kanpur city are believed to include 20
per cent Brahmins, 20 per cent Muslims, 15 per cent SCs, 10
per cent Backward Castes (BCs), 10 per cent Baniyas, 7 per cent
Rajputs, 5 per cent Kayasthas, and 2 per cent Khatris and Sikhs
(Srivastava 1996: I 11). The census, which breaks up the popu-
lation according to religion rather than caste, states that the
inhabitants consist of 76.4 per cent Hindus, 20.4 per cent Mus-
lims (most Sunnis). 1.9 per cent Sikhs, 0.97 per cent Christians,
0.23 per cent Jains, and a .minuscule percentage of Buddhists.
The four latter communities are more noticeable in the city than
their percentage suggests, as most of them are 1niddle-class
people n1nning shops, restaurants, or other kinds of enterprises.
The Christians include a community of Anglo-Indians, including
a few of 'pure' English descent who chose to stay on after
Independence. 111e Buddhists are mostly Chinese earning their
living fro1n restaurants, or as dentists, hairdressers, or beauti-
cians. The Muslims, whom I present in more detail in Chapter
6, are mostly concentrated in the congested neighbourhoods in
the heart of the city, while the better-off tend to live elsewhere.
What I had read about previous riots between Hindus and
Musli1ns in Kanpur proved roughly correct. Yet the city had not
been quite as peaceful as I initially thought. According to Brass
( 1998 (1997]: 209-10) and Rathaur ( 1992) , there were several
riots in Kanpur in the twentieth century, though they display a
variety of fault lines and causes." In 1900 there was a plague riot
• Unless otherwise inclicatecl, the following oven•iew of riots in K;1npnr

is based on these sources.

Setting, People. Fieldworlc • 47
in which local communities violently protested against regula-

tions-particularly the segregation camps on Grand Trunk
Road-the British had imposed to check contagion. In 1913
there erupted a riot following the demolition of a diilii.n (washing
section) of a mosque to enable widening of a road, a riot since
referred to as 'the Kanpur mosque incident'. One part of Meston
Road (as it was later named after the Lieutenant-Governor) went
in between the dalan and a temple. The diiliin was demolished,
but heavy protests and subsequent riots forced the British to
rebuild it. Muslims voiced their protests far beyond Kanpur,
something that, according to Freitag, revealed a growing con-
solidation of the Muslim minority in India (Freitag 1989: 21~16).
The first riot between Hindus and Muslims in Kanpur in the
twentieth century occurred in 1927. Starting as a minor quarrel
between students, a number of people joined in before prominent
persons of both communities intervened and curbed the riot.
Little is known about its causes, but the mobilization of specta-
tors along religious ·lines was probably linked to the growing
community consciousness created by the Khilafat movement,
Arya Samaj, and Hindu Mahasabha. The year 1931 witnessed
a serious Hindu-Muslim riot, erupting when Muslim shopkeep-
ers refused to obey a Congress-initiated bandh (closure, strike)
to mourn the execution of Sardar Bhagat Singh and two other
revolutionary leaders who had fought the British colonial regime.
About 400 people were killed, 42 temples and 18 mosques
(including the one on Meston Road) were damaged, and 248
Hindu and 101 Muslim houses were burned. This riot made
Hindus seek safety in Hindu-dominated neighbourhoods, and
Muslims in Muslim-dominated ones, thereby manifesting the
religious polarization in residential patterns (Chitrajoshi 1999:
173). The coming decade saw a few minor riots, and massive
trade union strikes in 1937-8 nearly overwrote communal memo-
ries with experiences of class action (ibid.: 174). Yet, there was
a minor riot in 1939, caused by Muslim residents in Moolganj
trying to prevent Hindus there from making the customary bon-
fire at a street-crossing the night before the holi festival. Bricks
and stones were thrown, but the situation was soon brought under
control.
Three additional Hindu-Muslim riots reportedly occurred
shortly after 1939, but none so serious as to have been analysed.

48 • Blentkd Boundaries
For the next 50 years there were no Hindu-Muslim riots, though

there was some collective violence along other fault lines. This
includes a riot between Shias and Sunnis in 1977 and the vio-
lence against Sikhs in 1984 following the murder of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. In the late 1980s, however, the ongoing
controversy over the Bahri Masjid in Ayodhya contributed to
polarize Hindu and Muslim communities once again. Even so,
the violence in Ayodhya on 30 October 1990 did not spread to
Kanpur until two months later, when a local newspaper reported
that some train passengers, including a railway employee from
Kanpur, were killed by rioters who boarded the train near Aligarh.
The riots that followed left about 50 people dead (Rathaur
1992), but rumours of far higher casualties and truckfuls of
bodies dumped in the Ganga still circulated in Kanpur when I
arrived in the city two years later. Such rumours are likely to have
made the election campaign that followed in May 1991 more
prone to violence than it otherwise would have been. Though only
a few persons were killed, stones were thrown and several ve-
hicles were set ablaze. However, I was unaware of the violent
incidents in 1990 and 1991 before arriving in the city and hearing
local accounts.
The heated elections in Kanpur in 1991-in which local poli-
ticians in the city competed for seats in the state assembly as
well as the parliament-was one of the many elections that
secured the victory of the BJP in Uctar Pradesh. This shift was
panicularly remarkable in Kanpur. Not only did the BJP candi-
date J agatvir Singh Dron win the Lok Sabha seat over the sitting
MP Subhashini Ali (CPl-M); the city's seven seats in the state
assembly were all captured by BJP candidates (see Chapter 7).
Vinually overnight, Kanpur acquired a new reputation as a 'BJP
stronghold', and this was the situation that prevailed when I
arrived in the city in mid-August 1992.
MOHANGANJ
Arriving in Kanpur without a single contact was a lonely expe-
rience. I established myself in a hotel room and went for daily
walks to familiarize myself with the city, hoping that one of those
I accidentally met would become the link that would get me
staned. Rather than merely visiting and interviewing people,

Setting, Peqple, F~ldworlt • 49
I was determined to conduct fieldwork in a way that allowed

for participant observation. This entailed participation in local
activities as much as possible, as well as observing everyday
activities and practices from morning to evening, day after day,
month after month. I considered this particularly crucial for a
project of the kind I was undertaking, knowing that much of the
knowledge that influences the regulation of social boundaries
defies articulation and sometimes contradicts that which is
said. However, such a methodological requirement could not be
met unless I developed an entry point in a neighbourhood, a
network or, preferably, a local family.
Those who saw this angrezi (white woman) day after day,
suitably dressed in salviir-kurtii (long shirt over baggy trousers),
but without male company, liberally talking to strangers and with
a walk that immediately revealed my alienness must have con-
sidered me a freak. 'You walked about like a camel,' I was told
ten years Iater.Y Yet I managed to establish a few durable ties
on my initial rounds in the city, though none provided the entry
point I looked for. In contrast to Kumar (1992) and Narayan
(1993) I had no local contacts that could serve as door-openers.
My offers of payment for accommodation and food were rejected
with the polite remark that 'paying guest' arrangements were
against the hospitality of Kanpur, however common they might
be in cities like Delhi and Bombay. Without surety, strangers
were met with more anxiety than curiosity.
I might have been able to come around such problems, had
I been patient enough to wait as Jong as it would take to let
sufficient trust develop. Growing increasingly anxious, I visited
the then Vice-Chancellor of Kanpur University, Dr Upadhyay.
Upon seeing my credentials, he scribbled some words on a
piece of paper, handed me the note and, told me to take it to
a particular lecturer in one of the many colleges affiliated with
the university. This lecturer, presumably unable to reject an
order from his superior, became the entry point I needed by
introducing me to a few families that agreed to put me up. These
9 My resemblance to a camel was explained in terms of the colour of
my hair, the way I held my head high, and the up-and-<lown movement
with which I walked. That I walked faster than most others on the streets,
something I discuss in Chapter 4, and way faster than a camel, was
insufficient to counter the camel remark.

50 • Bl.ended Boundaries
families were probably not more open to strangers than the other
families I had met. I assume that they took me in because they
could not say no to the lecturer, either because they had known
him for decades or because they owed him a favour. Fortunately,
I was soon to develop relationships with these families and their
networks in my own right.
During the course of fieldwork I stayed with three families in
different parts of Kanpur. I was also a frequent visitor to other
homes in two additional localities. All these families were upper-
caste Hindus with fairly co1nfortable, but by no means luxurious,
life-styles. They all lived in localities dominated by upper-caste
Hindus, but with scattered elements of low castes and Muslims.
For a couple of months I also lived on my own in a neighbourhood
that I will call Harl Mandi, a mixed locality in which the standard
of living was considerably more modest, as each family had only
one room for disposal. To protect my hosts, friends, and other
associates in Kanpur from recognition, I will give no fi.1rther
specification of the locations of my fieldwork. Leaving the mixed
locality, the ethnography that follows synthesizes the residential
areas of my host families into one single locality. I have named
this hybrid locality Mohanganj. In agreement with my host fami-
lies and the others I write about, I will provide all details relevant
for the analysis, but not their real names. Hence, leaving poli-
ticians and others with public profiles, all those I interacted with
are protected by pseudonyms, but in a way that retains religious
and j ati background as far as possible. The upper-caste families
I lived and interacted 1nost with constitute the core of the people
who inform this analysis. The ethnography also includes their
near and distant relatives, friends, contacts, employees, and
servants. Before describing the families and persons that recur
throughout this book, let 1ne give a brief description ofMohanganj.
The heart of Mohanganj is the market, the bazii.r (market),
which provides everything that the residents need for day-to-day
living. Fruit and vegetable vendors, standing behind their carts
along the shady side of the road, sell cauliflowers, potatoes,
onions, lady's fingers, guavas, bananas, and every conceivable
vegetable and fntit of the season. A few vendors inform the
passers-by loudly that their vegetables are cheaper and better
than those in the neighbouring cart, but most wait patiently and
silently for regular customers.

Setting, P«>f>le, Fiadwurlc • 51
On both sides of the streets are small shops. General stores

sell everything from rice, flour, and toiletries to Drainex powder
for clearing clogged drain pipes. A framing shop frames images
of Hindu deities or photographs within a couple of days. In the
sweet shops one may get sweetmeats such as la</4ft, barfi, and
sandei sold by the kilo, and dahi (fresh curd) and cream for
cooking. Three or four textile shops offer textiles of all imagin-
able materials, qualities, and patterns, from which sari blouses,
salvar-kurtas, and kurtii-pajamiis (long shin and loose trousers
for men) are made. The stitching is done by one of the many
tailors in Mohanganj, who make everything from everyday
wear to 'the latest fashion from Paris' in their small and dingy
workrooms. Two shops provide residents with rubber chappals
(flip-flops), leather sandals, and shoes, though one needs to go
downtown to Meston Road or Naveen Market to buy the leather
shoes Kanpur is renowned for. A couple of shops specialize
in gift paper, greeting cards, notebooks, and pens. Bakeries
provide Mohanganj with bread, pany cakes, and namkin (spicy
snacks). One shop sells buttons, needles, and borders for sari
blouses; another specializes in gift items such as fancy clocks,
'French' perfume, and inflatable Ganesha images for travellers;
a third in music cassettes with Hindi film songs, gaz.als, and
Michael Jackson; a fourth in repair of watches and alarm clocks.
In between these shops and in the by-lanes are pan sellers
offering betel leaves of all tastes and qualities, dhobis
(washermen) making a living by ironing clothes, and PCO-STD-
ISD booths from which long-distance 'calls are made and faxes
sent, thereby connecting Mohanganj to the rest of the world.
Mohanganj also has a couple of roadside temples, the most
popular one being the Hanuman mandir. Some of my acquain-
tances went there every single Tuesday, the day associated with
Hanuman. Mohanganj also has hairdressers, beauty parlours, a
tiny post office, a travel agency providing unauthorized railway
ticket booking, a branch of the State Bank of India, and a sleepy
police station. Within walking distance there is an eye hospital,
a tempo stand, a cricket ground, a computer institute, and a few
nursery schools. There are also a few restaurants. At the upper
end of the scale is a Chinese restaurant and a Mughlai 'palace'
reputed for its bar upstairs. The middle-range restaurants in-
clude a South Indian lunch place and a soup-and-pizza joint

frequented by Pepsi-sipping college students. The lower range

ones include two 4ha/JO.like restaurants offering ordinary sabU
(vegetable dishes) with ro!i (unleavened bread). Finally, there
are a few food stalls selling cha! (warm, spicy snacks) and ice
cream, normally only visited in the evenings. In most respects,
then, Mohanganj is a self-contained market that caters to the
daily requirements of its residents. Only when needing special
items such as kitchen utensils, books, readymade clothes, or
meat do they have to go downtown, or to a market with a better
selection.
Leaving the market, Mohanganj is mainly a residential area.
It is not a densely populated locality like the congested neighbour-
hoods in the centre of the city. There are four types of houses.
The oldest are the bungalows, constructed by the British before
Independence. Some are neatly maintained with annual white-
washing and green gardens around, others so run down that they
resemble ruins with gardens that are encroached upon. The
second type of houses are the three-storey apanment buildings
constructed during the rapid population growth in the 1940s. No
gardens separate these apanment buildings from the streets,
and the streets are so narrow that a car and a bicycle cannot pass
each other. Yet, these streets are wider than the one-metre galis
(lanes) in the central neighbourhoods. The third type of build-
ings are the makeshift houses and shacks constructed on vacant
plots or unused gardens. These buildings are inhabited by poor
families working as labourers or servants in the area. The fourth
type of buildings are the new eight-storey apanment blocks that
staned springing up in the late 1980s. Though painted in bright
colours, some of them already have visible cracks in the walls,
and they do not offer as good protection from the summer heat
and monsoon rain as the traditional architecture does. Nevenhe-
less, all new buildings currently under construction in Mohanganj
are eight-storey apanment buildings, something that reflects an
increasingly modem taste as well as a growing shonage of land.
For the residents, however, Mohanganj offers much more than
all this. For them, each house and each street evokes a landslide
of me1nories about past events. 'There is the roof where we used
to play with kites', 'This is my old way to school', 'Did I tell you
about the previous owner of that house?', 'Don't buy chat from the
stall over there, I got sick last time'-throughout my fieldwork I

Setting, Peopk, Fie/.dworlc • 53
heard the residents confirming the inseparability of their

neighbourhood and their past experiences. To its residents,
Mohanganj represented familiarity and safety, in shon, the place
in which they were at home.
THE CORE FAMILIES

A number of persons and names enter the chapters that follow.
Since this book studies the patterns and contents of social
relationships by means of actual cases rather than generaliza-
tions, it is impossible to reduce the cast of characters. Had I
insisted on being truthful to the local terms of address as well,
I would even have had to refer to each person in several different
ways, as the appropriate term of address changes with the
relation between the speaker and the person s/he addresses. A
50-year-old man named Prem Kumar Solanki, for example, would
be addressed by full name on official occasions, as Premu or
some other nickname by his friends and parents, by kinship term
such as papa (father) or chacM (father's younger brother) by
young relatives, by a composite of name and kinship term such
as Premu bhiii'jii (brother Prem) or Prem miimii (mother's brother
Prem) if kinship terms alone would refer to more than one
person, as a combination of name and title such as Solanki sahib
(Mr Solanki) or Prem Narain babU-and possibly simply as woh
(him) by his wife. 10 To save the reader from the confusion that
a full ethnographic truthfulness would create, I will fix all terms
of address according to my own age and position during field-
work. I will use kinship terms for the oldest generation, nick-
names (ghar kii nam, lit.: 'house name'.) for the youngest generation
and first names or surnames for the rest, depending on how well
I, or those I lived among, knew them.
The Kapoors were Khatris whose roots in Kanpur were at least
four generations deep. They proudly told me that a great-great-
grandfather had held a high position in the city ad1ninistration,
thereby hinting that they belonged to an old elite. His house and
w In some families, the wives were reluctant to utter the names of their
husbands. The women explained it as a token of love and respect. See
Trawick (1990a, 1990b) tor an analysis of this expression of love from
Tamil Nadu.

54 • Blended .Boundam.s
the land it was built on remained untouched until the 1960s, when
it was demolished to make space for a hotel. The hotel, com-
pleted in 1970, was still the only one in Mohanganj. It was largely
used by business people from other cities, but the most regular
source of income was conferences, exhibitions, and engagement
parties. It must have given the family a fairly comfortable in-
come, because they had just built a new house large enough to
accommodate the whole scmi:ioint family. The expression 'scmi-
joint' was their own and pointed to the fact that they lived under
the same roof, but with each nuclear family having separate two-
bedroom flats, separate kitchens, and separate household econo-
mies. The Kapoor family consisted of four brothers and their
aged parents, as well as the brothers' respective wives and
children-altogether 22 persons. The two elder brothers man-
aged the hotel, the third sold water coolers, and the fourth
worked as an engineer. All the wives were housewives, but took
pride in the fact that they were all educated up to Class 12 or
beyond. Most of the children still went to school; only one had
· reached college age and left Kanpur for Delhi. The children,
living in the same house, spent a lot of time together. As one of
them remarked, with 11 brothers and sisters, there was hardly
need for friends outside the family. Yet, only six of the Kapoors
enter this · book. These arc Kailash, the eldest or' the Kapoor
brothers, his wife Soni, their children Ajay (21) and Neelam
(16), and the children's cousins, Madhuri (15) and Munna (8).
The Agarwals, who were baniylis by caste, were also an 'old'
Kanpur family. The family property-a ten-room bungalow-still
served as their home, and housed the three Agarwal brothers,
their mother and the brothers' wives and children-13 people
in all. The three brothers were joint owners of a handful of
factories producing chemicals and paint. Management and money
were constant sources of dispute between the three, and between
them and the local government. This dispute had spilled over
to the wives as well. Even so, the Agarwals still maintained a
common kitchen and a common economy, though some food was
cooked separately and some money tacitly kept away from the
com1non purse. Due to strained family relations, I only got to
know one of the nuclear families in the Agarwal household. It
included the eldest brother, Rakesh, his wife, Madhu, and their
20-year-old son, Pintu.

Sttting, People, Fi~ • 55
The Aroras were Punjabis With rootS in west Punjab, which

became a part of Pakistan after Panition. 11 Back then they made
a living of importing second-hand agricultural machines from
Europe, getting them repaired, and selling them to farmers. In
the 1930s, that is, long before Partition, they moved to Kanpur,
bought .a vacant piece of land, and got a bungalow constructed.
They maintained their connection with Europe and their busi-
ness speciality, though they switched over to importing second-
hand machines used in leather production and, when this business
slowed down, to manufacturing rice--with limited success. The
Arora household consisted of an old mother (here referred to as
Amma), her two middle-aged sons Ram Lal and Gopal, and their
respective wives and sons. Like the Kapoors, the Aroras were a
semijoint family with separate household economies under one
roof, and the interaction between the nuclear families was more
frequent in the youngest than the middle generation. Though I
knew one side of the Aroras far better than the other, the whole
family (barring a son living elsewheFe) enters this book. On
Gopal's side it only includes Gopal's 24-year-old son, Anoop, as
Gopal's wife was dead and his oldest son lived outside Kanpur.
On Ram Lat's side the family included his wife, whom I will refer
to as Bhabhi (sister-in-law) since I got to know her through Gopal,
and their son Prashant, who was 24 years old, like his cousin.
The fourth family were Brahmins of a jati that I cannot specify
without making the family recognizible to their local caste fel-
lows. Let me therefore refer to them as the Sharmas-a name
that deliberately confuses their jati background. Their roots in
Kanpur went back to the 1930s, when the grandfather of the
current household lost his sight, resigned as a police inspector
in Unnao (a little further north), and spent his savings on a
bungalow in Kanpur, where he settled down with his wife and two
sons. The present Sharma household descended from the eldest
son. It consisted of an old mother (Arnmaji, who passed away
11
I follow my informants' tendency to juxtapose communities defined
in terms ofjati and van:ia with communities defined by geographical origin,
such as Punjabis. This juxtaposition probably arose because most Punjabis
in Kanpur migrated to the city en blcc from Pakistan as Hindu refugees in
1947. Their collective claim to a Kshatriya background was so successful
that, in Kanpur, the term 'Punjabi' says just as much about (assumed)
caste background as about geographical origin.

56 • Blended Bourulariu
during my fieldwork), three brothers and their respective wives

and children, plus two other relatives-altogether 15 family
members. Their main sources of income were a small shop
downtown selling electrical equipment and the youngest brother's
work as a medical representative. In the 1980s they started to
construct eight-storey apartment buildings on the land arolind
the bungalow, a construction that went on throughout my field-
work but that, due to shortage of funds, is yet to be completed
at the time of publication. Hence, the Sharma family's com-
pound was both a work place and a residential compound for 20
flat-<>wner families and some 15 workers and servants in addi-
tion to the Sharmas themselves. As for the Sharma household,
it had outgrown the bungalow, and some family members had
already shifted to flats. Even so, they still maintained a common
household economy, a common kitchen (except for non-vegetar-
ian food) and closer familial ties than any of the households
mentioned above. Besides Ammaji, the Sharmas include her
three sons Mohan. Pramod, and Tilak, and their respective wives
Mummy, Urmila, and Ritu. It also includes Mohan's and Mummy's
two sons Billu (33) and Bablu (31), as well as their daughter
Gurhiya (20)-and Billu's wife Bina (31), their daughter Dimpie
(3) and new-born son Munmun. The young generation also in-
cludes Pramod's and Urmila's daug'1ter Deepu (21) and Tilak's
and Ritu's son Rickie (22). In addition to the 'family proper', as
some of them put it, the Sharma household included two mem-
bers who were not part of the patriline, namely Mamaji (Ammaji's
elderly brother) and Naniji (Ritu's aged mother).
As these presentations suggest, the Kapoors, Aroras, Agarwals,
and Sharmas hailed from different jiitis, but had the following
common denominators: they were all upper-caste Hindus with
deep family roots in Kanpur, their main livelihood was business,
and their standard of living was well above the average who lived
in one-room houses or slums, though it did not qualify them for
the local upper crust. These common denominators and vari-
ables should be kept in mind throughout the book. Yet, the main
reason why these particular families play the lead roles in this
text is that the adult males were interconnected. They knew each
other and belonged to one and the same network of people.
Some had grown up together, others went to school or college
together, and yet others had come to know one another through

Setting, Peof*, FNldworlc • 57
common friends. Such ties and their consequences for the

development of political world-views makes it necessary not to
see these families as independently 'selected', but as linked in
a social network without finite boundaries. In what ways and with
what effects, is explored in later chapters.
THE FIELDWORK
The fieldwork on which this study is based spans several field
trips, the first from August 1992 to March 1993, the second in
January and February 1994, the third in October 1996, the fourth
from February to May 1997, the fifth from August to December
1997, the sixth in October 1999, and the seventh in October
2001- altogether about 19 months. In addition I have made brief
revisits in 2003 and 2004. The first fieldtrip was conducted for
my M.Phil degree, and the follow-up fieldwork in ·1997 for my
PhD degree. Hence, most observations discussed in this book
are from 1992 and 1997 respectively-two rather interesting
years as they demonstrate the politicization of two fairly differ-
ent social boundaries.
My fieldwork was largely conducted in English in the begin-
ning and Hindi towards the end. The importance of knowing the
local language can hardly be overstated. True, many insightful
studies have been generated by second-language interaction with
key informants, self-proclaimed cultural experts, and others who
mediate between the local society and the anthropologist. Nev-
ertheless, unless anthropologists doing research outside their
home country have some knowledge of the local language, they
are precluded from overhearing conversations and remarks not
specifically intended for him or her. Such statements can prove
highly revealing. Language is equally crucial when local concepts
and categories are used as building blocks in the analysis.
Though I fully agree with Wikan ( 1996) that anthropologists must
pay equal attention to what people do as to what they say, I strongly
disagree with her assertion that knowledge of the local language
diverts the anthropologist's attention from non-verbal data
sources. Take the participatory aspect of fieldwork, for instance.
How can an anthropologist 'learn by doing' without understand-
ing corrections or the small talk people amuse themselves with
while 'doing'? If language was a problem in my fieldwork, the

58 • Blmded Bw.rulariu
problem was that I never became sufficiently fluent. Many a

double meaning, connotation and reference is likely to have
escaped me, though hopefully not pertaining to the concepts and
expressions that underpin the analysis in this book.
An ethical principle in contemporary anthropology is that the
fieldworker must inform those she interacts with about her
intentions to study them and that they, in turn, must give the
anthropologist their consent to do so. I agree with this principle,
but found it difficult to live up to. The problem was not the
consent-I met only one person who was against 'disclosing'
societal matters to foreign scholars, something he explained by
stating that, for most Indian social scientists, fieldwork in the
West is unaffordable. 12 The problem was that, no matter how
often I explained what participant observation entailed, those I
lived among assumed me to be relaxing whenever I did not sit
bent over my notebook or laptop. When the notebook and laptop
were out of sight, which was most of the day, people assumed
that I was merely killing time. This led some of my acquaintan-
ces to reduce their self-censorship so drastically that they vol-
unteered information that would be outright harmful to them if
it became known beyond their inner circle of confidants. I heard
people talk about the enormous bribes they had paid, pedestri-
ans they had killed while driving, rape attempts, marriage prob-
lems, extra-marital affairs, desire to kill so-and-so, contacts with
the local mafia, dowry deaths, and troublesome employers they
had 'got rid of-all in informal contexts in which I was thought
to be 'off duty' . Fortunately the most sensitive information did
not prove directly relevant to the arguments I make in this book
and is therefore ·excluded. In the few places where I do make
use of such information, I conceal the identity of those it con-
cerns in additional ways than by using pseudonyms.
My reluctance to spend the whole day behind a notebook or
laptop was primarily rooted in my ambition to participate in the
12
I sympathize with this viewpoint. Till date Reddy's study of the Danes
(Reddy 1993) is the only anthropological account of a Scandinavian society
that I have come across. Even so, this asymmetry is just as much a question
of preferences as of costs. Each year a number of Indians go abroad to
study, but most prefer computer science to anthropology. Of those who
choose anthropology, vinually all return to India for fieldwork or conduct
research among South Asians in diaspora.

Setting, People, Fieldworlt • 59
daily lives of my hosts, friends and acquaintances, whether it

entailed making tea or going to the temple. However, it was also
because those I interacted with became a bit apprehensive when
I noted down their statements on controversial topics, such as
caste, economy, and politics--topics essential to this book. In
contrast, when I jotted down kinship charts, cooking recipes,
proverbs, ritual details, or Hindi words I had just learned, people
beamed with pride, partly because it signalled that their society
had something that mine could not provide, and partly because
I considered their knowledge as valuable as that of their fathers,
, husbands, and local intellectuals. As for the controversial topics,
I restricted the synchronic jotting to a napkin or newspaper,
concentrated hard on memorizing the rest, and postponed the
writing of detailed fieldnotes until I could be alone with my
laptop. This method might reduce the accuracy of verbal data,
in particular when reconstructing whole conversations, as in
Chapters 7 and 8. Even though these conversational snippets
might not be accurate word for word, I believe them to be fairly
accurate in terms of meaning, associational shifts, examples,
and signific~nt local concepts. This is because my reliance on
'head-notes' forced me to be alert and observant throughout the
day, and to develop a technique of memorization that was mentally
exhaµsting, but that gave me a more active relationship to my
observations and experiences than if I had been more depen-
dent on synchronic notes or tape-recorders.
In times of political tension, inter-communal ties often weaken,
fixing individuals in their kin groups or ethnic groups (Simons
1997) and making people lose trust in outsiders such as anthro-
pologists (Green 1995; Howell 1990: 98). In the wake of the post-
demolition riots between Hindus and Muslims in December
1992, this happened to me as well. At this point of time I had
only been in Kanpur for four months, a period insufficient for
necessary trust to develop. Besides, due to a wedding in my host
family, I had just moved to a hotel downtown to make space for
in-coming relatives, so my acquaintances were unable to keep
an eye on my movements during the riots and some started
to suspect me of being a spy for the Muslims, KGB or CIA
(the suspicions varied). In hindsight, I find it understandable
that people asked themselves whether it could be coincidental
that clashes occurred over the issue I had most actively taken·

interest in. Moreover, a newspaper photographer caught me

walking along Mall Road in the centre of the city during the
curfew on 31 December 1992. 1' The next day the photo of me
passing a group of armed policemen in an otherwise empty
street appeared in a local Hindi daily with the following caption:
•Nii.roe St! ayi videii mahilii taniiv bhau iahr kii jayja kti hai; A foreign
woman from Norway is scrutinizing the tense situation in the city'
(Swatanlra Bharat, Kanpur, I January 1993). Its readers evidently
projected this back to the intense riots a few weeks before, with
the consequence that suspicions of spying resulted in ostracism.
Whenever I visited my prior host families, they seemed to pre-
tend that I was invisible, and I was not invited in. Fortunately,
this only lasted for a couple of months. In the meantime I lived
in Hari Mandi, a religiously mixed and economically modest
locality on the other side of Kanpur. My relations with my former
host families gradually warmed again, and when I returned to
the city in 1994, suspicions of spying were bygones and we could
pick up where we had left off in December 1992.
As my fieldwork progressed, the participatory aspect grew
stronger. It started when I volunteered to make morning tea for
Tilak when his wife and mother-in-law were out of town. In their
absence I was also entrusted to water the 5Ck><ld potted plants
on the roof terrace- a pleasurable task, but quite time-consum-
ing when the hosepipe disappeared and it got so hot that the
. plants needed water twice a day. Soon I found myself going to
"the market for extra milk packets and spices, making egg
dishes for those who asked, running hither and thither with
messages, cutting vegetables, bringing letters and money to
family members in Delhi, serving water and tea to visitors,
ironing saris when the dhobi (washerman) failed to show up,
scrubbing pillow covers, spreading cardamom and whole wheat
for drying in the sun, stepping in as 'hostess' at parties, and
baking birthday cakes. When Gopal's cook was hospitalized
(see Chapter 3), I accompanied Copa! on his near-daily visits,
" The post-demolition riot in Kanpur was over by then (cf. Brass 1997),
but on New Year's eve a bomb exploded and n1mours buzzed that it had
killed Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena leader, who had come to Kanpur for
a meeting or a speech. Ba l Thackeray is alive and well when this book goes
to press, 12 years later.

Setting, P«JfN, FWdworlc • 61
carrying medicines, water, food and cassettes. When Bina gave

birth to a son towards the end of my 1997 fieldwork, Unnila and
I divided the day and night between us in staying by her side in
the maternity ward, the other women in the household being
either too immobile or too afraid of taking responsibility for a
woman in childbed and her new-born baby. Being entrusted all
these tasks did not only make up for the spy accusations, it gave
me a strong feeling of acceptance and inclusion, and was a vital
part of studying the local life-world from within. People no longer
considered me a guest who ought to be 'treated like God', but
an associat~ family member. 14
The adverse effect of increased participation was that my
days eventually became so full of practical tasks that I barely
found time to write fieldnotes, and that the lack of spare time
made it harder to memorize what I saw and heard. I did not
realize this before Bina's son was born. For a week I suddenly
found myself in the maternity ward from six in the morning to
six in the evening. Getting up at five, I prepared tea in a thermos
flask and breakfast in a steel box, reached the hospital before
dawn and spent the whole day there changing nappies, preparing
powder milk, chatting with Bina, assisting her communication
with iiyas (nannies) and nurses, exposing the baby to sunlight
to prevent jaundice, receiving visitors, and so on. I was only too
happy to do Bina a favour for a change and made several useful
observations in the maternity hospital. Even so, that week made
me realize that I had become so trapped in obligations that I
hardly controlled the content of my own fieldwork anymore. Soon .
after, I experienced a second turning point. I had just returned
from the market, and to get inside the house I had to pass three
middle-aged 1nen, two of them strangers. As befits a woman
younger than them, I looked down while passing them, a practice
I had mimicked at first and thereafter got accustomed to. This
14Hindus often explain their hospitality as guided by the dictum atilhi
deuo bhava (treat your guest like god). These Sanskrit words appear in the
Taittreya Upan ishads in the following context: Droapitrltilryiibhyarri na
pramaditvyllm. Matrdeuo bhava. Pitrdl!Vo bhava. Acharyadevo bhava. Alilhidl!Vo
bhava. (Taitt. Up. l.11.2). The words translate as 'Do not neglect your
duties to the gods and your ancestors. Be one whose mother is a god, whose
father is a god, whose teacher is a god, whose guest is a god.' (1 am grateful
to Martin Gansten and Lars Manin Fosse for reference ·and translation.)

time, however, I even felt my face growing warm and red. My

blushing made me realize that I was about to internalize a little
too well the do's and don'ts of the role of a young, female
associate family member. I was no longer comfonable when
talking to elder males or moving about in the city without com-
pany. Hence my network of acquaintances not only stopped
expanding, I also spoke less and less freely with those I already
knew. Within a single week I had realized that my fieldwork was
imploding with respect to social relationships as well as to time.
This was when I decided to leave Kanpur, and to make subse-
quent field visits shoner. The chapters that follow are based on
the observations I made before the panicipatory aspect gy-ew out
of hand.

3
-
At Home: Master-Seivant Relations
and Upper-Caste Superiority
Virtually all houses and home compounds in Kanpur were pro-

tected by walls or fences, typically of a six to eight feet high wall
of brick or cement. These walls protected the homes from the
streets, the inside from the outside, the familiar from the un-
known, and the orderly from the potentially unruly. Anyone going
out from the inside or coming in from the outside, had to pass
a steel gate. Such gates were always Jocked at night, and some
families kept them Jocked during daytime as well. This made
it impossible for passers-by to enter unless they had a specific
business inside, in which case they had to ring a bell. Some
families employed a chaukidar (gatekeeper) to open the gate for
residents and regular visitors, and to keep unwanted people,
cows, and dogs out. This was normally only required if the house
or home compound was located in a busy street, or if those on
the inside were considerably more affluent than those on the
outside.
All the four families I introduced in the previous chapter had
walls and gates that protected their houses or home compounds
from the street, though only two employed gatekeepers. This
method of creating spatial closure was by no means limited to
upper-caste households in neighbourhoods such as Mohanganj.
In localities that were more economically modest, or more
mixed in terms of caste and religion, people protected them-
selves by similar enclosures. The place in which I lived in Hari

64 • Bl.nukd Boundaries
Mandi, for example, was a complex inhabited by ten families,

some upper-caste and others low caste, each family living in a
one-room home that faced a small, cobble-stoned courtyard.
Entry to the courtyard was either through the five rooms that also
faced the street, or through a steel door shared by all the
residents. The steel door was locked at night but open during
daytime, and strangers entering the courtyard would immedi-
ately find themselves surrounded by children asking whom they
were looking for.
Even when gates were unlocked and unguarded, salesmen
and other outsiders hesitated to enter without permission.
Whether the outsiders were ice cream vendors, carpet sellers,
sadhfis (renouncers, 'holy' men) or Kashmiris selling embroi-
dered shawls, they tended to stand patiently outside until they
were noticed and either invited in or turned away. In addition to
keeping outsiders out, these walls and gates also kept insiders
in. They marked the limit of the freedom of movement for
children, married women, and unmarried girls, about whom it
was frequently said that walking outside the gates without com-
pany or permission was inappropriate, or 'not done'. Middle-
aged and elderly women never seemed to mind, but I often found
young girls standing at the gate,.staring curiously at whatever
went on outside. Even so, the boundary marked by the walls and
gates was always respected. In a Chaturvedi Brahmin family that
I stayed with for a while, the two unmarried daughters even
remained inside their home compound during their evening
walk. Every day at sunset they walked back and forth, back and
forth, back and forth in front of th~ir apartment building, evi-
dently without considering the possibility of leaving the com-
pound and walking along the street. Clearly, the boundary between
a home compound and the outside was more than a mere spatial
boundary.
Chakrabarty ( 1991) provides some interesting reflections
on the boundary between the inside and the outside. This
division, he says, is a strong conceptual boundary in which the
outside is seen as carrying '"substances" that threaten one's
well-being' (Chakrabarty 1991: 20). This mode ·or thought, he
argues, recurs in the contrast between the cleanliness of the
house and the waste thrown right outside the gate (cf. Kaviraj
1997) ; in the tendency to give children a ghar ka nam (lit: name

Master-Servant RelatWns, Clppw-Caste Superwnty • 65
of the house) as nickname and a iubh ni.im (auspicious, real

name) for formal contexts; in the numerous rituals required for
accepting women married into the patriline; in the ascription
of inauspiciousness and misfortune to alien entities and distant
events; in the distrust of strangers; and in the protective rituals
performed at or along village boundaries. Though I am not fully
convinced that these distinctions are commensurable irrespec-
tive of what they are inside and outside of. I find Chakrabarty' s
distinction between the inside and outside of the house very
useful. The house, he says, is 'an inside produced by symbolic
enclosure for the purpose of protection' (ibid.: 22), while the
outside, epitomized by the bazar, is 'that unenclosed, exposed
and interstitial "outside" which acts as the meeting point of
several communities', and 'a place· where one comes across
and deals with strangers' (ibid.: 22-3). While the inside is
guarded and enclosed, the outside is ambiguous and potentially
dangerous.
Chakrabany's reflection on the distinction between the inside
and the outside of the house tallies with my observations from
Kanpur and provides a useful staning point for the examination
of how social boundaries of different kinds coexist, interconnect,
and spill over to each other as people move between different
contexts and spaces. Taking a spatial approach and following
Gray & Mearns ( 1989) in studying social phenomena from the
inside and out, I intend to start from the inside, that is, in the
homes and home compounds of my acquaintances in Mohanganj.
Clearly, homes and home compounds are spaces in which social
boundaries of many different kinds are enacted and reproduced.
For example, gender is maintained in clothing and the familial
division of labour, the age hierarchy in the refrainment from
questioning and contradicting one's elders and both caste dif-
ferences and religious boundaries in the reflection over how
one's own fasts, rituals, and diets differ from those observed by
other communities. Since this book works towards unders tand-
ing the shift of upper-caste 'othering' between Muslims and
Dalits and the anchoring of such 'othering' in everyday life, I will
pay particular heed to caste and religious boundaries. This point
of departure precludes me from studying social differentiation
based on gender and age in their own rights, but both gender
and age will .nevertheless play a significant role in this study as

66 • Blended BoundariM
they flavour the everyday expression of caste and religious bound-

aries.
What kind of Others did my upper-caste hosts and acquain-
tances encounter inside the walls and fences that protected their
domestic spaces from the unruly outside? Their own family
members, as well as their closest neighbours, colleagues, and
friends tended to be of roughly equal status as themselves (cf.
Chapter 5). The Muslims among them were not so many that
their presence laid the foundation for a systematic othering and,
besides, my upper-caste acquaintances normally undercommu-
nicated (though never entirely forgot) religious differences when
receiving Muslim visitors (cf. Chapter 6). The most important
Others that my upper-caste acquaintances encountered at home,
I will argue, were their own domestic servants.
MASTER-SERVANT RELATIONS AND EVERYDAY PRACTICES

Master-servant relations have received surprisingly little atten-
tion in the anthropology of India. In the late 1990s, however, there
have been some attempts to put master-servant relations at the
centrestage-presumably in.spired by Karen Tranberg Hansen's
groundbreaking study from Zambia (1989). Lakshmi Srinivas
(1995), for example, summarized the scanty references made
to such relations thus far, drawing on anthropological studies,
newspaper reports, and personal ad hoc observations. Her
objective was generalist rather than empirical, but her overview
is nevenheless valuable. Rachel Tolen's studies of master-
servant relations (1996, 2000) are based on fieldwork in Chennai
(Madras). Tolen focused on the transmission of knowledge
across class boundaries, such as on how bungalow-owner:s com-
mu.nicate with their servants, how they expect them to dress,
talk, cook, clean, and serve. Most thought-provoking, in my view,
are Sara Dickey's excellent articles on master-servant relations
in Madurai (2000a, 2000b). Inspired by Chakrabany, Dickey
emphasized the ambiguity servants pose to the class status of
their employers. Though employers depend on servants to get
their household chores done, their very presence brings 'the din,
disease and rubbish' (2000a: 462) of the 'outside' into the house,
and employers fear that servants might betray them by carrying
family secrets or material objects out of the house.

Master--Seroanl RelalUms, Upper-Caste Superiority • 67
The issues addressed by Dickey and Tolen could well have

served as thematic guidelines for the following analysis of master-
servant relations in Mohanganj, as my observations dovetail with
theirs. Nevenheless, I would rather suggest that their inclination
to analyse master-servant relations solely in terms of class
might have led them to overlook the influence of _c aste in sµch
relations. Admittedly, both anthropologists conducted fieldwork
in urban Tamil Nadu, where caste boundaries seem less stark
than in Kanpur. Moreover, Dickey's and Tolen's informants were
more heterogeneous with respect to caste and religious back-
ground than mine. But their emphasis on class was not only
rooted in empirical differences; it also had methodological and
theoretical underpinnings. Dickey, for example, explained that
she focused on class because this was the idiom preferred by
her informants and, besides, her primary interest was indig-
enous concepts of class (ibid.: 465). Similarly, Tolen-influ-
enced by one of Dickey's earlier works (1993)-explained that
her informants 'talked frequently and with great intensity' about
differences between 'outhouse people' (servants) and 'bungalow
people' (2000: 67), which were the everyday class categories
used when referring to master-servant relations. Consequently,
Tolen's and Dickey's inclination to analyse master-servant re-
lations in terms of class was also influenced by an analytical
perspective giving predominance to indigenous categories and
discursive frameworks.
My aim is not to challenge such perspectives, whether in the
study of master-servant relations or in the study of class. On the
contrary, I will tum to a similar perspective on class myself in
Chapter 4. What I would like to argue is that the analytical
disparity between discursive frameworks and everyday practice
needs to be taken very seriously when analysing social distinc-
tions in India. It is conventional anthropological knowledge that
verbal utterances are of a different empirical order than actions
and practice, and that the former cannot be treated as a simple
reflection of the latter (see, for example, Holy & Stuchlik 1983).
When dealing with social inequality in urban India, this is particu-
larly important as the prohibition of caste discrimination has
virtually made it socially unacceptable to admit caste inhibitions,
let alone to defend them (Beteille 1994, 1996). Thus, urban upper
and middle class people who discuss inequality today, often

68 • Blend«l Boundaries
prefer to do so in terms of class, literacy or hygiene--even when

reluctantly acknowledging that caste may come into play as well.
This chapter will attempt to go beyond the local discursive
frameworks. Rather than drawing on a semi-Foucaultian analyti-
cal framework, which Tolen and Dickey appear to have done, my
main source of inspiration is Pierre Bourdieu' s theory of practice
( 1977, 1990). I will draw heavily on his separation between
reflexive and non-reflexive knowledge, that is, between what is
taken for granted to such an extent that it cannot be put into
words, and knowledge that may be articulated and discussed,
criticized, and defended. Similarly, I will draw on Bourdieu's
separation between reflexive and non-reflexive action and pay
particular attention to the latter, that is, to everyday practice.
According to Bourdieu, the most important values, principles,
and categories of a society are entn1sted to bodily automatism
(1977: 218). Later anthropologists have added that unreflexive
knowledge also may be stored in more cognitive ways, 1 above
all in what Bradd Shore calls 'cultural models'. Such models
refer to 'conventional, patterned public forms' (Shore 1996: 51)
that serve as prescriptions for action and interpretation (cf.
D'Andrade & Strauss 1992; Geertz 1993 [1973): 93; Johnson
1987) .2 I will also make use of this concept, though I strip off
the first word-'cultural'-since it assumes a coherence that is
problematic in Indian settings, given their enormous diversity.
As the remainder of this chapter hopefully shows, there is much
to be learned by examining what happens when a domestic
servant fails to show up, when an employer risks standing a bit
too close to her servant or when an upper-caste child tries to ride
piggyback on the maid.
SERVANTS AND UPPER-CASTE AVOIDANCES
During my initial months of fieldwork in 1992, a Khatri family

invited me to lunch. I did not know them well, and became very
1
Making this point is not (I hope) a lapse into the Cartesian mind-body
distinction, but an acknowledgement that knowledge may be non-reflexive
in more ways than Bourdieu recognized.
2
Similar phenomena are also analysed as 'schema', 'schemata', 'frames',
'scripts' and 'templates'.

Master-Servant &latitms, Upper-Casu Superiority • 69
embarrassed when a sudden movement of my elbow made a

glass fall down from the table and break. Following my Norwe-
gian gut reaction, I apologized, got up from my chair, and asked
where I could find something with which to remove the glass
splinters. My hosts told me not to bother as the servant would
remove the glass splinters when he arrived the next morning.
But I insisted that glass splinters could not be left that long, as
they could easily hurt people walking barefoot or in rubber
chappals. Once again I was told, this time in a far sterner voice,
that the servant would take care of it. I resigned and we contin-
ued our meal. Afterwards I saw one of the sons in the family
kicking the glass splinters further under the table with his leather
shoe, probably acknowledging the danger of getting cut, but still
not removing the splinters. When I left the house a few hours
later, the glass splinters were still there. Clearly, removing them
was below their dignity for some reason. But why? Prior to this
event, I had not given this question any thought. I had noticed
that all upper-caste families I knew who could afford it, em-
ployed several domestic servants. However, I had related this
to convenience and conspicuous consumption on the part of the
families, as well as to the ready availability of cheap labour in
Kanpur. The broken glass episode opened my eyes to a possible
additional explanation: the upper-caste notion that certain tasks
are 'supposed' to be carried out by servants.
This explanation appeared even more plausible after an
episode that occurred a few months later. I was now living with
the Kapoors, another Khatri family. They had a domestic maid
named Rupali who made the beds, helped in the kitchen, and
kept the apartment tidy. One day I spent the afternoon talking
to Neelam, the 16-year-old daughter in the house. We sat on her
bed as the sun gradually warmed the part of the building in which
the bedroom was located. Suddenly Neelam yelled out: 'Rupali?
He Rupali! Switch on the fan!' Neelam had to call a few times
before Rupali heard her, as the maid was busy in the kitchen.
Hurriedly, Rupali came into Neelam's room, headed towards
the switch just behind Neelam's head, turned on the fan, and
went back. How should we approach Neelam's reluctance to
bend over and do it herself?
To approach this question, let me open with an overview of the
tasks for which upper-caste Hindus in Mohanganj employed

70 • BJmded. Boundaries
domestic servants: cleaning toilets, cleaning bathrooms, wash-

ing floors, dishwashing, dusting, washing clothes, cutting veg-
etables, and cooking. I have listed the tasks in a roughly decreasing
order of avoidance. If a family, for lack of economic means,
could only pay for a single domestic servant, they would choose
to have their toilets and bathrooms cleaned. Even the low-income
families I lived among in Harl Mandi had pooled to pay a
jamiidarin (female sweeper) to clean the common lavatories. 5
She came twice a week to sweep the gutter in the courtyard, to
remove the garbage, and, above all, to clean the lavatories. With
ten families 40 people in all-sharing three lavatories without
running water, this was a task that evidently required a 'special-
ist'. On the other side of the scale, cutting vegetables was not
avoided as such. Getting a servant to do the tedious vegetable-
cutting, or employing a cook, was a matter of convenience and
of having sufficient economic means to do so.
When examining whether the circumvention of household
tasks was rooted in mere convenience or in deeper forms of
avoidances, it is useful to examine the reactions when a domes-
tic servant failed to show up and the task for which the servant
was responsible urgently needed to be done. Reactions, of course,
depended on the task in question. If a sweeper failed to show
up once or twice, the employers would grumble that it was hard
to get good, dependable servants these days. The absence of a
sweeper did not grow problematic until the bathroom he or she
was supposed to clean had grown unbearably filthy. During
one of my visits to the Arora household, I overheard a conver-
sation about absent jamadarins during a family gathering.
Bhabhi, Ram Lal's wife, embarrassed over the garbage heaps
that kept collecting outside the gates, alleged that after the
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) came to power (cf. Chapter 8) ,
'these people don't want to work anymore.' Her ownjamadArin,
she continued, 'recently stayed away for 15 days, and when she
finally came, it was only to claim her salary!'. Bhabhi seemed
ready to go on with her argument, but was cut short by her visiting
brother-in-law, who teasingly advised her to do it herself, starting
with the garbage heaps. Bhabhi looked at him in disbelief for
3 I follow my upper<aste acquaintances' tendency to denote sweepers

as jamadlns (m) or jamiiclarins (f).

Masin-Servant Relations, UptKr-<Aste Supniority • 71
a few seconds. Then she snorted: 'Me? Ha, ha, very good! Okay,
tomorrow you and I go outside and start, okay? I'll see how tough
you are then.' When her brother-in-law nodded towards me and
pointed out that Europeans normally did such things themselves,
Bhabhi grew silent for a while. Finally, she quietly replied, 'I have
never been taught to ·do such things. As long as I can avoid it,
I would never do work like this myself.' This unthinkability and
the difficulty in justifying it were very common among upper-
caste housewives and, even more so, among their husbands and
sons. Consequently, upper-caste families never solved the ab-
sence of ajamadar by cleaning the bathroom themselves. What
they did was to ensure the return of the sweeper or to arrange
for a substitute.
As for dishwashing, virtually all the upper-caste families I
interacted with employed maids to do the dishes. Since each
family had a limited stock of plates, spoons, and glasses, the
absence of a mehri (dishwashing maid) tended to be more acute
than the absence of a sweeper. The most common solution was
to send the gatekeeper to borrow a set of plates and spoons from
the neighbours, or to reluctantly allow me, the live-in anthropolo-
gist, to volunteer to do the washing-up. The latter option was only
open if all other possibilities had been tried. In less acute
circumstances I was not allowed to do the dishes no matter how
messy the kitchen was or how poorly the maid had cleaned the
utensils. When staying with the Sharmas, Ritu literally had to tear
some dirty plates out of my hands before I realized the inappro-
priateness of what I was about to do. Madhu, the one among the
Agarwals I got to know best, proudly told me how she and her
mother had avoided dishwashing when visiting her sister in the
United States-a journey she never neglected to mention when
talking to new acquaintances. The sister could not afford ser-
vants at US costs, and had grown accustomed to dishwashing.
She, however, spent most of the day at work, and Madhu and her
mother did not think it appropriate to let her return to unwashed
dishes . Nor did they want to do the dishes themselves. The
solution, Madhu proudly proclaimed, was to buy disposable
plates, glasses, and spoons for the whole two-month stay. Yet it
was probably Pramod Sharma who provided the most telling
evidence of the avoidance of dishwashing. Over and over, he
returned to an incident from his childhood in which he came

home and found his widowed mother crying over the dirty dishes:
'Her in-laws had made her do it (... ) I went over and started to ·
help. My grandmother asked what on earth I was doing. I gave
her a look she never forgot.' Every time Pramod told me about
this incident, he had seemingly forgotten that he had mentioned
this episode before. Most of the times he brought it up, he was
sentimental and thoughtful-a mood normally brought forth by
the combination of beer and the dark silence caused by nightly
power cuts. Each time he referred to it as a turning point, as an
episode that brought him closer to his mother, and that made
him realize that he would have to protect her as long as she lived.
Despite the turning point that this incident was to Pramod,
neither he nor anyone else was able to explain why they found
dishwashing humiliating. Nevertheless, the impact of this child-
hood episode and the inventive circumvention of dishwashing left
little doubt that my upper-caste hosts and friends considered
dishwashing humiliating and degrading.
Doing the laundry was not circumvented to the same extent as
cleaning bathrooms and dishwashing. Since dhobis (washerrnen)
traditionally were considered untouchable in this part of India,
and since washing clothes might entail contact with human waste
and blood, which are held to be highly polluting, one might
logically infer that washing clothes was nearly as intensely avoided
as cleaning bathrooms. But this was not the case. True, all uppcr-
caste families who could afford it, employed dhobis to wash
clothes twice a week or so. However, not all minded washing their
clothes themselves. In the Sharma family, for example, Mamaji
claimed that he scrubbed his own underwear while having his
daily bath. Naniji always washed the full set of clothes-sari,
blouse, and petticoat-that she had worn the previous day, and
I chose to follow her example. Deepu and Gurhiya always won-
dered why we bothered when the dhobi would arrive sooner or
later anyway. As for Ritu, she normally left the clothes for the
dhobi, but when he fell ill, she scrubbed them herself without
further ado. 'The dhobi doesn't wash the clothes properly any-
way,' she said. When I wondered why she had not ordered him
to do a better job or employed someone else, she pointed to his
old age and long service, thereby suggesting that the importance
of not hurting a faithful servant overshadowed her reluctance to
do the laundry. In the Arora household too, washing clothes was

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ,.._,
Master-Servanl Relations, Upper-Casu Superiority • 73
not nearly as strongly avoided as washing bathrooms and

dishwashing. When Gopal's dhobi fell ill, for example, he did not
even look for replacement, but sat down in the bathroom with a
bucket and a scrub. To his luck, however, he was soon relieved
by Sarita, the woman employed for cleaning his floors. Upon
spotting her master on all fours in the bathroom, she exclaimed,
'He /Jabil, what are you doing?', demanding that he hand the brush
and the bucket over to her. 4
To some extent, the avoidance of domestic tasks and sub-
stances can probably be traced back to the gu~ model, which
is described in several ancient scriptures and often referred to
as the bottom-line of purity and pollution in Brahminical thought.
According to Marvin Davis, who studied the way these prescrip-
tions were understood in West Bengal (1976), all beings and
objects were held to be composed by three qualities or sub-
stances: sattvagu.~. rajogu.ri, and tamogu~ Sattvagui:i is a white
substance manifesting the supreme principle, Brahma. It 'gen-
erates goodness and joy, and inspires all noble vinues and
actions' (Davis 1976: 9) and is panicularly prominent in deities.
It is also prominent in Brahmins and 'cold food ' such as veg-
etables, milk and ghi (clarified butter). Rajogui:i is a red sub-
stance that 'produces egoism, selfishness, violence, jealousy,
and ambitions' (ibid.). It is panicularly prominent in demons
and animals, but is also dominant in Kshatriyas and 'hot food'
such as meat, eggs, fish, onion, and cenain vegetables and
fruits. Tamogui:i is a black substance associated with the mate-
rial and sensual. It 'engenders stupidity, laziness, fear, and all
sons of base behaviour' (ibid.) and is panicularly predominant
in certain plants and objects. It is also the dominant quality in
Shudras and untouchables as well as human waste, spoiled and
leftover food, beef and alcohol.
ln Mohanganj, the household tasks that were most strongly
circumvented all entailed contact with substances containing
tamogui:i: bathroom cleaning and laundry with human waste,
4 Gopal's point in telling me about this episode was not to state his
willingness to wash clothes, but to assure me that he never treated
his jamadarin as unworthy of tasks other than sweeping. For a while
she had also assisted him in his rice retail business by cleaning rice for
him. ·

dishwashing with leftover food and sweeping and garbage col-

lecting with stale food. Yet, in daily practice, some kinds of
tamogui:i seemed more acceptable than others (such as alcohol
and dirty clothes), and several tasks were circumvented for
reasons that had nothing to do with polluting substances at all.
Neelam's reluctance to switch on the fan, for example, was
probably prompted by the fact that servants had carried out
such tasks for her family as long as she could remember. This
was also why Dimpie Sharma, a girl of only three, refused to
wipe the morning dew off her grandfather's chair with the fol-
lowing remark: •Mai lwi naukar hu kyii.1 Am I a servant or what?'
From childhood, both Dimpie and Neelam had been socialized
into a domestic world in which most household tasks apart
from cooking, serving, and knitting were carried out by servants.
Conversely, the girls came to see servants as people who existed
to get such tasks done. This was also how they perceived strang-
ers who resembled servants by looks and dress, by ways of
talking and moving about, be they poor women hurrying by on
the street or skinny rickshaw-cyclists.
The incidents discussed above also reflect that upper-caste
families in Mohanganj tended to employ several servants, each
for a limited number of tasks. Some servants worked full-time,
others dropped by once a day or a few times a week. Why not
appoint all-round servants instead? One reason was the expecta-
tion of skills. Upper-caste families were more inclined to appoint
a new servant if he or she hailed from a caste traditionally
accustomed to, and skilled in, the task in question. Only then, the
employers explained, would the servant know how to do the job
properly, and would not have aspirations leading to negligence.
Another reason is caste-related avoidances. To keep the food
and kitchen pure, untouchables were never appointed for work in
the kitchen. Nor were servants with access to the kitchen ever
asked to clean bathrooms. The servants shared such avoidances:
even a washerman would be insulted if asked to do the work of
a sweeper. Consequently, there was a strong congruence between
the servants' caste backgrounds and the tasks they were ap-
pointed for, especially in the case of sweepers and washermen.
Higher up in the hierarchy of household tasks, the congruence
was weaker. Cooks and general maids were recruited from rural
famHies of low- or middle-caste origin such as Ylidavs, Ahirs or

Master-5ervant Relations, Upper-c.asu Superiority • 75
Barhais.5 A few were from funher afar, such as Nepal or West

Bengal and, if so, their caste background was less significant.
According to Lakshmi .Srinivas, live-in servants are being
replaced by visiting, part-time servants in the largest Indian
cities. E1nployers, she argued, arc less willing to feed and look
after servants, have a growing need for privacy, and fear physical
attacks by live-in servants after reports of such violence in the
press ( Srinivas 1995: 273). However, she mentioned no corre-
sponding change from single-task to multi-task servants. In the
case of Mohanganj, a potential shift towards visiting and/or
multi-task servants is probably best assessed by lboking at the
accommodation offered to servants. Bungalow-owners normally
offered full-time servants-typically those with access to the
kitchen-accommodation in shacks or 'servant quarters' in the
back of their compounds. Visiting servants dividing their work-
ing day between several employers lived by themselves, nor-
mally in a rickety shack in a poor locality nearby. In the 1990s,
however, many bungalows were demolished to make way for
apartment buildings. All apartment owners had to offer their
live-in servants were a few square. metres to unroll the bedding
on at night, either inside the living room or in the staircase of
the apartment building. 6 Hence, the 'apartmentization' of Kanpur
forced flat-owners to reduce their number of live-in servants. But,
instead of giving broader responsibility to their remaining live-
in servants, they increased their staff of visiting servants. In
5
Traditionally, Ylidavs were cultivators, Ahirs cow herds/cultivators
and Barhais carpenters. None of these communities is associated with
defiling tasks and hence not classified as SCs by the Uttar Pradesh
government-a classification that gives entitlement to preferential treat-
ment in political representation, education and government employment.
The three communities were, however, found sufficiently marginal to be
listed as OBCs, who are entitled to preferential treatment to a lesser
degree.
6
A friend in Mumbai, Rajesh Bhatia, once told me about a documentary
that showed that Indian architects may well attempt to replicate Western
living styles, but as soon as people move in, staircases, pavements, and
back-alleys fill up with poor people engaged as servants and errand boys
(cf. Waldrop (2002, Chapter 5] for similar observations from New Delhi
and Suri (2001) for a fictional account). This exemplifies what James
Holston ( 1989; 1998) refers to as the utopian paradox of city planning.

other words, the shift fr.om live-in to visiting servants was not
followed by a shift from single-task to multi-task servants. This
suggests that master-servant relations remained flavoured by
the avoidances discussed above and that the domestic division
of labour continued to be regulated by caste.
SERVANTS AND UNTOUCHABILITY

Untouchable servants were not only known to be untouchable, but
in most cases also empfqyed as untouchables, that is, for carrying
out the specialization of their castes. Since jati status and work
overlapped, and since both were well known, untouchability was
far more apparent in people's homes and home compounds than
anywhere else in Mohanganj. In what ways, then, was untouchabil-
ity practised in these homely settings? Before examining this
question, we should note that, throughout India, people rarely
touch each other across gender and status boundaries. The fact
that upper:-caste Hindus in Mohanganj never touched their un-
touchable servants, then, is insignificant. Instead, we have to look
for ways in which untouchable servants were treated differently
from other servants. It will be useful to remain alert to transgres-
sions, that is, to the rare incidents in which the untouchability of
servants was questioned or' commented upon. Since untouchable
servants were part-time employees, they were normally absent
during my visits to families such as the Aroras and the Agarwals.
Hence, my observations on domestic practices ofuntouchability
are heavily informed by the everyday goings-on within the Sharma
family's compound, where I lived for a fairly long period of time.
That untouchable servants were kept away from kitchens has
already been mentioned. Second, untouchable servants were
never handed things directly. For example, when Dev Chand, the
sweeper, came to clean the bathroom, he was never given the
packet of Vim detergent powder. As if by a silent agreement, he
would hold out his hands while Naniji or Ritu poured the powder
into them. This, they rationalized, had the additional advantage
of preventing him from using too much detergent powder. Such
routines were not only preferred by the employers, but also
deeply embodied by the untouchable servants themselves. When
I offered grapes to the old dhobi, for example, he insisted that
I put them in the dirty shawl he held out no matter how many

Master-Servant Relations, Upper-Caste Supmonty • 77
times I assured him that I did not share the inhibitions of my

Brahmin hosts. Third, untouchable servants were never served
food or beverages in utensils used by their employers. Not that
untouchable servants were served food or drinks very often; after
all, most of them only worked for an h0ur or two a day. Yet, when
the occasion arose, they had to make do with scarred cups or
disposable containers such as polythene bags and cardboard
boxes or-if the stock was empty-with their sari falls or shirt
tails. Non-untouchable servants, in contrast, were usually al-
lowed to drink tea or take surplus food home in their employers'
utensils. 7 Fourth, upper-caste Hindus avoided the physical prox-
imity of their untouchable servants. This was evident in the way
Urmila Sharma refrained from stepping into the elevator when
discovering that Dev Chand, her jamadar, was already inside.
Urmila never said so directly, but it seems evident that she felt
uncomfortable with the thought of having to stand so close to Dev
Chand, locked into a space of only one and a half square metres.
Politely, she told him that she'd wait until he had gone upstairs
and the elevator had come down again.
Despite such precautions, untouchable servants were usually
treated nicely and politely. In the incident above, Urmila never
signalled to Dev Chand that he leave the elevator so that she
could use it first, alone. Moreover, whenever Dev Chand cleaned
the bathroom or swept the courtyard, he was spoken to in a soft
voice and was never scolded even after long delays. And, as I
mentioned previously, the old dhobi was never asked to improve
or else quit. On the contrary, his employers never burdened him
with more work than they thought he could handle, and when
speaking to him, always addressed him in ways that emphasized
his seniority in terms of age while ignoring his low social status
and caste background.8
7
This differentiation also restricted the type of food that could be given
to untouchable servants. While non-untouchable servants could receive all
sorts of food, including runny sabzis (vegetable dishes) that had to be
transported in ltaµ,ris (small bowls), untouchable servants and workers
could only be given dry food such as lilu;irii (potato with cumin), roti (dry,
flat bread), sweets and fruit.
8 Ritu addressed him as iif>, never as tum or tu. Accordingly, the verbal
fonns were always suffixed with -iye or ·iyegii rather than --0 or nothing at
all. There were exceptions to such politeness, of course. An acquaintance

78 • Blend«l Boundaries
Enactment of untouchability was hardly ever talked about-

and certainly not as untouchability. Whenever I attempted to
bring up this issue, the replies fell into one of the following two
lines of reasoning. One held that untouchability was mainly an
evil of the past, and that urban, modern people 'like us' had
stopped believing in such things. Some added that untouchabil-
ity nevertheless remained prevalent in the countryside, particu-
larly in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, areas that represented
backwardness, crime,.and disorder for upper-caste Hindus in
Mohanganj. Within this line of reasoning, untouchability was
rapidly objectified and transformed from an everyday practice
among themselves to a general phenomenon in and of the Indian
society at large.
In the other line of reasoning, people came closer to acknowl-
edging their own practices of untouchability. Here too, a com-
mon opening remark would be that their practices were rooted
in old inhibitions and habits. However, these inhibitions were
soon justified as a necessary precaution against gandagi. The
noun gandagi and the adjective it stems from, ganda, could be
applied to a vast array of objects, people, and activities. They
were applied to clothes, floors, and kitchen utensils that needed
cleaning. They .were used about unfashionable clothes and food
that tasted foul. They denoted a broad group of people whom
upper-caste Hindus considered poor, physically dirty, and lack-
ing in middle-class ethos. They were also used to refer to resi-
dential areas dominated by these people, as well as areas in
which the streets were dusty and the houses rickety or areas
where moving about was considered unsafe. The word ganda
was also applied to inappropriate activities such as fighting,
corruption, lying, and nose-picking. Three-year old Dimpie, for
example, was frequently told that unless.she behaved properly,
she would be a gandi bacchi (bad girl) .9
told me that, when he was ten or eleven years old, he and his friends used
to tease an elderly domestic servant by calling him be!ii (son), thereby
deliberately turning the age difference upside down. When the boy's father
discovered this, he gave him a good scolding. This servant, though, was
not of untouchable background.
!> G<•mli is the fen1inine form of ganda. ln Hindi, adjectives change their
endings according to the gender, number, and case of the noun.

Master-Servafll RelatUms, Upper-Caste Supniorit) • 79
The words ganda and gandagi, then, referred to lack of

hygiene, ugliness, tastelessness, and inaproppriateness, in short,
to virtually everything that was negatively evaluated. At the same
time, these were the terms used when justifying contemporary
practices of untouchability. Such justification was hardly ever
required except when challenged by cultural amateurs such as
children or myself. Once when three-year-old Dimpie was about
to climb onto the back of Seema, an untouchable servant who
was busy cleaning the floor, Seema stopped her on the grounds
that she (that is, Seema herself) was gandi. When Seema told
Mummy, Dimpie's grandmother, about the episode afterwards,
Mummy smiled and said toothlessly: 'HQ, tum bahut gandi lw.
Yes, you are very dirty.' Whether Scema's gandagi referred to
her caste background, to her floor-cleaning profession, or to her
current contact with the physical dirt on the floor is impossible
to say, and perhaps even futile to pc:>nder. The point, I suggest,
is precisely the multiple meanings of gandagi and the inference
of each meaning upon the others. Whenever I tried to pursue the
concept of gandagi further, the multiplicity collapsed and the
only meaning that was retained concerned physical hygiene.
This was not necessarily because hygiene was a dominant
meaning. It may well be because it was the only caste-related
meaning of gandagi that was unaffected by the inappropriate-
ness of defending caste inhibitions out loud. Hence, when Ritu
explained why she always used disposable cups when serving
tea to the Barhais (carpenters) who had come to make a new
cupboard for her, she said it was for 'pure hygienic reasons' and
had nothing to do with caste at all.10
Denials of caste observance and untouchability often resulted
in complete verbal turnabouts. When Madhu Agarwal was on the
lookout for a new servant and I wanted to know what kind of
person she was looking for, she initially explained that she'd be
happy with anyone except ajamadar or a Muslim. Such people,
she explained, would be non-vegetarians and 'not clean'. But
IU Though these carpenters were classified as OBCs rather than ses.

they were often treated as untouchables. This discrepancy probably arose
because the practice of untouchability varies with (i) context, (ii) the ritual
distance of the castes invol\'ed and (iii) the medium through which poten-
tial pollutants may be transmitted.

80 • Blended .Boundariu
when I asked why she linked cleanliness to caste, she suddenly

held that caste was unimportant and that she could employ 'any
Scheduled Caste person' as long as he was clean and honest.
'And that is not determined by caste,' she added, as if to stress
her own open-mindedness. Similar verbal turnabouts occurred
virtually every time I attempted to pursue the link between
untouchability and hygiene. Whenever those I talked to realized
the self-contradictions that they were about to stumble into, they
attempted to put an end to the conversation by shruggiijk their
shoulders, changing the topic or busying themselves with some-
thing else.
Untouchability, then, was either evaded or rationalized as a
matter of physical hygiene. Even so, the practices discussed
above leave little doubt that upper-caste families in Mohanganj
still maintained physical and ritual distance from untouchable
servants and still believed, in one sense or another, that untouch-
ables constituted a different and inferior kind of people. Most
important, my upper-caste informants practised untouchability
far more openly and elaborately at home than in any other social
situations I had the opportunity to witness them in.
LIVE-IN SERVANTS: THREE CASES

Having explored why domestic servants were recruited and how
the master- servant institution reproduced notions of untouch-
ability, I will now tum to aspects of master-servant relationships
that escaped the foci above. This section will examine to what
extent patronage holds relevance as an ideal for upper-caste
treatment of domestic servants. It also intends to throw light
upon how servants were rewarded, and on the durability and
quality of master-servant relations. These purposes are best
served by examining a f.ew master-servant relationships in some
detail. To prevent overemphasis on untouchability, this section
will focus on live-in servants whose work included cooking and
serving.
The first case pertains to the relationship between the Sharmas
and their maid, a Bengali woman in her late thirties. Saraswati
had been employed by the Sharmas about eighteen years earlier,
after having had to leave her job as a maid in Calcutta. She had
fallen in love with another servaat in the household, and had

Master-Snvant Relations, Upper-Caste Supniqrity • 81
'married' him without knowing that he already had a wife and

several children in his native village in Bihar. With a growing
belly she was forced to resign, and had ended up in Kanpur,
working for the Sharmas. She lived with the product of her love
affair-Sapna, now seventeen-in a shack behind the Sharma
bungalow. Saraswati paid no rent. As soon as Sapna grew old
enough, she started to help her mother with the work, though
Saraswati had been very particular about sending her to school.
Saraswati's main job was to make tea in the morning and
afternoon, to prepare ro~is and parafhas for lunch and dinner, to
cut vegetables, to tidy, to hang out the washing after the dhobi's
visits, to fetch and unfold the folding beds that Mamaji and
Urmila slept on at night, to remove the same beds in the morn-
ings, to apply alta (red liquid dye) to the Sharma women's feet
at the karviichauth ritual, and so on. 11 For this work, Saraswati
received Rs 600 a month (about £ 11) , which also covered
Sapna's evening help in the bungalow. To cam some extra
money, Sapna had also taken up work as a maid for Naniji and
Ritu, who lived in the apartment building adjacent to the old
bungalow. This was paid for separately with Rs 300 a month. In
addition, both Saraswati and Sapna were daily given leftovers
from lunch and dinner. They were also given second-hand clothes
used by the women and girls in the Sharma family. In addition,
they were given some extra food and sweets, and a few extra tcn-
rupec notes on festival days such as divali.
Both Saraswati and Sapna always took off their rubber chappals
before entering the bungalow and the upstairs flat. All servants
who entered the domestic space of the Sharmas did that. Both
Saraswati and Sapna were free to move about as they wanted
to, and might well watch 1V along with the Sharmas-though
they never sat on chairs or beds, but remained standing in the
doorway, squatted or sat on the floor. Whereas Sapna was praised
for doing her work silently, for blushing, and for her reluctance
to speak, Saraswati defied this servant etiquette almost every
day, being the only Sharma servant who openly grumbled if she
11 Karvachauth is an annual ritual in wh ich married women pray for the
long lives of th e ir husbands. Space does not permit me to elaborate on this
ritual here, but the way it was practised in Moh anganj appeared fairly
similar to what Raheja (1988: 181-4) observed a little further north in Uttar
Pradesh.

82 • Blended Boundariu
was displeased. Her grumbles included vague complaints such

as 'Now you're telling 1ne that you want tea~ why couldn't you say
so when I made a whole pot just a short while ago?' and 'So many
careless people and here I am tidying your things all alone'. Her
grumbles were never addressed to anyone in specific. She ut-
tered them as if she were talking to l:ierself, but they were always
sufficiently loud for others to hear. The Sharmas either over-
looked her or giggled, explaining that this happened to be
Saraswati's nature, but that she had worked with them so long
that she knew she would never be fired. In fact, Saraswati was
one of the few servants the Sharmas planned to retain after
completing the third and last apartment building that required
demolition of the bungalow and servant quarters.
In 1997 Saraswati got Sapna married. She had found a suit-
able groom, employed as a driver elsewhere in Kanpur. A few
months prior to the wedding, Saraswati asked Pramod to con-
tribute some money for Sapna's tilak ceremony, a ceremony that
precedes the wedding proper. Pramod was almost in a state of
shock, as Saraswati had asked for no less than Rs 10,000. Her
arguments were strong: as a servant earning only Rs 600 a
month, and an absent and largely disinterested 'husband', she
would not be able to finance a proper tilak ceremony herself: But
this was not all. Saraswati had· also asked Pramod to give Sapna
some gold 'ornaments' (which all married women are supposed
to have), to cover the food expenses, and to donate Rs 20,000
for the wedding. Most of the money, I assume, was intended as
part of Sapna's dowry.
Pramod was very upset when he told me about Saraswati's
requests. Not only did he consider tilak ceremonies a lavish
unnecessity, he also thought that the amount Saraswati had
asked for was outrageous-far beyond the required sum for the
marriage of a servant and, moreover, far beyond his means. Yet,
Pramod' s anger should not be interpreted as an unwillingness
to help. He stated several times that it was his moral duty to help
a poor girl get married.
Sapna eventually got married at the end of May the same year.
I was not present then, but when I returned a few months later
I was told that the Sharmas, despite being relatively short of
money during this period, had donated Rs 10,000, a gold neck-
lace and some saris. In addition, both Bina and Urmila had

given her one of their old 'heavy saris', that is, saris of expensive
material, appropriate for weddings and other elaborate celebra-
tions. Although Sapna's tilak ceremony was quite modest, the
wedding had been an event that neither Saraswati nor Sapna
needed to be ashamed of.
That upper<aste Hindus may go far to stand up for faithful
servants was even more evident in the relationship between the
Aroras and their cook, Ravindra. Ravindra was 27 years old,
about the same age as Anoop, the son of Gopal Arora. Since
Ravindra and Anoop more or less grew up together, I was often
told that Ravindra was 'part of the. family' . 12
Originally, Go pal had employed Ravindra to provide his mother,
Arnma, with some help in the kitchen, as Gopal himself (and his
wife and sons) lived outside Kanpur at the time. Ravindra was
recruited through a contact of Gopal who headed an orphanage,
but not the way Gopal had intended. Instead of sending an
orphan, the acquaintance sent a boy from his own natal village.
That is how Ravindra, the son of a poor Barhii family from Etah
district, came to work for the Aroras in Kanpur. Gopal told me
that Ravindra was only eight years old when he arrived, and
smiled fondly at the memory of Ravindra who was so tiny when
he came that he had to sit in Amma's lap when learning how to
hold a knife. Interestingly, the Aroras did not share the Sharmas'
inclination to treat Barhais as untouchables. For his work, which
included cooking, shopping, serving, tidying, and running er-
rands, Ravindra was paid the same amount as Saraswati. And,
like Saraswati, he lived in the old servant quaners in the back
of the employers' compound without having to pay rent. But,
unlike Sapna, Ravindra had never been to school.
My first impression ofRavindra was that he was better dressed
than any other servant I had met in Mohanganj. He always wore
new-looking T-shins and Levi's jeans, no minor status symbol
for young men in Kanpur. Most of Ravindra's clothes, I was told,
had been given by Gopal's sister in London, and had previously
belonged to one of her sons. Being too tight for the young Arora
cousins Anoop and Prashant, the clothes were given to Ravindra,
12 This expression is commonly used about servants in South Asia. See

also Tellis-Nayak (1983: 69) for southern India and Shah (2000: 105) tor
Nepal.

84 • Blmded &undariu
who was considerably smaller built. Though Ravindra did not

resemble other servants in dress, he cenainly behaved like one.
He was humble and respectful, never talked without being asked,
and even then his voice was almost inaudible, eyes fixed on the
floor, or on the tips of his rubber chappals. In contrast to the
Sharma servants, all the Arora servants wore chappals inside
the house.
One day, when Ravindra was on his way to the market, he
witnessed a robbery: three young men were snatching the gold
chain and purse of a lady in a rickshaw. Acting on the spur of the
moment, Ravindra tried to stop them, but ended up with his right
upper arm filled with bullets. Bleeding profusely, Ravindra fainted.
The robbers ran away, probably fearing that they had killed him,
and the lady hurried off. Luckily, the rickshaw driver, who had not
dared intervene, had recognized Ravindra and knew where he
lived, so he ran to the Aroras and alened them. Luckily, Anoop
and Prashant were at home. The boys jumped into Prashant's old
Ford, picked up Ravindra on the way, and drove to the emergency
ward in Hallet hospital.
Hallet hospital was a government hospital-the only kind of
hospital that would accept a patient wounded in a criminal case,
I was told. The condition of this hospital was dismal. It was
reputed to be a hospital so devoid of elementary hygiene that
stray dogs easily found their way into the &peration theatre, and
as a place in which no patient would be treated unless the family
actively hunted for doctors and surgeons with the help of per-
sonal contacts or offers of money under the table. For these
reasons, Anoop's next step was to rush to the Sharma family's
house to get hold ofTilak. As sales representative for a pharma-
ceutical company, Tilak knew most of the doctors in Kanpur and
through him Anoop managed to get hold of a competent surgeon
who did his utmost to patch Ravindra's arm together again.
Hallet hospital offered neither blood, medicines, bed-sheets
nor bandages, so the boys' next task was to get hold of acute
necessities like these. The most acute necessity was blood.
Ravindra, having lost a lot of blood, required a blood transfusion
immediately-a minimum of eight packets of 250 ml, type B+.
Blood packets were sold in the blood bank nearby for Rs 300 per
packet--or free of charge if the buyer donated blood in ex-
change. To save money, Anoop phoned all his friends and got

them to donate blood immediately. The operation that followed
lasted twelve hours and was extremely complicated, but Ravindra
survived and his arm was saved.
Gopal and I were in Delhi, visiting his sister. Gopal was deeply
worried about Ravindra, but, he was also annoyed. Why did
Ravindra have to pretend to be a hero? Did he not have a thought
for the conse.~uences? Being Ravindra's master, Gopal consid-
ered it his responsibility to pay for the treatment-despite his
strained financiaJ. ~ituation that had just forced him to sell his
car. Moreover, "Gopal was worried that Ravindra bad told the
police that he recognized the robbers. If so, he feared that the
robbers would retaliate, something that could well affect the
whole Arora family given the fact that Ravindra lived on their
premises. Gopal also feared that Ravindra had lodged a First
Information Repon (FIR) to take the robbers to court, something
that would, as he saw it, result in decade-long harassment by the
police and judges. Hence, the numerous phone calls between
Gopal and Anoop contained several instructions for Ravindra:
I( the police comes to see him, he should deny any knowledge
whatsoever about the miscreants.
When Gopal and I returned to Kanpur, Anoop picked us up
at the railway station. Rather than going home, we went straight
to Hallet hospital. The entrance was unguarded, the door was
open, the staircase smelled of urine, and the floor was filthy. The
door to Ravindra's ward was open, tied to a hook by a blood-
stained bandage. The ward smelled sweetly of stale blood and
the air was heavy. There were 16 beds in the room, but only six
or seven of them were occupied. Ravindra lay in a bed close to
the window. He was the only patient with clean, white bed-sheets
and fresh drinking water on the table. A friend of Anoop sat by
his bedside. Ever since the shooting incident, Anoop and his
friends, as well as some errand boys from Anoop's office, had
alternated in looking after Ravindra day and night. Gopal went
over to Ravindra, stroked his hair, and asked him in a kind voice,
'So what have you gone and done, you fool? ' Ravindra bit his lip,
but gave no reply.
On the way home from the hospital, Gopal asked Anoop about
the bandage: Was it being changed daily? How did the wound
look? What did the doctors say? His annoyance had given way
to worry and care. In the following weeks, Gopal visited Ravindra

at least once a day, sometimes taking Madhu or me ajong. Each

time he brought fresh drinking water and the next meal, some-
times cooked by one of his other servants, but sometimes also
sandwiches and omelettes he had prepared himself, as if tem-
porarily inverting the relationship between himself and his cook.
Anoop remained in charge of care-taking, medicines, blood,
contact with doctors and the like. He even helped Ravindra
with the bedpan. Whenever more blood was needed--once ur-
gently when Ravindra's newly mended vein burst again, neces-
sitating a second operation-Anoop continued to recruit donors.
When his circle of friends was exhausted, he approached me
and the young men in the Sharma family, the latter being par-
ticularly attractive donors since their blood type was the same
as Ravindra' s.
Ravindra survived the second operation too, but his psycho-
logical condition had worsened. One day when Gopal had brought
Sarita (his jamadarin) along, Ravindra broke down and started
crying, sobbing that he was going to die. Gopal tried to console
him, but when that didn't work, he slapped him, saying 'What the
hell are you doing, what are you saying?' That helped, but only
temporarily. The same evening, Gopal received an emergency
call from the errand boy in Anoop's office, whose turn it was to
sit by Ravindra's bedside. He reported that Ravindra had started
to cry again, once again convinced that he was going to die. This
time, Anoop rushed to the hospital to console him, and did not
return until the next morning. Ravindra's emotional distress
should not surprise anyone. He had been through a severe acci-
dent, he had none of his relatives around him, he was in the worst
hospital in the city, and to top it all, he had just witnessed the slow
death of the patient in the neighbouring bed. Space prevents me
from elaborating on the Arora family's subsequent efforts at
getting Ravindra back on his feet. In brief, this is what happened
next: Ravindra was moved to a far better hospital as soon as his
case was re-categorized from a criminal case to an accident.
Gopal finally sent for Ravindra's sister, something he had de-
layed as long as he could, fearing that his bungalow would be
thronged with villagers during a period in which his own mother
was ill.
What, then, does this incident tell us about the relationship
between the Aroras and their cook? First and foremost, it tells

Master-Servant RelatWns, Upper-Casu Supmority • 87
us that the Aroras did all they could to stand up for Ravindra
in a time of crisis. Anoop neglected his_office duties for weeks
to provide practical and emotional support. Gopal, despite his
initial annoyance, visited Ravindra daily, bringing food and kind
words, though the status difference made their communicatio·n
slightly awkward. Gopal's brother Ram Lal, as well as their
sisters in Delhi, Punjab, and London, donated money in sums
ranging from Rs 1000 to 8000, knowing that neither Gopal nor
Anoop could afford Ravindra's medical treatment. Two and a
half months after the shooting incident, the accumulated cost of
the treatment amounted to Rs 40,000-more than what Ravindra
would have earned as a cook in five and a half years. In short,
Gopal's assertion that Ravindra was 'a part of the family' was
more than an empty phrase intended to impress the visiting
anthropologist.
The final master-servant case I will discuss here pertains to
the Agarwal family. The first time I visited them, they received
me in the living room. This room was reserved for formal oc-
casions, and contained an expensive-looking sofa protected with
white cotton sheets as well as some home-made clay pictures
and vases that could be admired if the conversation ran dry. This
was a room of decorum and politesse, a room in which people
sat upright and conversed politely. The contrast in the way
Madhu talked to the little boy who ran to and fro with coffee and
biscuits was striking. In the midst of a sentence she would switch
from the flowery phrases intended for me and Gopal (who had
brought me there) to a harsh tone intended for the boy, com-
manding him to first bring water, then more of this and more
of that, and why hadn't he already done so, how stupid could he
get? 1' The boy, who was nicknamed Chotu ('the small one'), was
ten years old at the most, and originally from Nepal. His family
had been too poor to send him to school, and as soon as he grew
old enough, his uncle brought him to Kanpur to work as a
domestic servant. The Agarwals, having heard about the boy's
arrival from some neighbours, were keen on taking him in. Chotu
did not cook, but worked as a herd (bearer), bringing food and
beverages from the kitchen to the family bedroom and back. He
cleaned the floors in the two bedroo1ns used by Madhu, her
13
For a similar experience from Mumbai, see Jaffrey (1996: 12).

88 • Blend«i Boundaries
husband Rakesh and their son Pintu. Evidently, the Agarwals did
not share the two other families' inhibitions against getting
floors cleaned and meals served by the same person, though we
should note that serving by no means entailed cooking. 14 Chotu
was also an errand boy, running to the market to get various
items that the family had forgotten to pick up on their daily
shopping rounds. For the tasks he was assigned, Chotu earned
Rs 400 per month (two-thirds of what Saraswati and Ravindra
earned), an occasional ten-rupee note on Sundays, accommoda-
tion, food, and some shorts and T-shirts. Chotu sent most of his
salary to his family in Nepal--even most of the extra ten-rupee
notes.
A few months after my first visit to the Agarwals, Madhu went
to New Delhi, where her natal family lives. In her absence, Chotu
ran away, and Pintu alleged that he had stolen a 100-rupee note
from his wallet before running off. As soon as Madhu returned,
she started to look for a replacement for Chotu. A week later
she employed a 14- or 15-year-0ld girl, believing that girls would
be more obedient and less inclined to steal. However, the next
time Madhu was in Delhi, this girl ran away too. When she
returned to Kanpur, she promptly went to the girl's house, got
hold of her, and demanded to know why she had run away. The
girl, supported by her mother, told Madhu that Rakesh (Madhu's
husband) had tried to misbehave with her. Madhu was not
prepared to believe this unless the girl repeated her story in front
of Rakesh. The girl did so, and added that Rakesh had threat-
ened her with dire consequences if she ever let anybody know.
Not surprisingly, Rakesh denied the allegations and claimed
that the girl probably had some 'mental problem' as she could
tell such 'vicious lies'. .
After this incident, Madhu struggled hard to find a new ser-
vant. She had asked all her friends and acquaintances, and all
their respective servants and drivers if they 'had any relatives or
connections looking for domestic work. Then, during one of my
14
The different acceptance of multi-task servants might be caused by
a different attitude on the part of the employer families, but it could just
as well reflect the tendency-also noted by Khare ( 1976: 53)-<o consider
multi-task servants more acceptable when they hail from less familiar
castes in distant areas, in this case Nepal.

Mast.er-Servanl Relalions, Upper-<As1e Superwrity • 89
increasingly frequent visits to the Agarwal household, I suddenly

spotted a new seivant. His name was Mohinder, a-thin fellow in
his late teens, originally from Bihar. He had previously worked
for the tenants who rented the first floor of the Agarwal bunga-
low. Madhu told me she intended to take a photograph ofMohinder
and deposit it with the police in case he ran off with anything.
Evidently, she expected him to run away sooner or later. The way
she bossed Mohinder around was no different from what I had
observed during my first visit to her house: 'Hey, bring us some
sabzi (vegetable dishes); no, not that sabzi! Arre! Where do you
think you're going? Not now, stupid! Later!' Mohinder, shifty-
eyed and clearly confused, ran back and forth, often stopping
mid-way and turning back, all the time with an insecure look in
his eyes. Madhu claimed that he was pagal (mad), but added
that his confusion probably was due to lack of familiarity with
the house and with the preferences of its inhabitants. Just two
days after Mohinder arrived, Madhu admitted later, he had told
her that he wanted to leave. But Madhu had persuaded him to
stay, convincing him that time would change everything for the
better. I do not know what happened next, as I left Kanpur shortly
after. When I returned a year later I asked Madhu whether
Mohinder had stayed on or not. 'Mohinder who?' she replied. As
it turned out, Mohinder had joined the series of unhappy seivants
who ran away from the Agarwals.
TWO MODELS: MARKET AND PATRONAGE

All the seivants discussed in the previous section-Saraswati,
Sapna, Ravindra, Chotu, Mohinder, and the 14-15-year-old girl
whose name I never came to know--did the same kind of work.
Hence, it is reasonable to assume that their employers consid-
ered them as being of roughly similar social and ritual status.
Even so, they were treated differently. The former three were
treated fairly well, while the remaining three were treated so
harshly that they ran away. It is tempting to ascribe the different
treatment to the caste difference between the employers, and to
link the treatment of Chotu, Mohinder, and the unnamed girl to
the Agarwal family's Baniya background, as Baniyas are reputed
to be 1noney-minded and calculating. 1 ~ Such an explanation
would be unwarranted given the small selection of employer

90 • BlnuUd .Boundaries
families. What these master-servant relations do indicate, how-

ever, is the influence of at least two coexisting cultural models
in the way my upper-caste hosts and friends in Mohanganj
related to live-in, non-untouchable servants. The less common
model is most clearly represented by the Agarwals. For them,
the ideal was to 'extract the maximum amount of work' from
their servants, as one of them once stated. They conceived of
master-servant relations as economic transactions in which the
payment, workload, and treatment of the servants were deter-
mined by the balance of demand and supply of labour power.
Yet the model that predominated in my close-up observations
of ties between upper-caste families and live-in, non-untouchable
servants was the patronage model. Briefly explained, patronage
refers to stratified relations between persons or groups that
expect mutual assistance from each other. Patrons provide ma-
terial or political resources while clients provide labour power
and loyalty. The bonds are personal and indeterminate with
respect to extension and duration (cf. Breman 1993 [1974): 18).
In the Indian case, patronage is epitomized by the jajmiini
system, which was the Wisers' (1930, 1936) term for the inter-
caste exchange of labour for agricultural produce and protection.
Both the jajmani and the patronage concepts have been called
into question-the former for being too synthesizing and tran-
scendent (see, for example, Fuller 1989; Inden 1990; Pocock
1962), the latter for never quite fitting the empirical cases under
scrutiny (see, for example, Hansen 1983, 1989; Ruud 2000).
Such challenges deserve serious consideration. Yet we should
note that they are all directed against the common tendency of
using the patronage or jajmani concepts as general categories
of social relations. My argument here, however, is not that an-
thropologists should categorize master-servant relations as a
kind of patron-client relation. What I argue is that many upper-
caste employers appeared to do so. For the Aroras, the Sharmas
and many others, the ideal master-servant relationship was one
that, in addition to exchange of labour for money, clothes, food,
and accommodation, also entailed an exchange of loyalty and
1
~ Traditionally, Baniyas were traders and moneylenders (cf. Hardiman
1996). and they still appear to be over-t"epresented in the business com-
munity in Kanpur and elsewhere.

Master-Servant Relations, Upper-Caste Superiority • 91
faithfulness for patronage and protection. Such qualities re-

quired time to evolve. Thus, a long duration of master-servant
relations emerged as an ideal quality: the longer ·a servant had
been employed, the 'better' were the employers' qualities as
masters. Conversations about master- servant relations often
evoked fond memories of old servants, now long dead, but who
were pan of the narrator's childhood. Nevertheless, kindness
and protection should be carefully balanced with control and the
ability to put one's foot down. This balance was a constant source
of dispute in upper-caste families. For example, whenever Gopal
Arora was away, Arnma made it a point to boss the servants
around and scold them for petty reasons just to remind them of
'their place'. In the Sharma household, Urmila and Pramod
once had a severe quarrel over how to deal with their gatekeeper's
neglect of duty. Whereas Urmila had demande.d to know the
reason for his absence, Pramod rebuked her for Jetting such an
employee give an explanation at all: 'You must· never let them
think that you are at the same level as them. All you should tell
them is that, if you get caught once again, you're out. One must
know how to act like a master. ' In other words, the master should
never allow his kindness to erode his power of command.
Even though the patronage model clearly influenced the way
many upper-caste families in Mohanganj related to their ser-
vants, its predominance was limited to live-in servants. As for
visiting servants- normally those in charge of more defiling
tasks-their presence was rarely sufficiently continuous to allow
the employers to include them in their mental gallery of servants
who were, or once had been, 'j ust like a part of the family'. This
does not necessarily imply that visiting servants were treated
according to the market model. Rather than being a question of
either-or, I find it useful to think of these two models as spanning
a continuum operative in all the master-servant relations I
observed in Mohanganj. While the patronage pole dominated in
relation to live-in, long-term, and non-untouchable servants, the
market pole dominated in relation to visiting, untouchable ser-
vants who were newly employed. Most 1naster-servant relations
were somewhere in-between, but if the shift from live-in to vis-
iting servants continues, the patronage pole is bound to weaken.
The patronage I witnessed in my upper-caste informants' ties
with their live-in servants is not necessarily a token of caste.

Isolated, it could just as well reflect differences of class, nation-

ality, race, or even gender-an inconclusiveness suggesting that
patronage, rather than being reducible to any one form of social
differentiation, is inherent in the master-servant relation itself.
Yet we should note that, in master-servant relations, patronage
never occurred in isolation, but alongside occupational rigidity
and avoidances. Besides, master-servant patronage could also
involve hereditary employment and prestations, features that are
held to be crucial in rural inter-caste relations in Northern India
(see, for example, Raheja 1988) but absent from most other
asymmetrical relations. Hence, the patronage that upper-caste
families bestow on their live-in servants is probably yet an indi-
cation of the caste· flavour in master-servant relations.
CONCLUSIONS
If asked, my upper-caste acquaint~nces in Mohanganj would
undoubtedly disagree with my emphasis on caste. In their view,
servants were merely a practical necessity and upper-caste
superiority was either an obsession of others, an inhibition of the
past, or a topic of discussion in the media, something 'out there'.
Yet the foregoing discussion suggests that their interaction with
domestic servants was strongly flavoured by caste. This was
evident in the preference for single-task servants over multi~task
servants, in the congruence of caste and occupation in the lower
rungs of household tasks, in the distance maintained from un-
touchable servants and perhaps also in the patronage of live-in
servants. True, the number of servants an upper-caste family
employed depended as much on their economic standing as on
their attitude to menial work. But, as I noted in Harl Mandi and
elsewhere, even poor upper-caste families would rather let their
children outgrow their school uniforms than clean their lavat<>-
ries themselves. Indeed, virtually all upper-caste children in
.Kanpur grew up in families that employed at least a sweeper.
Hence, these children were socialized into a world in which
certain relations, at least in part, were regulated according to
caste. This socialization reproduced upper-caste notions of caste
in a particularly 'deep' and subtle way because master-servant
interaction is governed by tacit knowledge and mute practices
rather than by reflexive thought and aniculate statements. Hence,

Master-Servant Relalions, Upper-Caste Superiority • 93
the common upper-caste tendency of employing domestic ser-

vants is no innocent habit; it also contributes to reproducing
notions of caste, untouchability, and upper-caste superiority.
In the next chapter I will follow my upper-caste hosts and
friends out of their homes and gates and into the streets, mar-
kets, and public spaces that Chakrabarty synthesized as the
'outside'. What made the outside different from the inside was
that the outside was populated by strangers. At home, they
largely interacted with people they already knew and could easily
position according to caste, occupation, and economic standing.
Even in home compounds shared by several households, say,
apartment buildings or so-called 'colonies', the tenants or flat-
owners tended to be recruited from such a homogeneous social
stratum, and their seivants to be so familiar and recognizable,
that my acquaintances always had a pretty good idea of the
status of those they encountered. To what extent did their modes
of positioning on the indeterminate outside-a positioning that
was crucial when determining how to relate· to those they encoun-
tered-differ from the principles of positioning that they acti-
vated on the inside? This is the question to which the next chapter
turns.

4
•
Outside: 'Good' People
and 'Small' People
'Just by looking at a girl I will know whether she knows English

or not.' Nodding towards the girl behind them in the train
compartment, this was how an army officer reassured my col-
league that the girl would not be able to overhear their English
conversation. 1 Evidently, the girl's physical features, dress, and
mannerism indicated the unlikelihood of her knowledge of
English, presumably because it revealed her low class status.
This remark hit point-blank on a complex phenomenon: the
positioning of strangers in public places.
In this chapter I will follow my upper-caste acquaintances
from their homes and home compounds and out into the public
places of the city-or, to follow Chakrabarty' s terminology (1991),
from th~ 'inside' to the 'outside'. I use the term 'public places'
in its most concrete sense, namely, as physical and spatial
locations in which admission and movement are unrestricted,
such as streets, markets, parks, and roadside food stalls. In
such spaces, upper-caste Hindus (and everyone else, for that
matter) had few means of establishing accurate knowledge of
the caste status, occupation, income, or education level of the
strangers they encountered. Hence, they had to rely upon other
indicators when deciding whose proximity to avoid, and how to
relate to the rest. Caste being invisible beyond the use of Jamil
1The colleague was Arild Engelsen Ruud, and I thank him for permis-
sion to refer to this incident, which occurred on a train in West Bengal.

......
'Good' People and 'Small' People • 95
(sacred thread), 2 they too had to find a way to communicate to

strangers that they were of a 'respectable' caste and social
status, as they could only take their upper-caste superiority for
granted in places in which their background was known, be it
at home or in other venues with restricted access.
In one way, Chakrabarty was right in pointing to the ambiguity,
open~ndedness, and potential danger of the 'outside'. Even so,
I think he underestimated the existence of alternative principles
of categorization and positioning, which enabled people to cre-
ate what Abner Cohen (1981) called 'closure in open systems'
even in public places. This chapter explores some of thes.e
principles. It argues that people judged each other on the basis
of clothing, complexion, physical features, speech, style of move-
ment and so on. The composition of these traits allowed for
positioning as more or less choia (small), acchii (good) or hara
(big), which which were the three main adjectives used for
describing social standing in Mohanganj and beyond. I will also
argue that the cho~ii-acchii dichotomy was closely linked to
expectations of caste and suggest that the category hara was of
a slightly different order, its main connotations being money and
political influence.
LOCAL IDIOMS OF CLASS

In addition to representing a spatial shift from the previous
chapter, this chapter adds two theoretical filters to the emphasis
on subtle everyday practices. The first is a closer attention to
local idioms and concepts. Since my interest in what people say
is limited to the identification and use of a handful of local
categories, my interest in local idioms is less embedded in a
discursive or narrative framework than in the older and more
exclusively anthropological perspective known as ethnoscience.
As Alan Barnard (1996: 202-3) explains it, ethnoscience aims
to analyse indigenous systems of classification, be it of natural
2 The janeU-a cotton thread worn over the right shoulder-is reserved
for men of twice-born van:ia status, and should only be worn after an
initiation ceremony. Janeiis are unreliable as caste markers in public
places as they are only worn by men and normally hidden under shirts or
kurtas. Moreover, the thread is frequently dropped by those entitled to wear
it and occasionally worn by people whose twice-born status is disputed.

96 • Blenfkd Boundaries
phenomena such as plants, animals, or colours (thereof the

suffix 'science'), or cultural phenomena such as kinship or, as
in this chapter, class. The second theoretical filter I will add to
this chapter is cognitive science, a discipline that takes interest
in all aspects of information processing (Coleman 1994: 279,
Reber 1995 [1985]: 133), and that approaches categorization
from another angle than ethnoscience. Whereas ethnoscience
identifies local categories and examines how they are used and
with what effects, cognitive science takes the analysis of local
categories one step further by examining how new elements are
categorized and which cluster of traits each category is identi-
fied with. A crucial point is that, when determining whether an
object, event or person belongs to this or that category, we rarely
think in terms of clear delineations or boundaries, but in terms
of prototypes, or clear cases (Bloch 1991, 1998; Rosch 1978).
As I hope to show in this chapter, this process also comes into
play in the way class is locally construed.
Attentiveness to local class categories was also a crucial
element in Tolen's and Dickey's studies of master-servant rela-
tions, which I mentioned in the previous chapter. For example,
Tolen reports that, in the railway colony in Madras, the tendency
that railway employees referred to their servants as 'outhouse
people' and 'poor people' whereas the servants referred to their
employers as 'bungalow people' and 'rich people' suggests a
combination of spatial and economic class referents (Tolen
2000: 67). Sara Dickey reports that her poor informants in
Madurai (including servants) tended to divide the population in
two-'poor people', 'people who have nothing', 'labourers', and
'people who suffer' versus 'rich people' or 'big people'-while
her wealthier informants invoked a three-tier class model by
placing themselves in a middle category which they normally
referred to with the English terms 'middle class' or 'upper class'
(Dickey 2000a: 465; 1993: 8).
As far as the process of categorization is concerned, Dickey
notes, 'When people make class judgements, they identify differ-
ences in clothing, food, hygiene, manners, sophistication, ~duca
tion, intelligence, language, mutual support systems, and attitudes
toward money and consumption' (Dickey 2000a: 466) . In films,
for example, the actors often emphasize a certain dress or style
of speech to make their characters immediately identifiable in

'Good' Peopl.e mad 'Small' Peopl.e • 97
terms of class (Dickey 1993). Osella 8c Osella provide us with

an example in their 'class reading' of Mani Ratnam's celebrated
film Bombay: the hero, wearing a 'horizontally striped jersey
shin' in his love song scene, came through as a bourgeoisie high-
caste Hindu and 'an educated man of substance and status',
whereas the man dancing the passion scenes was identified as
'working-class' because of his 'extremely curly hair, darker skin
tone, street-style baggy clothes and lubricious dancing' (Osella
& Osella 1999: 1000; 2000: 121).
This chapter aims to penetrate such processes of class cat-
egorization further. As such, it expands on a perspective on class
that complements the way class most commonly has been re-
ferred to in Indian contexts, namely in terms of income, property,
education level, profession, or other quantifiable variables.
Approaching class through local idioms and processes of catego-
rization instead will, I suggest, draw our attention to an interlinkage
between class and caste that departs from the interlinkages that
most commonly are discussed. Whereas quantifiable under-
standings of class allow for the examination of over- or under-
representation of certain castes or caste segments in certain
occupations or income groups, and the emergence of classes or
'creamy layers' within certain castes or caste segments, the
approach I will follow in this chapter suggests that upper-caste
constructions of class borrow several features from caste. Just
like Dumont once argued that caste was an 'irruption of the
biological into social life' (Dumont 1980 (1966): 61), this chapter
will suggest that local constructions of class arose through the
irruption of upper-caste superiority into public places.
VENTURING OUT: THE GOOD, THE SMALL AND, THE BIG

To illustrate this irruption, let me open with an incident from my
stay with the Sharma family in 1997. Like most other evenings,
the men were playing cards with their friends, their wives were
watching a 1V serial and the youngest ones were sitting in
Ammaji's room without anything in particular to do. Then the
idea emerged: Let's go for an ice cream! Billu agreed to drive,
and Bina, Deepu, Gurhiya, Dimpie, and I climbed into the Am-
bassador and drove off to one of the local ice cream stalls. Billu
ordered five 'Tooty Frooties' through the car window. While

waiting for the ice creams, Billu and Gurhiya looked for familiar
faces. Suddenly a white shadow passed the car windows, stopped,
and blocked their view. It was an old woman, limping, slightly
bent forward, thin, and small. She was dressed in a white, wom-
out cotton sari. She joined her hands humbly together and held
out her hands, but said nothing. Billu put his hand in his pocket
to search for some coins. Gurhiya, seeing this, shouted 'Don't
give!', but too late. Billu had just put a 50 paise coin in her hands.
The old woman joined her hands together in gratin1de and
proceeded to the next car. Three-year-0ld Dimpie, who had
watched the scene silently, asked 'Who is she?' Gurhiya and
Bina, almost at the same time, answered that the woman was
a gandi aurat (bad/dirty woman) . Dimpie seemed to reconcile
with this explanation, but later on, in the middle of her ice
cream, she asked 'Candi aurat kyo iii~ Why did the bad/dirty
woman come?' Bina, seemingly wanting to put a stop to Dimpie's
questions, snapped at Dimpie, 'Tumko Lene iii; She came to fetch
you'. Dimpie fell silent and lay quietly in Gurhiya's lap until we
reached home, obviously thinking hard about what she had just
heard. But she asked no further questions, and there was no
more talk about the beggar woman.
As I maintained in the previous chapter, 'the word ganda was
used about a whole range of objects, actions, and people that
were negatively valued. In this incident, I suggest, it was also used
as a class term. The woman was a stranger, and the Sharmas
knew neither her caste background nor her (previous) occupa-
tion, if any. And yet, they immediately positioned her as being
of a roughly similar status as the lowest category of servants,
a positioning process rooted in much more than the act of
begging. Before disentangling the traits that made such guess-
work possible, let me give an overview of the other class labels
that the Sharmas and my other upper-caste acquaintances
employed.
Like Dickey's better-0ff informants, upper-caste Hindus in
Mohanganj distinguished between three broad categories of
people. But the way they labelled the categories was slightly
different. Those my upper-caste friends looked down upon were
occasionally referred to as ga,nde log (bad/ dirty people), as in
this ice cream outing. They could also be referred to as jo parha-
likhii nahi' (illiterates) or with English terms such as 'the illiterate

class' and 'the masses'. Most commonly and less condescend-

ingly, however, they were referred to as clw/e log (small people) .
Whatever the label used, this category·consisted of people who
looked relatively poor, and whom my upper-caste acquaintances
almost automatically assumed to be of low-caste origin. People
· they considered to be on a par with themselves-in terms of
caste, economic standing and in other ways-ere referred to
as acche log (good people). This was also the term they applied
to themselves. There was also a third category, bare log (big
people). This term did not necessarily refer to people whom they
considered more acche than themselves. In other words, class
was not merely construed by positioning others below, on a par
with, or above themselves, as Dickey suggests was the case in
Madurai. In fact, 'big' people in Kanpur did not have to be
perceived as 'good' at all. What made people big was money or
influential positions or connections-features that could be fur-
ther specified by labels such as karorfJatis (multi-millionaires),
amir log (rich people) , VIPs or even by the hybrid term VIP log
(VIP people).' None of these idioms are unique to Mohanganj,
but to my knowledge the categories they represent are yet to be
studied in their own right. In the following I will concentrate the
discussion around the two first categories which I, for the sake
of simplicity, hereafter will refer to as acche log and chofe log,
or with their English equivalents.
To categorize a stranger as either 'good' or 'small' was a
complex process in which several features were involved. Take,
for example, the murder repons in the local edition of the Times
of India. One unidentified victim, a young man, was described
as follows: 'Clad in blue T-shin and a pair of black trousers, the
deceased appeared to belong to a good family.' Little more
could be said about the victim, as his body was panly decom-
posed. Another murder case concerned a young girl who had
been raped and killed: 'The victim, hardly 20 years of age, was
found clad in a pink shalwar suit, and had shon hair and gold
finger rings. Her fair complexion and sharp features indicated
that she was from a good family background.' A third repon
described the male victim as 'clad in cream-coloured trousers
3 The abbreviation VIP (Very Important Person) is widely used in India.

In Kanpur there was even a road locally known as VIP Road.

100 • Blended Boundamr
and shirt' and continued that '[s]porting both a beard and a

moustache, the man had a wheatish complexion and apparently
hailed from a lower-middle-class family'. 4
As suggested by these murder reports, clothing and complex-
ion were crucial elements in class positioning. In these reports
it seemed as ifthe journalists virtually ticked off one feature after
the other. Outside the newspaper columns, however, class posi-
tioning tended to occur in the way Eleanor Rosch (1978) and
Maurice Bloch (1991, 1998) suggested: People never consulted
any mental catalogue of essential 'good' or 'small' features.
On the contrary, the strangers they encountered were immedi-
ately compared to their prototypical image of a 'good' or 'small'
person. A spur of a second was all it took to rank a stranger
somewhere on the continuum spanned between the two prototypi-
cal categories choia and accha. Yet not a single person I met was
able to explain this process. Nor could they explain what the
categories entailed. The knowledge on which it was based was
so inarticulate, yet so deeply internalized that it flavoured every-
day practice in a number of ways. On the basis of my immersion
in these practices I will unpack some of the most important traits
involved in the local construction of class in Mohanganj, namely
complexion, clothing, movement/bodily stature, and speech.
COMPLEXION
Complexion was graded in three main categories: gvrii (fair),
gehua (wheatish) and liiita. (black, dark).~ The end poles were
by no means extreme: I was too pale to be gori and the African
exchange students and the Dravidian South Indians in the city
had far darker skin than the locals who were referred to as kala.
Being gori was considered a far more important criterion for
4 111efirst two murder stories were reported in an article entitled 'Girl
raped, murdered in Gomtinagar' in the Lucknow edition of the 'limes of
ln<lia, 20 September 1999. The final murder was reported in the same
paper, 5 May 2000.
'' An Indian acquaintance in Norway made me aware of two additional
categories: diulhiya (milkish), which is a shade lighter than gorii; and savlii
(brown), which is in between ~hua and kc'lla (Amit Shrivastav, personal
communication). However, I encountered neither of these categories in
Kanpur, so I will not consider them further here.

'Good' People and 'Small' Peqp'te • 101
beauty than any others: a fair girl would be considered beautiful

despite plain features, whereas the most delicately carved fea-
tures could not prevent a dark-complexioned girl from being
perceived as plain, or even ugly. The seven-year-old daughter of
my Brahmin neighbours in Hari Mandi constantly wanted me to
point out the most gori person who lived around the courtyard.
Since I did not count, the girl herself was the fairest. By making
me say so again and again, the little girl evidently reconfirmed
her self-worth. During marriage negotiations complexion was
always evaluated-discreetly in the case of direct negotiations
between potential affines, but very directly in newspaper adver-
tisements. In 1natrimonial ads, complexion was often mentioned
before height, education level, caste, family background, 'home-
liness', profession, and the other traits used to market marriage-
able brides. Looks, were less important for men than for women,
but even for men, fairness was an asset in marriage negotiations.
This was not unique to Kanpur, as suggested by Amit Chaudhuri' s
novel Freedom Song. The novel is set in Calcutta in the 1990s, and
this is how two middle-aged women worried about the marriage
prospects of a young man named Bhaskar:
'He should get married before he does anything.'
'I hear they're going to find a girl.'
'It won•t be easy.'
'Oh, it won't be easy, will it?' she asked.
She cradled the receiver and curled her toes; her feet were up on the
divan.
'Mashi, how can it be easy?' cried Puti. Her voice came agitated but
musical on the ear-piece. 'You know how long Arun took to find a wife.'
'Yes, Arun,' agreed Khuku. 'But Arun is so . . . shon.'
'Arun is shon but Bhaskar is dark,' said Puti (Chaudhuri 2000 (1998):
263).
The connection between fairness and beauty, handsomeness
and success is not only commented on in novels, but also in
ethnographies (see, for example, Osella & Osella 2000: 83; Roy
1993 [1972): 76). Such connections are not unique to India. In
virtually all places in the world in which complexion matters, fair
skin is valued over dark skin, but which social category each skin
tone is associated with, and for what historical reasons, varies
from place to place. For the past three or four decades, anthro-
pologists have been reluctant to discuss such phenomena. This

I 02 • .BJmded Boundaries
is understandable due to the disastrous consequences motivated

by earlier research on complexion and other phenotypical differ-
ences. Nevertheless, notions of race and complexion tend to
persist in most of the societies anthropologists set out to study.
Whether these notions are of indigenous origin, influenced by
nineteenth and early twentieth century Western scholarship
or 'inverted' versions thereof, like the case seems to be with
the Maroons in Jamaica, these notions deserve attention as an
aspect of social differentiation. Just like one can study race as
a social construction ·at the same time as one denounces race
as a biological category, it is possible to examine the local
preoccupation with complexion in India-and the associations
frequently made between complexion, caste, and class-without
falling in line with orientalist scholarship, the Aryan invasion
theory, or physical anthropology. Among ~he few scholars who
have examined the associations that many Indians draw between
complexion, class, and caste are the Osellas, who repeatedly
remark that their informants in Kerala associated 'Southern' or
'Dravidian' features- that is, curly hair and a dark skin tone-
with low-caste origins (Osella & Osella 1996, 1999, 2000) .
Tellingly, however, they chose not to pursue the matter further,
once commenting in a footnote that they decided to 'defer this
difficult question' until having discussed it further with local
people and other South Indians (Osella & Osella 1999: 1000,
n29).
In Mohanganj, the overall assumption was that the average
upper-caste person, and particularly the average Brahmin, was
fairer than the average low-caste person. This assumption was
shared by upper castes and low castes alike. Yet, as everybody
knew, the congn1ency between caste and complexion was far
from absolute. Occasional low-caste people might well be fairer
than the average Brahmin. I was once told about a Scheduled
Caste (untouchable) man who 'was so tall and so fair that if he
told anybody that he belonged to a Scheduled Caste, people
would laugh in disbelief'. Likewise, Batik, one of the Barhllis
working as a carpenter for the Sharmas, told me that his first
child was kfila like himself, but that his next two children were
so fair that the whole Barhai village jokingly claimed that his
wife must have taken some secret trips abroad. Despite such
remarks, the two children were considered handsome and lucky.
Digitized by Google Original fro.m

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN -
'Good' People and 'SmaU' People • 103
When an upper-caste family produced dark-complexioned

offspring, it was considered a little more unfortunate. One of my
Khatri acquaintances who was slightly darker than his relatives
and friends was promptly nicknamed Kallu (Blackie)-a name
that still stuck though he was now in his late fifties. Yet the
incident that more than anything revealed the upper-caste impor-
tance of producing fair children occurred in the maternity ward
in which Bina Sharma gave birth to her son. The baby was born
by caesarean section, Bina was still under influence of heavy
anaesthetics, and Urmila and I were looking after the newborn
while waiting for Bina to wake up. Suddenly, Biria started to toss
around in her bed. Still in half-coma, and still with eyes closed,
she managed to inquire about the boy: 'KiiW. nahI hai, na1 KiiW.
nahl hai, na 1 He is not black, is he?' she said twice. We assured
her that the boy was fair, pink and healthy, after which Bina
lapsed back into her coma-like sleep. A week later I asked Bina
why she had worried about the baby's co1nplexion. This time,
however, Bina strongly denied the importance of skin colour,
claiming that the most important thing was that the baby was
healthy. The sole reason for her worry, she said, was a dream that
had frightened her a few days prior to the birth. She had dreamt
that she was lying in bed, and that a kala boy, about 10 years old,
stood by her bedside. She had never seen him before, and yet she
instantly knew that he was her own son. This dream had fright-
ened her so much that she was unable to move, and in the days
that Femained until the birth, she had"worried that the dream
would foretell the future in some way or the other, warning her that
she would give birth to a dark-skinned boy. In my interpretation,
Bina's dream and the fear it induced in her confirmed rather
than negated the importance of fair complexion. I will not go so
far as to suggest that the dream was caused by fear of giving birth
to a dark-skinned child, but it seems beyond doubt that the
importance of producing fair-skinned offspring was so profound
that it emerged as a self-evident frame of interpretation for her
dream.
The local association of complexion with caste was also
confirmed by the following proverb: One should never trust a
kala Brahmin, as he might be an untouchable leather-worker in
disguise. Pramod, who made me aware of this proverb, firmly
stated that he did not believe in it. On the contrary, he said, he

I 04 • Blended Boundaries
had two close friends who were dark-skinned Brahmins, and had
never found any reason to distrust either of them. Even so, the
very existence of this proverb supports that there had been, and
still was, a fairly strong expectation that the highest castes were
fair while the lowest castes were dark. This expectation also
appeared to entail that dark-skinned Brahmins and other upper
castes stressed other features associated with upper-casteness
a little stronger than their fellow caste members did, particu-
larly when venturing out in public places. Though the· compen-
sation argument should not be stretched too far, it might explain
why both Pramod's dark-skinned Brahmin friends were always
impeccably dressed in high-quality shirts (striped or white) and
expensive trousers, whereas their fair friends normally made do
with more simple makes or kurta-pajamas (knee-long shirt over
loose trousers in the same material).
Given the high expectations that upper-castes were, or ought
to be, light-complexioned, they also tended to cultivate their
fairness. Billu, whose business necessitated occasional scooter
trips to the neighbouring town of Unnao, was constantly rebuked
by his wife Bina who said he was becoming 'ugly', couldn't he
please use long-sleeved shirts? Cultivation of fairness entailed
protection from the sun. Those who were unable to remain
indoors or in the shade, tended to prefer clothes that covered
the entire body. Some had started using sun-block cream, a
cosmetic product that was introduced in Kanpur in the 1990s.
Even males occasionally used sun-block cream. When women
and girls dressed up for a party or an outing, they frequently
applied powder that lightened their complexion. The facial bleach
offered by ·the local beauty parlours, however, was an option
reserved for special occasions such as weddings, or for women
whose complexion was radically out of tune with their status
aspirations.
In Mohanganj, then, complexion was more than a biological
given. In most instances, it seems appropriate to use the expres-
sion 'conspicuous complexion'. Fairness communicated a status
too dignified for menial work, which my upper-caste acquaintan-
ces tended to circumvent and regard with contempt. Since the
cost of cultivating a fair complexion was out of reach for the
numerous people who out of bare necessity had to spend their
money, time, and energy on making ends meet, the cultivation of

'<Aod' Ptople and 'S.o'l • People • 105
fairness was linked to economic standing as well. As a feature

of acchaness, then, complexion epitomized the intricate link
between caste, economy, and conspicuousness.
CLOTHING
To be recognized as having a 'good' family background, it was
not sufficient to be fair. Clothing was just as important. Scholars
who have taken interest in the relationship between dress and
social status have tended to emphasize the way in which clothes
signify the respectability of women (see, for example, Joshi
1992; Leslie 1992; Tarlo 1996). This respectability is most
crucial for Brahmin women and includes the use of purdah in
the presence of elder affines. Some scholars have also made
specific remarks on how clothes may reveal a person's caste.
Among them is O.P. Joshi, who argues that:
Traditionally a person's caste is visually identified by his or her dress.
Women of all castes may wear the sari but the selection of style, floral
designs, and choice of ornaments is influenced by the caste of the
wearer. In rural areas people recognize the caste of a male by his head
gear and a woman's caste by her dress Qoshi 1992: 217-18) .
To what extent is such identification relevant today? Emma

Tarlo's recent observations from rural Gujarat suggest that
some clothing styles may still be associated with caste. A telling
example is the woman of a wealthy cultivator caste who rebuked
her daughter for her embroidery: 'Why is your embroidery so
patchy and bare? Are you a Vaghri girl?' (Tarlo 1996: 145). As
Tarlo goes on to show, however, the association between cloth-
ing and caste is by no means straightforward, partly because
of the wide-spread borrowing of styles and patterns and partly
because wealthy families frequently pass on old clothes to their
servants.
In cities like Kanpur, the link between clothing and social
status was even less straightforward. One complicating factor
was the sheer variety of castes and peoples currently residing
in Kanpur. Another was the heterogeneity of clothing styles. Even
within one single family, the choice of clothing varied signifi-
cantly, even for family members from the same gender and age
group. Unmarried girls alternated between salviir-kurtii and

l 06 • Blended Boundaries
jeans and T-shirts; 6 men between kurtii·pajii.mas and trousers

and shirt; and married women between saris and salviir-kurtiis-
except in the Sharma family, where all married women wore
saris, the elder ones even at night. A third complicating factor
was that the quality and style of clothing used by 'good' families
did not always differ from the quality and style used by 'small'
people. Some upper-caste males never wore anything but kurtii-
pajiimiis in cheap, coarse cotton, even at weddings. Likewise,
the cost, colours, and patterns of the saris used by upper-caste
women were often similar to the saris used by their maids. This
could hardly be otherwise since 'good' people often gave second-
hand clothes to their servants, workers, and other less fortunate
people with whom they had some relationship or the other.
Even so, clothing was crucial in maintaining, if not producing,
social distinctions. What we need to look at is not only what kind
of clothes people used, but also how they maintained their clothes.
Let me exe1nplify this by the way in which the Sharma women
explained their preference for polyester saris to cotton saris:
saris of both 1naterials were available in the market for approxi-
mately the same price. However, they preferred polyester saris
since it was cheaper to maintain them. A polyester sari required
only washing and drying, whereas a cotton sari required starch-
ing and ironing as well. With the local rates of 50 paise for
starching and one rupee for ironing, cotton saris were simply too
expensive to maintain in a joint family with four married women.
In the summers, however, they had no option but to pay the price,
as polyester gets sticky in the heat. But why was it so crucial to
get the cotton saris starched? When I asked this question, I
referred to the many women I had seen wearing unstarched
cotton saris. The answer was prompt: 'Unless we starch them,
we will look like maids!' The importance of not looking like a
maid surfaced in several other comments about clothing as well,
as when Arjun Srivastava, one of my former neighbours in Hari
Mandi, came to pick 1ne up with his scooter. I was cager to visit
his mother and the others living around the cobble-stoned court-
yard, but since they were poorer than my present hosts in
6
Like kurt.a-pajamas worn by men, a salvar-kurtii (also called 'suit' or
' Punjabi suit') consists of a knee-long shirt over baggy trousers. However,
salvar-kurtas are worn by females and are more colourful and elaborate.

'Good' Ptf>fJle and 'Small' Peqple • I 07
Mohanganj, I had not dressed up for the occasion. I was wearing

a cotton salvar-kurta, black with block-printed elephants-ad-
mittedly a little old, but clean and neatly ironed. I was ready to
go, but Arjun hesitated: Wasn't I going to change first? 'With this
one [nodding towards my clothes], you look like a .. . like a .... '
He stopped. 'Like a servant?' I asked. 'Exactly, you look like a
servant! ' he said, obviously relieved that I had expressed what
he had not dared to say himself.
The way clothing served as a means for discriminating be-
tween 'good' and 'small' people, then, was not as much related
to cost, quality, style, patterns or colours as to maintenance, that
is, the extent to which the clothes appeared new, clean, and
ironed. 'Good' men and women made a point of dressing up in
clean clothes every morning, and sometimes in the evening as
well. 'Small' people could not afford to do so. Their cupboards
were considerably emptier; and they could pay neither for a
dhobi nor for high-<J.uality laundry powder. Instead they had to
make do with a cheap bar of soap or nothing but their muscle
power, which they had to save for other kinds of labour. While
'good' people got all their clothes ironed, including jeans, iron-
ing was a luxury for 'small' people. And finally, whereas 'good'
people got their white or light-coloured clothes regularly bleached,
similar clothing worn by 'small' people turned greyer and more
stained as the months and years went by. And since the clothes
worn by 'small' people on average were older than those worn
by 'good' people, distinctions of whiteness were all the more
noticeable.
A second discriminatory aspect created by the flow of clothes
from the 'good' to the 'small' pertained to fitting. When a 'good'
woman's sari had become torn or grown unfashionable, it was
degraded to kitchen wear. Having grown stained, faded, or more
torn, it was given away. The wear and tear of a sari could well
reveal the 'smallness' of its second user. Nevertheless, the sari
would still fit her. After all, saris have no seams or stitches. It
hardly mattered if the second owner was slimmer and shorter
than the first owner. The blouse worn under the sari, however,
was more revealing. When a 'good' \voman got a new sari, she
would look through the blouses in her cupboard-normally cov-
ering most shades in the rainbow. Unless one of her old blouses
matched exactly one of the colours in the new sari, she went to

the market to buy a 'blouse piece' that she handed over to a tailor
along with her measurements. 7 'Small' women had fewer blouses.
Second-hand blouses were hardly ever given alongside second-
hand saris, and even when they were, 'small' women could rarely
afford to get them altered. Hence, women could be recognized
as 'small' by the mismatch between her sari and her blouse, or
by oversized blouses. In addition, they might be revealed by the
way they wore the sari: whereas 'good' women tied their saris
so that their toes were concealed when standing, 'small' women
revealed their feet or even ankles. This made it easier to walk
and work, while protecting the sari from getting soiled and torn
from sweeping the ground. Fitting could communicate a man's
social status too. 'Good' men wore clothes that were tailor-made
or bought according to their size and shape. 'Small' men, how-
ever, were often seen in clothes that were too wide or too long
because they had inherited it from a patron.
Fashion also influenced the way clothing produced social
distinctions. This was most evident in the case of unmarried
girls. Girls of 'good' families did their best to keep up with the
latest ~alvar-kunli fashion and asked their tailors to copy de-
signs and patterns shown in Bollywood movies, 1V serials, and
women's magazines. The fashions changed quite rapidly. Dur-
ing my fieldwork in 1992, for example, kuna sleeves were
supposed to be puffed, wide, and to the elbow. Baggy salvars
were also in vogue and, to be extr~ chic, one was supposed to
wear a little 'coatie' over the kuna. Five years later, such clothes
were hopelessly outdated. The kurta was now supposed to be
wider and longer, but tighter across the torso, almost resem-
bling a dress. The sleeves had grown long and tight, the puffed
arms were gone, and most girls preferred the tight, puckered
up churidars to the baggy salvars. Salvar-kurtas in yesterday's
fashion were degraded to home wear or given to female servants
or their daughters. In the case of unmarried girls, then, there
were three ways in which the clothing could reveal whether they
were 'good' or 'small': the degree to which their clothes were
7
Tailor-made clothes were by no means a luxury of the rich. The
abundance of cheap labour in Kanpur made it cheaper to get clothes
stitched than to buy readymade clothes in the market. However, neither
is free and the poor layers of the population could afford neither.

fashionable, the degree to which they fit, and the degree to which
they were maintained.
Whereas complexion was a biological given that might be
funher cultivated if one had sufficient economic means or lei-
sure time, dressing up like 'good' people was possible for anyone
with sufficient money. Compared to complexion, clothing was
strongly rooted in economic standard. Poor upper castes lacked
the means to keep up with the aesthetics of 'good' people whereas
well-to-do low castes embraced this aesthetics to improve their
social status. Nevertheless, the way my upper caste acquaintan-
ces in Mohanganj decoded the clothing of strangers pointed to
the following simple reasoning: the fewer clothing features the
person shared with 'good' people, the less likely this person was
'one of us', and the less likely this person belonged to one of the
upper castes. H the stranger was really poorly dressed, he or she .
was thought to be some untouchable or low caste and was treated
as such-politely, but determinedly, with a certain distance, and
with a tone of command if necessary.
MOVEMENT, BODILY STATURE, AND HEALTH
Above I mentioned the man who was so tall and fair that people
found it hard to believe that he was of untouchable origin. This
did not merely point to his complexion, but also to his height.
In Mohanganj, there was a widely shared belief that height
varied by regional belonging as well as by caste. People from
Uttar Pradesh were assumed to be shorter than Punjabis and
Sindhis, but taller than Bengalis and Tamils. It was also as-
sumed that, within each region, height varied with caste. Statis-
tically, this probably holds true since the average height in a
population is affected by its standard of living and diet over time.
A frequently-cited example in Norway is that the average height
of the army recruits increased from 169 cm in 1885 to 179.9 cm
in the 2000s. 8 In India, however, such differences could also be
8 The figure from 1885 is derived from Statistics Norway, Annual Repon
2000, table 114, 'Rekruuering 1995-26', and figures from the 2000s from
the Annual Repon 2002, table 102, 'Conscripts, by height. Per cent',
available at the time of publication at hitp://www.ssb.no/ english/year-
book/2001/tab/t-0300-102.html.

measured by social segment. The segments that had survived

on poor diets and long working days for countless generations
were likely to be shoner on average than those who had been
better off. And since income and propeny were unequally dis-
tributed with respect to caste, it was quite likely that height
correlated with caste, at least to some extent. This was probably
why upper-caste Hindus of 'good' families valued height. They
often referred to tall men and women as having 'good height'
even though there was clearly an upper limit for how tall it was
desirable to be. Shon daughters of 'good' families were slightly
disadvantaged in marriage negotiations. Shon women used high
heels even though it gave them backache, but in contrast to
Western women, they did not do it to look slimmer, but to 'get
taller'. Quite a few of the shon men 'I met had extra soles glued
to their shoes. Even so, one of them-a Khatri medical doctor-
was so shon that he was nicknamed 'child labour' by his friends.
How one moved around in the public spaces of the city was
even more imponant than height. As soon as my upper-caste
acquaintances ventured outside the fences and gates that pro-
tected their domestic life from the hustle and bustle outside,
they encountered a busy street life in which some earned their
living and others moved to and fro. Vegetable vendors, rickshaw
drivers, newspaper boys, milkmen, labourers, servants, shop
•
owners, and sweepers, were all busy with their work, or with
getting from one place to the other. Most of them moved around
with ease, without wasting their time. Some even moved around
with a speed revealing that they were accustomed to using their
bodies as resources in their work. Walking, and doing so rapidly,
was therefore strongly associated with the strata of people for
whom this was a necessity, namely 'small' people of various
kinds. According to Thorstein Veblen, similar associations were
just as prevalent in Europe over a century ago:
The performance of labour has been accepted as a conventional evi-
dence of inferior force; therefore it comes itself, by a mental shon-cut,
to be regarded as intrinsically base.... Conspicuous abstention from
labour therefore becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary
achievement and the conventional index of reputability; and conversely,
since application to productive labour is a mark of poverty and subjec-
tion, it becomes inconsistent with a reputable standing in the commu-
nity (Veblen 1931 (1899): 38).

'Good' Peopk Mid 'Small' People • 111
Veblen's approach is no longer valid for the rich in the West, who
now seem to cultivate their devotion to work rather than to
display their leisure (Rojek 1999). This may hold true for many
professionals and business people in India as well, particularly
if based in New Delhi, Mumbai and other metros. Those I
associated with in Mohanganj, however, thought themselves for-
tunate not to be affected by this lifestyle, which they described
as 'too fast'. Not having to hurry and not being bogged down by
tight schedules were seen as essential elements of a good life.
When walking about in the streets or markets, their move-
ments were slow, controlled, and dignified, and they held their
heads high. When Pramod brought his closest female family
members to the market in Mohanganj to buy new sandals for
them all, their slow walk appeared to be more than an internal-
ized bodily practice; it was also intended for public admiration:
everyone on the street, all the shop owners, and passers-by,
whatever their social status, was to notice that here was one of the
most honourable men in the street with his respectable wife and
well-groomed daughters. In Veblen's terminology, this slowness
was a matter of 'conspicuous Jeisure'-a 'dramaturgical perfor-
mance' (Cohen 1981) demonstrating their abundance of time.
This does not. suggest that quick walking was inappropriate,
but that upper castes in Mohanganj followed strict norms con-
cerning when, where, and how they moved around on foot. Quick
walking was reserved for exercise and restricted to the time
around sunrise, when the sun neither caused heat nor tan, when
the air was fresh and unpolluted, and at a time of the day when
nobody could mistake speed for having any other purpose than
exercise. Even though the timing of morning walks was deter-
mined by practical considerations, the timing gave the walkers
an additional advantage: At sunrise nobody could mistake them
for having to walk and, thus, they also communicated that they
walked by choice rather than compulsion, and that they had
occupations that did not give them physical exercise.
Nevertheless, very few of my upper-caste acquaintances in
Mohanganj were morning walkers. For the rest, Jack of physical
fitness was quite common. Many were overweight due to their
preference for food that was either fried in ghi or heavily sweet-
ened. Yet overweight was not seen as a problem unless the
person in question was young and soon to be married-a stage
•' I

112 • Blerukd Boundaries
of life in which physical appearance was imponant, particularly

for women. The only solutions were to diet or to join one of the
new aerobics classes. The latter, however, was too expensive for
most of those I knew. The low-caste scholar and activist Kancha
Ilaiah was quick to relate overweight to the upper-caste avoi-
dance of menial work. Thus, he described the typical Brahmin
priest as having 'an overgrown belly [with) his unexerciscd muscles
hanging from his bones' (1996: 22). Ilaiah also scorned Brah-
1nins for their dietary preferences. Their obsession with the
religious aspects of food, Ilaiahjokingly argued, was less related
to purity than to the need for God's protection from the conse-
quences of overeating:
It is the God's duty to . .. look after the health of the eaters. God ntust
save them from overeating and from the diseases caused by the fatty
food . It is for this reason that all cooking activity begins with prayer,
and eating activity begins with prayer. The relationship between God
and priest here becomes a friendly relationship between God and
glutton (1996: 26) .
Clearly, Ilaiah overstated the congruence of dietary and bodily

differences with caste boundaries. Yet, his statements are inter-
esting as they inven the upper-caste perceptions of low castes
that I noted in Mohanganj-even though Ilaiah's views were
based on childhood memories from rural Andhra Pradesh, which
is geographically, linguistically, and culturally distant from
Kanpur.
Since being overweight and lack of physical fitness were
common among my upper-caste acquaintances, they were also
prone to diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, angina
pectoris, and anhritis. At least 5-8 per cent of India's urban
population were diabetics, and a specialist in diabetes, Dr Mohan
Bagandi, explained this figure as a combination of the 'thrifty
gene' and increasingly sedentary lifestyles, including heavy
smoking, alcoholism, poor food habits, and obesity (the TimtS
of India, 19 May 1999). Similar health warnings kept recurring
in the local newspapers, and since my male informants had
several medical doctors among their friends, such repons were
read and discussed. Even so, the thought of lifestyle diseases
did not seem to worry them even though they were clearly in the
risk group. Not even those who had already developed diabetes,

hean problems, or arthritis referred to these ailments as dan-

gers to their lives, or as problems that prevented them from
leading their lives the way they wanted. On the contrary, diag-
noses, and prescriptions were discussed and compared, pills
counted, displayed, and swallowed in front of visitors, and re-
marks about 'high BP' voiced so frequently and loudly that
diseases associated with a semi-affluent urban lifestyle appear-
ed to have a certain conspicuousness to them as well. 9 None of
those I related to, I am sure, would ever boast of having con-
tracted diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, diseases that
were strongly associated with the poor areas of the city and the
'small' people who lived there.
Health, bodily movement in public places, and bodily stature
were also related to the access to vehicles, something that was
a matter of economic status. At the same time, Ilaiah 's argument
that upper-caste immobility was linked to disregard for menial
work was by no means obsolete. Whatever the complex relation-
ship between economic standing and attitude to bodily move-
ments, my upper-caste acquaintances tended to make the following
chain of associations: strangers who were plump and who passed
them on a scooter or in an Ambassador car were probably upper-
caste and of 'good' families. Strangers passing them speedily by
foot were probably 'small' people and of low-caste background-
and presum"ably untouchables if they were short, poorly dressed,
and in rubber flip-flops. Again, my upper-caste informants tended
to exaggerate the connections between caste and economic
background. Before commenting on such exaggerations, let me
discuss the importance of speech as a marker of class.
SWEET SPEECH
A feature that could not be 'decoded' merely by looking at a
stranger was her mode of speech. 'Good' people attempted to
speak what they perceived as 'correct Hindi'. The preferred
correctness had little to do with the Sanskritized and literary
Hindi style heard in the news bulletins of Doordarshan, the
~ High blood pressure was normally referred 10 as 'high BP' - in accor-

dance with the lend ency lo use abbrevialions and acronyms whenever
possible.

114 • Blnukd &nindarits
government--0wned broadcasting channel, but referred to the

mi#ii bhi4ii (sweet speech) associated with the 'high culture' of
the neighbouring city of Lucknow, the capital of erstwhile Awadh
and the centre for the navabi culture. The sweet speech of
Lucknow-previously known as Awadhi-which the 'good' people
in Mohanganj admired and approximated to, differed from the
speech of choie log in Kanpur in several ways.
Before exemplifying the differences, let me make a brief note
on the waysin which speech may indicate social status in India.
According to the sociolinguistJohnJ. Gumperz (1971 (1958): 27),
it is instructive to distinguish three forms of speech: (i) village
dialects, which vary from village to village; (ii) regional dialects,
spoken in the market centres and avoiding many of the divergent
local features; and (iii) standard Hindi, used in larger cities
such as Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow. Gumperz's detailed study of
the village dialect in Khalapur in the north-eastern corner of
Uttar Pradesh revealed that certain forms of pronunciation were
far more prevalent ainong untouchables like Chamars (leather-
workers), shoemakers, and sweepers than among upper castes,
and that the latter rebuked these forms of pronunciation as
'Chamar speech', 'backward', or 'ignorant'. As Gumperz con-
vincingly argues, the speech differentiation was rooted in lack of
informal contact between untouchable and other castes, and in
the extent to which the villagers had been exposed to other forms
of speech through schooling, apprenticeship, or work elsewhere.
Such exposure depended on the personal networks provided by
their relatives and caste fellows, and were consequently caste-
clustered. In this paper, Gumperz does not elaborate on the role
of education and exposure to the outer world in expanding the
speech differentiation. However, it is beyond doubt that such
exposure increased the mastery of, and preference for, regional
dialects and standard Hindi, both of which are held in higher
esteem than village dialects. Hence, literary or semi-literary
forms of Hindi seep into the spoken language (see also Ferguson
1996: 89).
Kanpur was not a village like the one Gumperz described. On
the contrary, Kanpur had long been a centre to which people
from the surrounding villages had migrated. The sociolinguistics
of Kanpur at the time of my fieldwork had a clear historical root
in the industrialization and subsequent population growth of the

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN .... ---
city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the

British established factories-first for footwear, saddlery, and
arms, thereafter cotton mills-unskilled factory workers were
recruited from the regions around Kanpur and beyond, mainly
from low-caste segments such as chamars and Muslims
(Holmstrom 1984: 63), as well as from agricultural communi-
ties including Ahirs, Yiidavs, and Kurmis (Gooptu 1997: 885).
Over the years, the dialects spoken by these groups seem to
have merged and evolved into a standard Kanpur working-
class dialect. A typical feature distinguishing this working-
class dialect from the sweet l.AJcknow language and standard
Hindi is the pronunciation of the vowel/z/. For example, while
'good' people pronounced the word pahlL (before} as/piehle/
and hai (is} as/hz/, most 'small' people pronounced the words
as/pzile/and/hzi/respectively. Many of those who had mi-
grated to Kanpur recently-in search of work as servants, rick-
shaw cyclists, or unskilled labourers-hailed from poor regions
in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The new migrants were just
as easily recognized through their difficulty in pronouncing the
sh-sound. The name Santosh, for example, would be pronounced/
Santos/in these dialects. Though the pattern of labour migration
has changed over the years, 1° upper-caste Hindus such as my
hosts and friends in Mohanganj were still able to draw connec-
tions between having manual or unskilled jobs, being low-caste
and speaking non-mi!}li dialects with rural traces.
Speaking sweetly involved more than pronunciation; it also
involved a certain choice of words and gestures. 'Good' people
were expected to use a moderate volume, and to make do with
their words without adding more gesticulation and facial mim-
icry than necessary." Furthermore, 'good' people were expected
to cultivate a fluent, polite speech and to avoid words that could
10
See, for exan1ple, Newell (1996) for an account of the subsequent
phases of industrial ization in Kanpur, and of what kind of workers each
phase attracted.
11
Control over facial mimicry applies particularly to women. A young
l'lmjabi girl in Norway told me that whenever she accompanied her parents
to India, her father reminded her to minin1ize her facial mimicry, arguing
that it was not 'ladylike' and appropriate for a girl of a 'good family'. In
panicular, she had to concentrate on not lifting her eyebrows while speak-
ing or laughing, as that could be considered flirtatious and ' loose'.

116 • Bl.ended .Boundaries
be interpreted as rude or unpolished. It was frequently pointed

out to me that the sweet speech of Licknow was particularly
renowned for the common courtesy 'Pahk ap! You first!'. In
addition, the speech of 'good' people often contained references
to poetry, songs, or the scriptures, or an English phrase or two,
revealing not only a certain level of education, but also a high
degree of what they referred to as 'culturedness' and 'exposure'.
Whenever 'cultured speech' emerged as a topic of conversa-
tion, it rarely took long before Atal Behari Vajpayee was brought
up as an ideal. Vajpayee, the senior BJP politician who became
prime minister in 1998, was, tellingly enough, a Brahmin from
Licknow. However, not a11 politicians were praised for their
verbal 'culturedness'. In fact, the most common critique of low-
caste politicians from Uttar Pradesh had little to do with the
political ideology they represented, but pertained to· their
'rude' or 'plain' speech. This critique was frequently directed
at Phoolan Devi, the legendary 'bandit queen' voted into the Lok
Sabha as a representative of the Samajwadi Party in 1996, and
whose court cases dragged on in Kanpur at the time of my 1997
fieldwork. Even more frequently, this critique was directed at
Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav, both holding the post of
chief minister of Uttar Pradesh .during different phases of my
fieldwork, and both originating from rural areas elsewhere in the
state. In fact, even 'good' people who spoke more rudely than
appropriate for their social status could be rebuked for 'speak-
ing like Phoolan Devi', or of talking 'just like Mayawati'.
Speech, then, was clearly an indication of social status and
acchaness. Pronunciation, phrases, choice of words, use of ges-
tures and so on, could not only indicate rural background, but
also the level .o f education and 'culturedness'. Again, the link to
caste is not causal, but at the level of upper-caste expectation:
a stranger who mastered the sweet speech and 'cultured' com-
munication dramaturgy was normally assumed to be of upper-
caste origin unless his or her complexion and clothing pointed
in the opposite direction.
THE FEATURES COMBINED

As we have seen, bodily movements and stature, clothing, com-
plexion, and speech were crucial signifiers of social status. I

'Good' People mid 'Small' People • 11 7
could well have proceeded by looking at additional signifiers

such as facial features, hairstyles and accessories such as
spectacles, jewellery, and cellular phones. But rather than re-
peating similar arguments over and over, let me return to the
process by which my upper-caste acquaintances assessed all
these features at once when positioning the strangers they spot-
ted in public arenas. Despite the fact that they did so every single
time they ventured out from their homes, they were able to
describe how they went about. However, my observation of and
subtle questions about how such judgements were made, and my
efforts to internalize them as a part of my cultural learning
process, point to the importance of prototype-categorization.
The prototypical choia man was short, thin, and dark-com-
plexioned, wearing tattered, greying clothes and worn-out foot-
wear. If old, his hair would be grey, his skin wrinkled, and he
would not wear glasses even if his eyesight was visibly weak.
When speaking, his accent revealed his working-class back-
ground and lack of education. His female counterpart was also
short, skinny, and dark. She was dressed in clothes that had lost
their original colour and crispness, and with mismatching dupa/{ii
(shawl) or sari blouse. On her feet she had worn-out chappals
or nothing at all. If unmarried, her hair would be long, braided,
and either brownish or oily. If married, her hair would be tied
in a disorderly bun that would be grey or white if the woman was
old. Her speech was like that of her male counterpart but, in
addition, she was able to throw the choicest abuses in her high-
pitched 'village voice' if quarrelling with her neighbours. Not
that the prototypical 'small' man and woman didn't dress up if
the occasion demanded it. But even then, they could not fool the
'good' people, who found the men's clothing too shiny and the
women's choice of colours screaming and gaudy (cf. Osella &
Osella 2000).
In contrast, the prototypical accha man was just like the lead
role in the film referred to in the beginning of this chapter: tall,
fair, sharp-featured, dressed in a neatly-ironed striped shirt,
jeans or expensive trousers and shining dark leather shoes. If
weak-sighted, he'd wear glasses. If greying, he might well dye
his hair and moustache black. His voice would be firm, but soft,
his dialect sweet, and his movements dignified and slow. He
would rarely be seen outside except when going in and out of a

car. His female counterpart was tall, fair, and sharp-featured

like him. If young, she would be dressed in a smart, fashionable
salvii.r-kurta or in jeans and T-shirt, and if married, in a sari
reaching to the ground and with matching blouse. In contrast to
'small' women, she could well have short or shoulder-length
hair-sometimes worn loose. If greying she could dye it black
or apply henna to conceal grey hair.
Of course, most strangers moving about in Mohanganj did not
fit either of these extremes. These prototypes, or caricatures,
served as ideal types that facilitated navigation in 'outside'
spaces and other situations that were indeterminate with re-
spect to more accurate variables of social status. In a split
second, each stranger was compared to the prototypical 'small'
and 'good' man or woman. Depending on the balance of 'small'
and 'good' traits, he or she would be categorized somewhere
along the continuum spanned between the chotii. and acchii.
prototypes. This ranking, in turn, determined how one should
relate to the person in question.
The fact that complexion, clothing, speech, movements, and
other class markers worked in combination rather than sepa-
rately, and that none of them was essential, opened for compen-
sation strategies. As I mentioned, Brahmins and other upper
castes who lacked one or two features associated with their caste
background and social status m"ight put more stress on the
remaining features. The low economic standard of my neighbours
in Hari Mandi is likely to have increased the little Brahmin girl's
consciousness of her fairness, and the dark complexion of
Pramod's two Brahmin friends probably influenced their prefer-
ence for expensive shirts. However, not all upper-<:aste Hindus
who lacked certain features of acchliness made use of compen-
sation strategies. Madhu Agarwal, for example, did not seem to
make much effort at cultivating a softer speech or at subduing
the briskness of her movements- presumably because her bulk,
clothing, convent education, car, and relatively secure economic
background sufficed to render her acchii.ness unchallenged.
Similarly, Pramod Sharma would probably have preferred more
expensive clothing than coarse kurtii.-pajamii.s had he not been so
fair-skinned, tall, and 'dignified' in his movements. As long as the
number of 'good' features sufficed to prevent ambiguous posi-
tioning, it might well cause neglect of the remaining ones.

CONFI.ATING CLASS WITH CASTE

I have mentioned that my upper-caste acquaintances tended to
assume 'small'-looking people to be low castes and the 'small-
est'-looking among them to be untouchables. Such a conflation
of class with caste should not be confused with the correlation
that might be quantitatively tested if one were to develop a survey
inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction (1984) by measuring
the frequency of each 'smallness' feature by caste. Even so, one
may ask whether, or how long, the local conflation of caste and
class was sustainable without a cenain statistical correlation.
At the time of my fieldwork, SCs still scored considerably lower
than the average Indian as far as income and literacy were
concerned. Despite half a century of job reservation, they re-
mained underrepresented in administrative and white-collar
jobs (Mendelsson & Vicziany 1998). Nevenheless, preferential
treatment combined with other societal changes had facilitated
· social mobility among untouchables and other low castes. A
l~rge majority of the SC employees in the administration in
Kanpur in the 1980s stated that, co1npared to their fathers, they
had more educational variation, higher income, higher expendi-
ture, and higher social power (Ram 1988) . Despite such changes,
caste still correlated with poveny and illiteracy-and with them,
the features that followed: poor clothing, limited possibility to
protect the skin from the sun, 'uncultured' speech, and lack of
access to vehicles that bespoke a 'good' family background.
Though the statistical correlation was weakening, the prototypi-
cal nature of the local class categorization and its reproduction
from generation to generation resulted in a remarkable conti-
nuity. Rather than reflecting an assumed contemporary correla-
tion, the local class categorization in Mohanganj appeared
to reflect a correlation so obsolete that it vinually resembled
a conservative upper-caste utopia. People who dressed poorly,
walked about on the streets, did not speak in a 'cultured' man-
ner, and so on were immediately positioned as 'small'. And,
once positioned as 'small', they were almost automatically thought
to be low-caste or untouchable, something that surfaced when
'small' strangers were referred to as 'people of the Chamar
type', or 'some harijan or the other'.
Of course, my upper-caste acquaintances were perfectly aware
of the existence of what Kapadia ( 1996) termed 'classes within

120 • BlnuUd &uflda1Vs
castes', including high-income low castes that had adopted the

inclination to cultivate features of acchaness as well as poor
upper-<:aste families who lacked the means and time to do so.
As for upwardly mobile low castes, upper castes in Mohanganj
could well accept them as 'good' in public places and other
venues in which their caste background was unknown. If known,
however, they did not seem to accept them as acche. For ex-
ample, when they referred to loW<aste bureaucrats or politi-
cians in terms of class, it would be as bare log (big people),
which was a generic term for powerful and rich people. Bare log
were respected by vinue of being 'big', but the public discourse
on corruption-and frequent personal brushes with it- also made
my acquaintances associate the category of 'big people' with a
cenain moral ambiguity. Interestingly, this ambiguity increased
manifold when the bare log in question were low-caste. Since low
castes enlisted as SCs or OBCs were entitled to preferential
treatment, upper castes commonly implied that they had not
reached their baraness through hard work, but through quotas,
laziness, or fraud. On several occasions my acquaintances lit-
erally enacted the features ascribed to low-caste politicians and
VIPs. As if mimicking the Bollywood comedian Johnny Lever,
they bulged their eyes and exaggerated movements of the head
while saying in the most vulgar voice they could muster ' Ain yiir,
ham to bare iidmi ho gaye! I have become a big man!'. 12 When
commenting on the 'rude' speech of Mayawati, Mulayam Singh
Yadav and other lower- and middle-caste politicians in Nonh
India, it seemed as if they actively searched for signs of
cho~aness."
1
~
The expression arre yar ! is diflicult to translate. Literally, it means
'hey, f.-iend! ', and it is commonly used when expressing surprise or dis-
agreement. Kanpurites commonly use hllm (we) instead of mai (1)-irre-
spective of social status.
13 Two exceptions need to be mentioned: Uma Bharati, a female BJP
politician of OBC background, and K. R. Narayanan, who became the first

person of Dalit background to be appointed President of India. I never
heard any negative comments on their speech, appearance, class, or caste
background. Narayanan was highly respected, both for his public appear-
ance and for his diplomatic career. It might be significant that neither Uma
Bharati nor Narayanan were associated with caste-based politics, a nd that
neither hailed fro1n Uuar Pradesh.

'c-xJ' Pt!Of>k and 'Sma.U' P«Jfk • 121
As for the other group of people whose existence was a

potential threat to the conflation of the accha-cho~a scale with
caste, namely poor upper-castes, my Mohanganj acquaintances
referred to them with considerable sympathy, as if implying that
they were bereft of the social position they were morally entitled
to. Yet this was limited to generalized talk, as none of the upper-
caste families I knew in Mohanganj maintained relations with
upper-caste families considerably poorer than themselves. There
were simply no social contexts that would bring them together
with people such as the family of the little Brahmin girl in Hari
Mandi who kept asking me who was fairest. The only link be-
tween these families was myself, but the few times the Kapoors
or the Sharmas drove me there, I failed to convince them to get
out of their cars to see how I had lived. They felt just as awkward
in this neighbourhood as they did in other ch~e-looking locali-
ties. Likewise, whenever Arjun Srivastava from the same court-
yard came to pick me up from Mohangaaj, he was treated
politely, but with considerable distance. With his dark complex-
ion and clothing style, he was nowhere near the acchaness
cultivated in Mohanganj, though he was not quite cho~a either,
something his appearance, scooter, and surname attested to. 14
The inconsistency in the way poor upper-caste Hindus were
treated and talked about, suggests that poor upper-caste Hindus
were an anomalous category: They were talked about as 'poor,
but acche', but treated more or less like choie.
This suggests that not even confrontation with choie-looking
people known to be upper-caste, or with rich and influential
people known to be low-caste, prevented my upper-caste ac-
quaintances from conflating the cho~a-accha scale with the caste
hierarchy. Such confrontations were simply too rare to matter.
In the streets, 1narkets, and other 'outside' spaces, this conflation
could not even be put to test given the lack of accurate knowledge
of the strangers one encountered. In such spaces, then, the local
14 His surname revealed him as a Kayastha, a jati considered to be
either upper or middle caste. Their van:ia status is contested. A Brahminical
view holds that Kliyasthas are descendants of the son of a Vaishya father
and a Shudra mother (Gupta 1991: 123) , and a survey I conducted in 1993
revealed that, even within a single neighbourhood, some Kliyasthas catego-
rized themselves as Kshatriyas, others as Vaishyas, and a few even as
Shudras.

122 • IJJefukd Boundaries
construction of class was virtually 'caste by proxy' at the same

time as it was something completely different.
CLASS AND CLOSURE IN PUBLIC Pl.ACES

Given the influence of caste models on the local construction of
class, it is not surprising that upper-caste Hindus such as my
acquaintances in Mohanganj attempted to minimize contact and
regulate interaction with the 'small' people they encountered in
public places. To illustrate the discomfort that such encounters
could entail, let me cite a passage from Pankaj Misra's novel
Tht R.omantics ( 1999), which is set in Banaras in 1989-90. The
narrator, a young Brahmin man, has just been invited by a
middle-aged English woman known as Miss West for a boat ride
on the Ganga to get a different feel of the city:
Miss West had her own favourite boatman: his name was Ramchand
and he came running up the steps as soon as she and I appeared on
the ghats that evening.
He was a strikingly handsome man with beautifully sculpted muscles
on his lean, chocolate-brown body, most of which was bare, his only item
of clothing being a dhoti, which he wore like a G-string, tightly wound
round his hips and buttocks. He held his palms together before Miss
West; he bowed his head; he looked eager to serve. Miss West, speaking
to him in broken Hindi, inquired after his health and family; she asked
about the house he was building for himself as he led us to his boat,
a ramshackle affair of nailed-together planks lying still on the black,
scummy water. ·
She brought an un-lndian naturalness to her exchange with the
boatman, and watching her, I felt a trifle awkward. Although I spoke
the same language as Ramchand and lived in the same country, the
scope for conversation between us was limited. Countless inhibitions
of caste and class stood in our way; the only common vocabulary
between us was of the service he offered (Misra 2000 (1999): 38).
In addition to illustrating how strangers were categorized ac-

cording to caste and class, this passage suggests that, in public
places, upper-caste Hindus such as this young man kept inter-
action with people they considered inferior at a minimum, even
during the exchange of services. This tallies with i:ny experience
from Mohanganj. Whenever my upper-caste acquaintances' in-
teraction with cho~e log in public places involved exchange of

'Good ' Peopl.e and 'Small' Peopl.e • 123
services, they regulated the interaction in roughly the same way

as when interacting with servants at home. If no exchange of
services was involved, my acquaintances attempted to minimize
or outright avoid contact with 'small' people.
There were at least three different ways in which such contact
was minimized. The first was to stay away from venues in which
many 'small' people were likely to be present, and where con-
gestion made physical proximity unavoidable. Among these
venues were vehicles used for public transpon. Throughout my
stays in Kanpur, not a single of the upper-caste people I knew in
Mohanganj ever travelled in a tempo or an ordinary bus. 15 Deepu
Sharma even remarked that tempos were 'cheap', presumably
not only referring to the fare (two rupees a trip), but even more
to the inappropriateness of squeezing into a vehicle with strang-
ers of all unspeakable categories. In terms of transpon, cycle-
rickshaw was as public as they were willing to go. On a rickshaw
they did not have to worry about fellow passengers. Another kind
of venue avoided by the 'good' people in Mohanganj was the
poorer neighbourhoods in the old pan of the city, where the
markets were so busy and the lanes so narrow that the only
vehicle one could use when entering them, was a scooter or
bicycle. These were among the areas referred to as gande (bad,
diny). Public movie halls were shunned as well. Though everyone
I knew, and panicularly the females, were fond of watching
movies, they did not consider it appropriate to go to the ordinary
movie halls downtown. Not only were most of them 'diny', they
said, they would also have to sit alongside 'rickshaw-drivers and
the like', and besides, they feared •eve-teasing' .16 Fonunately for
them, however, the many TV channels that had appeared since
1992 reduced the temptation of public movie halls. Moreover,
most youngsters in Mohanganj had the occasional opponunity to
attend the closed movie screenings arranged by clubs such as
1
~ Tempos were small and often rusty vans that officially took six
passengers at a time, but that normally squeezed in eight or nine. Through-
out the 1990s, tempos were a more common means of public transport than
buses in Kanpur.
1
~ Eve-teasing is a common Indian-English expression for the teasing
of girls and women by male strangers, ·typically by directing improper
remarks at them , pulling their chunnis (shawls) or even pinching their
breasts or bottoms.

124 • Blended Buundaries
the Ganges Club or Kanpur Club. At such screenings, Deepu

once assured me, 'the crowd is good', presumably because entry
was restricted to club members and their families.
The second strategy for minimizing contact with 'small' people
in public arenas was to remain in the vehicle when visiting public
venues that attracted people from all segments of the society,
as if carrying the 'inside' with them when venturing out. In the
ice cream outing mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, for
example, the Sharmas remained in their car both when ordering
the ice creams, when waiting for them and when eating them.
Indeed, the food stall vendors' willingness to send their workers
to take orders from and deliver to the vehicles parked nearby
virtually turned their food-stalls into proto-drive-ins. This prac-
tice protected people such as the Sharmas from mingling with
those who had arrived without vehicles, and who ate their ice
crea1ns and spicy snacks in front of the stalls. It also protected
the vehicled customers from getting their leather shoes, sari
falls, and delicate chunnis soiled by the dusty street or the used
leaf-plates that mounted in the gutters and flowed over from the
dirty cardboard boxes that served as dustbins. In addition, it
also saved them from the children and beggars hanging around
the stalls hoping for small change-though not from the beggar
woman who was bold enough to walk over to the row of Mantti
cars that had stopped at the other side of the street. Indeed, the
tendency to remain in the car when eating 'outside' food was so
pronounced that I even remember eating tomato soup in the car
though we were so many inside that it was difficult to lift our
spoons.
The third strategy of minimizing contact with choie log in
public spaces was to make the spaces less public. This strategy
rested on the initiative of business enterprises, and aimed to
restrict admission for 'small' people in order to attract more
'good' and 'big' people. Quite a few of the expensive shops in
Kanpur, as well as most restaurants and exhibition fairs came
in this category. Shops and restaurants designed for keeping
'small' people away had large, stained windows through which
it was itnpossible to look in from the outside, and a uniformed
guard who, in addition to opening the door, appeared to scare
away the 'small' people by his very presence-even more so
than the gatekeepers who guarded individual home compounds.

'Good' Peopk and 'Small' Peopk • 125
Exhibition fairs excluded cho~e log by distributing invitation

cards to desired customers and charging entrance fees from
the rest. Entrance fees to exhibitions in hotels-most common
for saris or fashion clothing-amounted to anything from Rs IO
to Rs 30, depending on the hotel's standard and number of
stars. Larger exhibition fairs or 'shopping melds' which popped
up every second month or so on cricket grounds or in public
parks did not charge more than Rs 5 to Rs 10--not much, but
sufficient to keep undesired people away.
To illustrate the way entry passes and entrance fees could
transform areas that in principle were public to spaces virtually
co-opted by acche log, while drawing together several of the other
issues examined in this chapter, it may be useful to describe a
particular visit to an exhibition fair in some detail. Once the
Sharmas received five entry passes for an exhibition fair in the
mail. The young ones were eager to go, particularly the girls and
women who rarely left home. Having begged their fathers, uncles,
and in-laws for permission and money, and having persuaded a
brother to -Orive them, they all disappeared to change their
clothes. Carefully ga~bering their saris and kurtas lest they get
crushed, they squeezed into the Ambassador, and off they went.
The venue for the exhibition fair was a huge white pandal (tent)
temporarily set up in a dusty park nearby. Having parked the car
as close to the entrance as they could, they proceeded slowly
towards the entrance. There were a number of men outside-all
short and thin, some wearing worn-out kurta-pajamas, others
shirts and trousers. Some sold popcorn, peanulS, and kulfl (local
ice cream), others offered to look after the cars and vehicles for
a small fee. Yet others were merely hanging around. The Sharma
women hurried past them and headed towards the entrance.
They handed in the five entry passes they had received in the
mail and paid entrance fees for the rest.
Once through the entrance, they found themselves in a differ-
ent world. Not only was it brightly lit compared to the gloominess
outside; it was also clean and neatly organized with several rows
of counters. Each counter offered different household gadgets:
pressure cookers, idli (rice cake) steamers, machines for mak-
ing chapatis, plastic plates for party use, refrigerators, electric
baking ovens, scooters, ready-made salvar-kurtas, voltage stabi-
lizers, animal figures made of leather, bedspreads, cosmetics,

126 • Blended &undams
necklaces, pottery; in short, every gadget an ordinary middle-

income household could possibly desire. In addition, one counter
offered life insurance and another subscription for cellular
phones, which were rare in Kanpur at the time. In a corner of
the tent one could also buy Pepsi, ice cream, and a variety of
warm snacks.
People strolled around in pairs, or in groups, partly looking
at the items on display and partly looking at the other customers.
All customers appeared to have dressed up for the occasion, and
the presence of occasional turbans, burqiis (long o:vercoat/veil),
and beards revealed a religious plurality. The only people who
did not appear to have dressed up, and who looked poorer than
the others, were those who brought tea to the sales1nen or picked
up the garbage thrown on the ground in front of the food stalls.
The presence of women and young girls was also higher than in
the markets and streets. Hand in hand, the Sharma women
moved slowly from one counter to another. They saw several
objects that they liked, but all they bought were two brightly
painted murlis (deity figures) of clay intended for use in a
forthcoming religious festival. Yet · they enjoyed watching the
goods and the other customers. Upon spotting familiar faces,
they whisperingly discussed who it might be, whom they were
walking along with, and whether they were nicely dressed or not.
After a couple of hours they decided that they had seen what they
wanted to see and went home.
As we see, the exhibition ground, a dusty park normally
associated with ambiguity and potential dangers in the same
way as other public places, was transformed to a safe 'inside'
by entry passes and entrance fees. The tent served as its walled
boundary and the ticket collector as its chaukidar (gatekeeper).
Whether open spaces were transformed to enclosures in this
or other ways, it suggests the tendency of creating 'a room with
one's own', as Anne Waldrop (2002) aptly termed it.
CONCLUSIONS
Delving into the terms cho~a (small) and accha (good) has been
more than an exercise in local processes of categorization. The
examination of the connotations my upper<aste hosts and friends
in Mohanganj assigned to each term and how they referred to and

'Good ' Pt<>ple and 'Small' Pe<>J>le • 127
treated those they categorized, has provided a basic understand-

ing of how class was enacted in everyday life. On the one hand
I have argued that the local constructions of class allow for
positioning of strangers in open settings, thereby providing a
model of navigation entirely different from those used in people's
own homes and home compounds. It was different because it
relied on visual and auditory traits rather than unquestionable
knowledge of caste status, occupation, economic background
and so on. But, on the other hand, the principles of interaction
used on the 'outside' were strongly influenced by the principles
employed on the 'inside', as the composition of the visual and
auditory traits tended to be used as rough caste approximations.
It is in this sense that local constructions of class may be
understood as an irruption of upper-caste superiority fro1n the
'inside' to the 'outside'.
My interest in upper-caste constructions of class was not pre-
planned, but evolved gradually during fieldwork. Amazement at
how my informants so readily guessed the status and caste of
people they had never met before, let alone knew the names of,
put me on the track of categorization processes and class idi-
oms. Though my acquaintances employed several sets of class
referents, including the common terms 'lower middle class' and
'upper middle class', I took panicular interest in the class
idioms used when not consciously speaking about class, that is,
when not drawing on frameworks learned from the newspapers
or textbooks they had once read in school. The approach to class
that this resulted in could well deserve a closer scrutiny than this
chapter has allowed, but I hope it has pinpointed some issues
that deserve funher empirical and theoretical attention.
A question I am yet to address is whether the class categories
examined here were restricted to upper-caste positioning of
other Hindus, or if they could be U$ed about Muslims as well.
Pursuing this question requires some background knowledge
about internal differentiation within the Muslim community in
Kanpur, as well as on how and to what extent Muslim strangers
can be identified as Muslims in public arenas. Wheri examining
this, which I do in Chapter 6, I will suggest that class is equally
crucial in upper-caste categorization of Muslims. TI1is, I will
suggest in Chapter 7, makes class a crucial mediator of reli-
gious polarization: it thrives on incidents and narratives in which

class differences are congruent with reli~ious boundaries, but

is counteiworked by similarity of class across religious bound-
aries. The class categories discussed in this chapter also seem
to preserve old expectations of caste in a rapidly changing
society. Thus, they are equally relevant for understanding the
upper-caste resentment against low-caste movements and politi-
cal efforts at levelling out structural caste inequality, which will
be examined in Chapter 8.
Discussing such issues, however, requires more knowledge
about the local patterns and processes of interaction. So far I
have mainly focused on relations between unequals, whether
governed by caste or class. We also need to explore social
relations between people who hail from the same social seg-
ment, and to what extent such relations cross religious bound-
aries or not. The next chapter begins to explore these issues by
examining what kind of people the upper castes in Mohanganj
associated with beyond their own family and servants, be it
relatives living elsewhere, friends, or others.

5
Social Ties: A Web of 'Good'

and Upper-Caste People
This chapter describes the people whom my upper-caste hosts

and acquaintances in Mohanganj associated with beyond their
homely circle of family members and servants. By describing
their social world, this chapter shifts the focus from boundary
maintenance to its flip side, the patterning of social relations.
In this chapter I will suggest that my acquaintances' social world
to a large extent was a web of 'good' and upper-caste people.
This is important for my overall argument in two ways. First,
upper-caste clustering influenced notions of normality and shaped
the cultural yardstick against which differing life styles and
preferences were compared. Second, an examination of rela-
tionship patterns prepares the ground for the study of political
opinion-formation that follows later in this book, as the social
relations I will describe here constituted the channels through
which news and political viewpoints was filtered and given shape.
The upper-caste families I associated most closely with-the
Sharmas, Aroras, Agarwals, and Kapoors-were socially linked
to the world beyond their homes by relatives (riitediir), friends
(dost/saheliya}, and what they·referred to as 'contacts' (normally
in English), that is, influential people with whom they main-
tained relations for practical purposes. Neighbours and col-
leagues, though crucial in expanding the social worlds of many
others in Kanpur, did not play such a role for these particular
families. Since they spent little time·with neighbours unless they

130 • BleruluJ &Undaries
had recruited them themselves, 1 and since most of those who

worked were e1nployed in some family business or the other,
both neighbourly relations and work relations were secondary
to kinship and friendship. Clubs did not provide social catalysts
for my acquaintances either. True, a few of them paid member-
ship fees to Kanpur Club, Ganges Club, Lion's Club or the
Brahmavarta Chamber, but only lo give their children access
to badminton courts, tennis courts, and occasional closed movie
screenings. However, not even the children's use of the clubs
formed the basis for new social ties given that they used these
facilities rarely, and then too only with friends they already knew
from else-where. This chapter, then, will focus on the four
categories of relationships that had the potential to link my
acquaintances with the society beyond their homes, namely
kinship relations beyond the household, caste fellowship, friend-
ship, and 'contact' relations.
In terms of theory, this chapter retains the focus on everyday
practices, but shifts the secondary lens to network analysis. This
is a mode of analysis that maps the social relations that bind
human beings together and examines the way the relations
are arranged (for overviews, see Boissevain & Mitchell 1973;
Hannerz 1980; Mitchell 1969; Scott 1992). The advantage of the
network concept is that, in contrast to the group concept, it
captures the unboundedness and limitlessness that character-
ize urban, complex societies. Another strength is that the net-
work concept does not presuppose social ties and loyalties to
cluster within castes, classes, or other predetermined units,
but leaves any clustering or grouping open for empirical scrqtiny.
It is such an examination that is the task of this chapter, and
the question at hand is whether the catego,ries of relationship
that I will look at brought my upper-caste acquaintances in
touch with low castes, 'small' people, and other alters-or whether
it confined them to a largely homogeneous social web. A full-
fledged network analyst would probably have approached this
question by recording the interaction of each person through a
fixed period of time and analysing the aggregate interaction
statistically, like Roger Sanjek (1978) did when examining the
1 This was what happened when the Sharmas lent out and sold their
newly constn1cted flats to friends, friends of friends or distant relatives.

A Web of 'Good: Upper-Caste Peopk • 131
extent of interethnic interaction in a mixed neighbourhood in

Ghana. However, as Fredrik Barth's similar efforts (1978) sug-
gest, the interaction of a single person can be so extensive that
only to quantify and analyse the full interaction of a family would
have required methodological clarifications on so many levels
that it probably would have taken the attention away from the
qualitative features of these social relationships. For this reason,
this chapter will make do with a less rigorous network analysis.
By limiting the examination to outlining the kind of people that
my acquaintances in Mohanganj most cummqnly associated with,
this chapter will also leave scope for discussing the motivations
that made them associate more with some people than with
others. By doing so, I not only aim to document potential clutering;
I also hope to enhance the understanding of why such clustering
occurs.
As this endeavour will suggest, the social world of my acquain-
tances hardly went beyond the segment of other 'good' people.
Whereas ties to relatives and caste fellows inevitably were caste-
clustered, friendship and 'contact' relations were predominately
inter-caste. But not even friendship and contact relations ex-
panded the social world of my acquaintances much beyond the
kind of people they held to be 'good'. In sum, then, their social
networks were fairly homogeneous with respect to class and, as
a logical extension, largely confined to the upper-caste segment.
There were occasional exceptions, something I will elaborate on
in Chapters 6 and 8, but for now it is necessary to concentrate
on the overall pattern of social relations.
In contrast to the processes of boundary maintenance ex-
plored in Chapters 3 and 4, the boundary maintenance produced
by the everyday business of staying in touch with relatives, caste
fellows, friends, contacts, and so on should not be understood
as deliberate. As Michel Foucault once expressed it, 'People
know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they
do; but what they don't know is what what they do does' (personal
communication to Dreyfus & Rabinow, cited in 1982: 187). As
we will see, the reasons why everyday social relations hardly
crossed the conceptual gap between 'good' and 'big' people on
the one hand, and 'small' people on the other, are found in
concerns and values as disparate as duty, gratitude, pleasure,
and utility. To begin a substantiation of these claims, let me first

132 • Blended Boundmies
look at kinship ties and the caste-clustering they produced in my

acquaintances' social networks.
KINSHIP RELATIONS BEYOND THE HOUSEHOLD

That kinship was clustered according to caste follows from the
endogamous marriage rule that still prevails in India. Though
there had been occasional 'love-marriages' in Kanpur-also
among relatives of my acquaintances in Mohanganj-marriage
across caste was still very rare. Caste-clustering, then, was
virtu-ally a given. But the amount of time that people devoted
to their ri.Stedii.r (relatives) was not. Nor were the contexts in
which they did so their motivations for maintaining kinship
relations. ·
To approach such questions it is useful to distinguish between
relatives who lived in Kanpur itself, and whom it was possible
to meet on a regUJar basis, and relatives who lived elsewhere.
The number of r.elatives that a family had within Kanpur varied
greatly. The Aroras had none, though they had some kin in
Lucknow.just two hours away by car..The Agarwals, the Sharmas
and the Kapoors, however, had a number of relatives in Kanpur,
including several first and second cousins in Mohanganj itself.
Given the existence of relatives in town that my acquaintances
could associate with, what characterized their ties with them?
In my experience, the relationship between households within
the same patriline was often soured by rivalry or dispute rooted
in contention over property, family business, or neglect of family
obligations. A telling example was the relationship between the
three Sharma brothers and their cousins in the neighbouring
compound. Despite the proximity of kinship and residence, they
never visited each other. Moreover, they boycotted each others'
enterprises and restricted the greetings to cold nods when
encountering each other on the street. The Sharma brothers
explained the cold relations as a result of their uncle's ingrati-
tude towards their own father. Their father, they claimed, had
been as hard-working as his brother was lazy. In the 1930s, when
their father had accumulated sufficient money to purchase the
bungalow in which they now lived, he had given his brother half
of the surrounding property. .8ut when their father died at the age
of 34, leaving a young widow and three small sons-Mohan,

A Web of 'Good: Upfwr-Casu P60f>l.e • 133
Pramod, and Tilak themselves-their uncle next door did not

lift a finger to help them, they claimed. 2
Even so, the fissure in the patriline was far from total, as the
kinship relations were maintained through the wives. The women
did not visit each other often, but on religious festivals and
birthdays they normally dropped by with sweets or gifts such as
a bottle of perfume or a paperback. The atmosphere was often
tense and formal at first, but eased rapidly, both panies seem-
ingly doing their best to paper over the fact that their husbands
were not on talking terms. For life-cycle rituals such as wedd~ngs,
cremations, and janeii ceremonies, even the men appeared to
expect the other pany to bury the hatchet. 3 When Ammaji was on
her deathbed in 1994, the Sharma brothers were deeply disap-
pointed when their cousins next door failed to visit her as a last
token of respect. Six years later, however, Pramod finally swal-
lowed his pride and visited his cousins when one of their close
relatives passed away. When explaining this to me during one
of the nightly power cuts, Pramod said that at that point of time
his economic problems had been so acute that he had contem-
plated suicide. Not wanting to depan from this world without
trying to make amends with his relatives next door, he finally
decided to take the first step towards normalizing the relations. 4
The strain that characterized the Sharma brothers' ties to
their paternal relatives was not unique. In several upper-caste
households in Mohanganj similar problems, commonly fuelled
by disagreement over joint business enterprises, was about to
cause cleavages even between brothers living under the same
roof. Such problems had not only soured the domestic atmo-
sphere in t~e Agarwal household (cf. Chapter 2), but could also
be felt in the Kapoor and Arora families. While my acquaintan-
ces' ties to relatives within the patriline entailed so many unful-
filled expectations that they often limited the contact to ritual
occasions, they associated more freely with their maternal
relatives. Mummy Sharma, for example, frequently brought her
: This explanation is bound to be biased, but this need not concern us
here.
3
A janeii ceremony is a rite of passage in which boys or young men of
twice-born caste status receive the holy thread (janeu).
4
Fortunately, Pramod's economic problems passed, and his depression
with them.

134 • Blended Boundams
grown-up children to visit her sister living nearby, and Arjun

Srivastava, my Harl Mandi neighbour, spent considerable time
in the house of his miimii (mother.'s brother), where he enjoyed
playing with his kids.
Mummy and Arjun, however, were among the few of those I
knew who had maternal relatives in Kanpur. The fact that most
had not, is due to the combination of virilocality and what I will
loosely refer to as 'territorial exogamy'. Virilocality entails that
a son brings his wife into his natal home, whereas a daughter,
after marriage, moves in with her husband and parents-in-law. By
territorial exogamy I attempt to capture the marked tendency-
though no rule as such--of seeking marriage alliances in other
cities. All the married women I knew had been born and brought
up outside Kanpur-some elsewhere in Uuar Pradesh (Mathura,
Rampur, Hardoi, Lucknow, Agra) and others further away (Delhi,
Calcutta, Chandigarh,Jaipur,Jabalpur, Bhopal). As for the women
who had married out of Kanpur, one had even settled in London.
Of course, maternal kinship ties across large distances could not
entail face-to-face contact on a regular basis, but what was lost
in frequency was compensated by duration. A visit that lasted
less than three days was almost seen as an insult, and people
often found it easier to send youngsters out of Kanpur for educa-
tion or work if they had maternal relatives to stay with and who
could keep them in check. The assistance from maternal rela-
tives in other cities could also entail employment, as when Madhu
Agarwal counted upon her brothers in Delhi to employ her son
when he failed to secure a decent job on his own.
It would be misleading to suggest that the ties with maternal
relatives outside Kanpur predominately were maintained with
potential utility in mind. Yet this was clearly among the motivat-
ing factors. Take, for example, Pramod Sharma's attitude to his
maternal uncle in Lucknow, whom he referred to as Lokesh
mama. 5 Though I had known Pramod for six years by then and
had met most of his near and distant relatives, I had not even
heard about this person until I announced my plans of going to
Lucknow to get hold of some documents. 'I'll join you,' he pro-
claimed, 'and then we'll go and visit Lokesh mama afterwards'.
Lokesh lived in a modest flat in the outskirts of Lucknow, and
; Like many other kinship terms, mama was often used as a suffix to
the person's name.

A Wtb of 'Good', Upper-Cas~ Ptople • 135
our visit was brief and a little stiff. As Pramod explained on the
way back to Kanpur, Lokesh had worked as a Chief Engineer for
the Uttar Pradesh government, bot had never asked for bribes
and thus never became the big and respectable man that his
relatives had expected of him. As Pramod laconically put it, he
had become a 'victim of his own honesty' to the extent that he
could not even afford a television. Still, Lokesh was not com-
pletely deserted by his relatives. Even Pramod stated that, in the
event that Lokesh passed away, he would feel compelled to
ensure that someone took care of his widow and children. Unless
someone else stepped forward, he said, he would even take
responsibility for his uncle's mentally disabled daughter.
To conclude, kinship ties could well be distant and strained,
and few of those I knew devoted much of their time to relatives.
Nevertheless, kinship ties provided·them with a stable network
in which considerable expectation and obligations were invested,
thereby providing each individual with a security net. These ties,
as it were, were not only clustered with respect to caste, but
vinually homogeneous.
INTRA-CASTE RELATIONS BEYOND KINSHIP

Another category of people that held potential to secure my
upper-caste acquaintances' social ties with the world beyond
their own homes were people of the same caste, but with whom
they had no kinship relation. 6 Most of those I knew, however, took
limited interest in caste-fellows unless there were other things
that tied them together too, say, a friendship that had evolved
for reasons that had little to do with commonalty of caste. Yet,
caste-fellows .who did not know each other would often know about'
each other--or could easily come to know if they wanted to:
Caste, then, had a cenain corporate potential beyond kinship.
This potential, I suggest, was ensured by weddings and caste
associations, the former being a social institution, the latter a
formal institution.
6 Itis possible that an analysis modelled on the genome project in Iceland
(cf. Palsson & Haraard6ttir 2002), though difficult to accomplish in India,
would have revealed many of these people to be distantly related in terms
of genes or blood. However, I see no reason to refer to such relations as
kinship relations unless those involved acknowledged them as such.

136 • Blended &undmW
Let me open with the role of weddings. When a son or a

daughter was to get married, an inevitable topic of discussion
was whom to invite. Many upper-caste families felt a strong
obligatio1' to invite caste-fellows far beyond their own kin-at
least a representative from each of the prominent families in
town-to attend the part of the wedding located in Kanpur. 7 The
Sharmas even felt an obligation to invite their whole jati. This,
I was often told, was because people from this community 'pre-
fer to stick to their own'. Whether this was true or not, it was
probably significant that their community was smaller and more
close-knit than the upper-caste communities it was often com-
pared to. 8 In 1992, the Sharmas estimated their jati in Kanpur
to include some 60-70 families, all of whom were invited to
Billu's reception ceremony in December that year. When Bablu's
wedding was being planned in 1997, however, the. Sharmas'
strained economic situation made them attempt to ·restrict the
number of guests by scheduling Bablu's wedding on the same
date as another wedding in their community, hoping that most
non-relative caste-fellows would be unable to show up. Nonethe-
less, they were all invited. Anything ~lse would have been insult-
ing.
Another subtle way of restricting the number of guests without
compromising the obligations to one's caste-fellows follows from
the differentiated invitation practices. Wedding invitations in
the form of elaborately printed cards were sent to all invitees.
But in Kanpur, I was often told, one was not really expected to
show up unless the invitation was delivered personally by a
member of the bride's or groom's family or followed up with a
visit or phone call that insisted on the importance of one's
presence. Receiving only a written invitation, and that too by
mail, was often interpreted as a mere gesture of politeness. If
the family of the bride or groom were relatives or friends, a mere
7 In the case of daughlers, il would be lhe wedding proper; in lhe case
of sons, the reception ceremony.
• I have no exacl figures, bul based on lhe estimate of the casle·
composition of lhe populalion of Kanpur ciled in Srivastava ( 1996) and
referred lo in Chapler 2, lhe Baniyas musl have comprised some 200,000
people, lhe Kiiyasthas 100,000 and the Khalris less than 33,000. There
were no figures for Punjabis, and lhe Brahmin population was nOl broken
down lo jali.

A Web of 'Good', Upper-Oiste People • 137
card would even have been interpreted as a subtle insult. Even

so, the common practice of sending invitation cards to caste-
fellows far beyond one's own relatives communicated an aware-
ness of their existence, an appreciation of the commonalty of
caste, and, at least in some cases, an acknowledgement of the
possible distant kinship connections one might be able to trace
if one were to look for them.
The other institution that could link my acquaintances' ties
to caste fellows beyond their own relatives, were the caste as-
sociations. Not all upper castes had formed caste associations,
but among the associations I stumbled across during my field-
work, whether through the local newspapers or the people I
talked to, were the Kshatriya Sabha, the Kanpur Mathur Sabha,
the Uttar Pradeshjaiswal Mahasabha, the Uuar Pradesh Agarwal
Mahasabha, the All-India Kayastha Mahasabha, and the Akhil
Bharatiya Kanyakubj Brahmin Mahasabha. As the names sug-
gest, some attempted to mobilize people in the name of a jati,
others in the name of a whole van,a. Moreover, some were local
while others claimed to represent all the caste members in the
state-or even in the whole country. Besides attempting to inte-
grate their caste members and create a network through which
news about eligible brides and grooms could be disseminated,
the aims and activities of the caste associations varied widely,
just like Kothari & Maru pointed out in their classic study of
caste associations (1970). The local Mathur and Brahmin as-
sociations, for example, appeared to have few ambitions beyond
gathering their respective members for festivals or excursions.
In contrast, the state-level Agarwal and Jaiswal associations
fought for increased political representation and reduction of
the injustice they considered themselves to be victims of.° The
activities of the caste associations could also go far beyond the
9 The Uttar Pradesh Jaiswal Mahasabha pleaded to all the political
parties to choose representatives from their caste ('ticket dmii') when
contesting elections ('jaiswal community demands say in national politics',
the Hindustan · Times, Lucknow, 6 December 1997). The Uttar Pradesh
Agarwal Mahasabha felicitated a caste member who had ascended to
ministership in the Assembly and lamented the increased crime rate,
which they held to affect the Agarwals particularly strongly ('Inadequate
representation for Agarwal community decried', the Hindustan Times,
Lucknow, 4 October 1997) .

138 • Blended &undaries
immediate interests of the caste, as when the All-India Khatri

Mahasabha in 1992 unanimously decided to send a resolution
to the then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, demanding that
a Ram temple be constructed in Ayodhya.
Only a few of my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj
took interest in caste associations. Among them were Kailash
Kapoor and his engineer brother. Kailash had even been present
at the All-India Khatri Mahasabha meeting in Shahjahanpur in
November 1992, where the decision about the Ram temple
resolution had been made. When explaining his involvement to
me shonly after returning to Kanpur, Kailash claimed that khatris
were 'children of Surya-dev (the sun-god)' and 'descendants of
Ram'. 10 For him, then, it was but natural that the khatri associa-
tion should express its opinion on the Ayodhya conflict. He was
also pleased that the meeting in which this issue had been on
the agenda had attracted far more members than usual, includ-
ing many women, something he happily reponed to his brothers
and their respective wives.
As for the Sharma family, it was only Urmila and Mamaji who
took interest in caste associations. For both, the greatest attrac-
tion was the annual holi milan that gathered their community in
Kanpur for celebrating the annual holi festival. Unfonunately
none of them seemed keen on letting me join them at these
gatherings, but when they returned they told me that they had
sung traditional holi songs, chatted with jati fellows they rarely
met on other occasions, and eaten snacks. The remaining mem-
bers of the Sharma family held the holi milans of their caste
association to be utterly boring. Bina and her husband, more-
over, claimed that its current leadership was sufficient reason
for staying away, as it was headed by people 'of the Mayawati
type'. For once, this was no allusion to rude speech, but an
expression intended to capture the kind of people who had no
agenda except getting into the limelight and grabbing power.
Pramod had his own reasons for staying away from the caste
association: known to be fond of his daily bottle of beer and
to serve whisky and rum to his visitors, why should he seek
the company .of traditional caste-fellows for who1n the only
w Most of m)' other Khatri connections had never heard about this,
something that should warn us against making generalizations concerning
a caste and its 1n}'th of origin.

A Web of 'Good: U~-Caste Pecpk • 139
acceptable intoxicants were bhagand t/la~i1Not that outcasting

was practised anymore, but Pramod still dreaded the feeling of
being looked at with contempt. 11 In addition, he claimed that
open communication was curbed by the economic differences
within the community because it made the poorer ones behave
like chamchas (toadies) to the richer ones to the extent that they
even addressed them as baba, a respectful term of address used
for seniors. Despite such misgivings, caste associations enabled
my acquaintances to have at least a rough idea of what their
caste-fellows were up to. Even those who expressed total disin-
terest in their caste association found it difficult to avoid hearing
what their family members or relatives who had attended the
association's latest gathering had to tell when they got home.
Even Pramod was able to describe in remarkable detail a ~icnic
that his caste association had arranged even though he had not
joined it himself.
Given my acquaintances' limited interest in maintaining re-
lations with caste-fellows beyond their own kin, the corporateness
that caste associations and weddings created is best understood
as a potential. When my acquaintances decided to activate this
potential, it was usually in an effort to link up with the VIPs or
bare log (big people) within their own community Such contact-
building was motivated by expectations of utility-not of imme-
diate utility, but in case the need should arise some time in the
fuu,1re. For example, when Rakesh and Madhu Agarwal were
invited to the wedding of a son or daughter of the Agarwal family
who owned the local newspaper, Dainikjagran, Madhu explained
that it was 'important to stay close to them' since the hosts were
'one of the richest Agarwal families in Kanpur'. Madhu's hus-
band evidently shared her view as he gave her money to buy three
new 'heavy' saris, which Madhu asked her sister in Calcutta to
11
1only heard one account of outcasting from the caste that the Sharrnas
belonged to. As the story went , a young Sharma n1an from Kanpur had once
been outcasted because he insisted on pursuing his education in England.
In England, the chairman of the association had claimed, he would have
to give up vegetarianism, and anyone who would willingly do so and thereby
defy his jati dharma for the sake of going abroad , could not possibly be a
good Brahm in. None of those 1 spoke to were able to tell me exactly when
this happened except that it had occurred 'some time before Indepen-
dence', and none of them could remember whom it involved.

buy for her and send to Kanpur by mail. Also in the Sharma
family's caste association, the most sought-after caste fellows
were the rich and influential ones. One of them was a man who
secured an important political post, and whenever I saw him at
a wedding, people swarmed around him like bees. Even the
Sharmas showered him with polite phrases and praised his
political progress although they hardly knew him. Another sought-
after caste-fellow of the Sharmas was a man who ran a company
in the city centre, and who was held to 'roll in money'. Also
Pramod Sharma could be a sought-after caste-fellow. Not that
he was rich or influential, but since he was closely acquainted
with a senior police officer, he was occasionally approached by
caste-fellows who had got in trouble with the police. In one such
instance, a young caste-fellow of his had been arrested for
involvement in the kidnapping of the son of a wealthy business-
man, and when his family turned to Pramod for assistance,
Pramod persuaded his police friend to pull the strings required
to get the boy released. Nobody believed the young man to be
innocent, but the string-pulling was justified with allegations that
the potice had forged a number of additional cases to 'extract
money' from his family. From their viewpoint, then, caste ties
provided a legitimate resource that could assist the man in the
street to survive the harassment of the evil state.
Whether such assistance was within or outside the law, the
utility that motivated my acquaintances to build ties to influential
caste-fellows far beyond their own kin, renders it appropriate to
analyse caste relations beyond kinship in terms of social capital,
a concept I will return to when examining 'contacts'. Certainly,
caste-fellows did not constitute the inain part of my acquaintan-
ces' contacts, but they were nevertheless important given the
obligations to assist a caste-fellow in need.
FRIENDSHIP
In contrast to ties with kin and caste-fellows, friendship entailed
the possibility of integrating people across caste and class.
Before examining to what extent it actually did so, however, we
must find out what my acquaintances meant when they referred
to someone as a 'friend'. The linguistic idioms they used were
the standard Hindi terms dost (male friend of a male), saheli

A Web of 'Good; Upper-Caste Peopl.t • 141
(female friend of a female) and dosti (friendship). Leaving their

genderedness and inability to capture cross-gender friendship, 12
these terms appeared to have fairly similar connotations as their
English equivalents. Men would often describe the closeness of
a friendship by saying that 'I can call him at any time, even at
four at night, and if I ask him to come immediately, he will rush
over without even asking why.' The unquestioning willingness to
stand up for another person, and the selflessness with which it
was done, literally epitomized friendship in Mohanganj. In ad-
dition, my acquaintances stressed the need of mutual liking:
unless their friends had a personality that they appreciated, the
friendship would not have come into being. 13 Selflessness and
personality were also used to differentiate between friends and
'contacts', which was the term used for those the men built
relations with somewhat calculatingly. such as their non-relative
caste-fellows. Not that they denied the existence of a utility
quotient in friendship but, as they stressed again and again,
utility was never its 1notivating or perpetuating factor. Given their
effons to make me understand the difference between friends
and contacts, I will retain this distinction here, deferring contact
relations to the next section.
Let me first consider friendship among adult men, for whom
the distinction between friends and contacts was most relevant.
The Sharma compound, where I lived during most of my field-
12Traditionally, friendship between women and me~r sexually mature
boys and girls-was considered inappropriate. Cross-gender friendship
was about to gain acceptance among youngsters of 'good' families, but
most of them nevertheless preferred to convert such a friendship to a
brother-sister relationship during the annual rakhi ceremony. By trans-
forming a friend of the opposite gender to a 'rakhi sister' or · rakhi brother',
potential suspicions of romantic or sexual undertones could be defused.
The only environment in which such conversion appeared unnecessary was
in the colleges. Here, 1nale and female students freely referred to each
other as 'friends', though the need for an English term suggests a lexical
vacuum that confirms the novelty of such relations.
" The word 'personality' was among the English words that dotted
everyday Hindi speech in Mohanganj. On a few occasions my acquaintan-
ces 'Hindified' it to give it a humorous twist. By substituting the original
form personoli!i with the non-diminutive form personali/a, they invented a
word appropriate tor describing persons whom they held to be overly self-
confident, assertive, and dominating.

work, served as a meeting ground for the three Sharma brothers

and their friends, something that gave me ample opportunity to
observe male friendship. The Sharma compound was an ideal
place to meet. Not only did it have enough space outside the
bungalow to accommodate a large group of people; the Sharmas
even had a room on the ground floor of the new apanment
building in which the men could play tin patte (a poker-like card
game), gamble, drink alcohol, exchange information, and joke
in complete privacy. Every evening the compound was visited by .
an average of six to eight men. In many ways these gatherings
resembled the Bengali a44dwhich Dipesh Oiakrabarty describes
as 'the practice of friends getting together for long, informal,
and unrigorous conversations' (1999: 110), as in the following
account from Calcutta around the 1950s:
One house in the neighbourhood had a wide rawak [veranda]. The boys
would have their adda there on every Sunday and on other holidays . . . .
Conversation ran across all different kinds of topics: patriotism, wres-
tling, sports, England, Germany, Switzerland... (Atarthi 1988: 364-5,
cited in Chakrabarty 1999: 119).
While Chakrabarty emphasizes the many changes the Bengali
ac;ic;ia has undergone since then, the Sharma compound was a
place in which it existed in more or less exactly the same form
as in Atarthi's description from Calcutta. The conversation
revolved around a variety of different topics, with politics, cricket,
and local gossip as prominent themes. The only differences
were that the Sharma ac;ic;ia was a daily event rather than a weekly
one, and that the conversations were often fuelled by drinking,
card playing, and gambling-which was why the Sharmas were
frowned upon by their conservative caste-fellows in Kanpur.
I will return to the conversational dynamics of these gather-
ings in later chapters. What matters here is the pattern of
friendship. For the points I wish to make it will suffice to mention
the most regular visitors, who constituted the core of what Pramod
jokingly called 'our human zoo'. One was Gopal Arora, whose
master-servant relations I discussed in Chapter 3. As men-
tioned earlier, he was a Punjabi and currently a half-hearted,
unsuccessful rice merchant. He had known the Sharma brothers
since childhood, as they went to the same school and grew up
in the same neighbourhood. His friends appreciated him for his
kindness, for his wit, and for his ludicrous singing at wedding

A Web of 'Good: Upper-Caste People • 143
parties: in closed male gatherings he sang classical-style melo-

dies, but improvised lyrics with double meanings so blatantly
sexual that the listeners had to guard the doors and windows
against female passers-by. The singing, in fact , had provided
Gopal with friends and contacts far outside Kanpur as well. 14
A second regular visitor was Kishore Chawla, a kind-faced
Punjabi who normally dropped by every Sunday afternoon for a
few bottles of beer-to his wife's great irritation. Chawla owned
a shop in another neighbourhood, selling 1Vs, radios, music
cassettes, and the like. He had met Pramod in college, and
among the qualities that distinguished him from the other friends
was that he often recited sentimental or humorous iers (four-line
poems) in Urdu or Punjabi, and that he knew palmistry and
willingly predicted people's futures, always bringing his blue
magnifying glass along.
A third regular visitor was Kallu ('Blackie') Malhotra, another
khatri. His friendship with the Sharma brothers had staned in
their late teens, but Kallu Malhotra had continued to study when
his friends opted for business, and ended up as a college lec-
turer. Many of his friends turned .to him to ensure that their
daughters and sons got admission to the college of their pref-
erence and graduated with decent papers. In this network of
friends, however, Kallu Malhotra's job was more often ridia.1led
than admired. His attempts at explaining the social processes
at work in the society normally drowned in laughter, and his
recent promotion made him subject to critique for having be-
come a chamcha of his boss. Moreover, Kallu Malhotra was
reputed to undress women with his looks, with the result that all
the Sharma women discreetly withdrew indoors as soon as he
was spotted at the gate. Even so, he had an asset that many of
them appreciated: he was able to foretell the future through
numerological calculations.
A founh regular visitor was Dr Tandon, a medical doctor of
khatri origin. Dr Tandon was so shon that he was nicknamed
'child labour' by his friends. He had entered the network of
friends through Tilak Sharma, who frequently visited his mini-
14Being a female anthropologist, I was never allowed to hear these

songs, but had to make do with sketchy summaries made by those who had
been present.

144 • Blended &Junda~s
clinic in order to market and sell medicines and tonics. Dr Tandon

never participated in the card-playing-cum-drinking sessions,
but occasionally dropped by for a peaceful outdoor chat and a
glass of rum and Pepsi. He had also become the Sharma family's
self-appointed family doctor. He frequently took blood samples,
handed out pills, and checked Mummy's level of blood sugar-
conveniently right outside the house.
A fifth regular visitor was Dr Kamal, another medical doctor
of khatri origin. Like Dr Tandon, he came to know the Sharmas
through Tilak's work as a medical representative, but did not
become a friend as such until Ammaji became critically ill in
1994. Ammaji's last months had been spent at home rather than
in hospital, and from time to time she had needed medical care
at very short notice, whatever the time of day. Dr Kamal was the
one who had proved willing to rush over whenever they called
him. The Sharmas could not praise him enough for the care and
respect he had showed their dying mother, and claimed that they
would always feel indebted to him. Hence, whenever Dr Kamal
showed up, they always treated him as well as they could, even
though he never talked much and did not seem to live up to their
standards of wit.
A sixth regular visitor was Harish Trivedi, a Brah min who had
a moderately successful career as an actor and film director
behind him, and who now directed local school plays. Harish
entered the network through another friend, who now lived else-
where. Although his link to the film industry in Bombay gave
Harish a certain air of glamour, he seemed to be in the process
of losing his popularity. Not only did his friends consider him
a little dull, he was also suspected of being a miser, as he never
contributed any booze to these gatherings.
What, then, characterized the composition of this core of
friends? As far as caste was concerned, it clearly transcended
the boundaries of jati and van:ia, as the inner circle included
people from different Brahmin jatis as well as Khatris and
Punjabis, who are both acknowleged as Kshatriyas. A little out-
side the core, but still within the network of friends, were also
men of Vaishya background. 15 Male friendship, then, clearly
1•
Even further outside the core were some Muslims, Christians and
Sikhs, something I will return to in the next chapter.

A Web of 'Good: Uf>l--Caste People • 145
integrated people of different castes. Nevertheless, the bound-

ary transgression was limited. Not a single of the male friend-
ships I observed in Mohanganj, whether in the Sharma compound
or elsewhere, crossed the boundary between upper and lower
castes. Moreover, all the friends seemed to have a fairly similar
standard of living, and though not all were fair complexioned,
they all had physical statures, clothing, speech, and manners
that made them acknowledge each other as acche log.
Caroline and Filippo Osella, who observed a similar cluster-
ing of friendship among adult men in rural Kerala, argued that
the transgression and contest of hierarchy that friendship had
potential to entail, mainly occurred among youths, who 'are not
yet prepared to take on their full, casted social identities re-
quired by adult males... .' ( 1998: 191). With this statement, the
Osellas appear to relate the lack of boundary transgression
a1nong adult men to a deliberate attempt to avoid friendship with
people of a caste or class background that might compromise
their own respect and prestige. It is not impossible that such
inhibitions were present in Mohanganj too, but we also need to
seek explanations beyond conscious avoidance. Much suggests
that the clustering of adult male friendship was just as much an
effect of the structural propenies of class, something that be-
comes clearer if we take a closer look at where and how friend-
ships were formed.
The close and long-term friendships that I observed among
adult men had normally been established in school, in college,
or through being in the same spons team in their youth. Hence,
contemporary friendship must be understood in the context of
the education patterns that prevailed when they attended school
or college. In the case of the Sharma brothers and their friends,
·we must return to the 1940s and 1950s. In those decades, fewer
families than today could afford to send their children to school.
Those fonunate enough to get a college education came from
the minority of families in Kanpur with sufficient economic
means and intellectual capital to suppon them. Thus, the friend-
ships of today reflected the class relations of yesterday. In the
1940s and 1950s, moreover, the congruence between caste and
education level was even stronger than during my fieldwork in
the 1990s, as the numerous illiteracy eradication programmes,
development aid schemes, free basic education projects, and

preferential treatment that had been implemented to reduce the

educational caste gap were in their earliest stages, if at all they
existed. I have not been able to find local statistics that show
the extent to which the education level in the 1940s and 1950s
was differentiated according to caste, but it seems reasonable
to suggest that one of the reasons why friendships formed in the
educational institutions in this period were clustered within an
upper-class, 'good' segment, was that the pupils and students
were far more homogenous with respect to these variables than
the population of Kanpur at large. ·
The second feature that contributed to cluster male friend-
ship according to caste and class penained to the non~tilitarian
qualities that made a person worth spending time with, that is,
what they loosely referred to as 'personality'. The most impor-
tant quality was to have ready wit. A man who could twist a
comment, play with words and double meanings, joke about the
contemporary political situation, or dramatize an ordinary en-
counter as if it were a filmi plot, was a sought-after and popular
friend. Another valued quality was the ability to make allusions
to art and culture. Whatever the topic of conversation, there
would always be someone present who could recall and recite
a proverb, poem, gaz.al, or old film song appropriate for the topic.
Such interjections could well interrupt the flow of conversation,
but the interruptions were welcome as they elevated the conver-
sation by establishing connections between everyday issues and
classical referents, 16 thereby making the conversation larger
than itself. A third sought-after quality was a high level of general
knowledge. An ideal conversation partner would be able to dis-
cuss anything from whether Sitaram Kesri was likely to withdraw
the Congress party's support to the Janata Dal government or
not, to the likelihood of India beating Pakistan in cricket after
the reinstatement of Saeed Anwar .as Pakistani captain. The
appreciation of knowledge had a limit, though: it should never
come across as arrogant or teaching, as it often did in the case
of the lecturer. A fourth appreciated quality was specialized
skill or knowledge, such as Gopal's singing and fortune-telling.
16
For a parallell, see Yamaguchi's analysis (1991) of the use of mitau
in Japanese museums and an galleries. an 'an of citation' that links
conu;mporary objects and events to the past.

The latter, in fact, could turn a man into a very popular friend,
whether his specialization was palmistry, numerology, or astrol-
ogy. While my acquaintances preferred to consult experts when
they were in serious trouble or had to make major choices,
friends with fortune-telling as a hobby sufficed for consultation
about less serious problems. Even the sceptics between them
made use of fortune-telling friends, something they legitimated
with the entertainment value they considered it to have. In prin-
ciple, all the qualities mentioned above were available to every-
one regardless of caste and class. However, professing them
in a style that would be appreciated in this circle of friends
required a level of education equal to theirs, a self-confidence
equal to theirs and a frame of reference common with theirs,
something that in effect excluded most 'small' and low-caste
people.
In many ways, friendship was predominately a male category
of social relationships-partly because it was mainly men who
had the freedom of movement required to cultivate them, and
partly because what I termed 'territorial exogamy' tended to
sever 1narried women's ties with the friends they had had as
young girls. For the married women I knew, the most important
social ties beyond their homes were their female family mem-
bers and relatives. My queries about friendship normally made
them look back to their schooldays, and many told me that they
missed being able to choose whom they were to associate with.
The only married women I ever observed with friends were Bina
Sharma and Madhu Agarwal, and that too only a few times. Bina
had become friendly with the wives of two friends of her husband,
as well as with a Brahmin housewife living in the half-built
apartment building at the back of the Sharma compound. Madhu,
who had more freedom of movement than the Sharma women,
maintained contact with several other 'good' women in Mohanganj
and the adjacent neighbourhoods. One of them-the only one I
was able to meet-was a Khatri woman in her late forties named
Kiran. Since Madhu's friendship with her suggests that female
friendship was no less class-clustered than friendship between
adult men, I will describe it a little closer.
Kiran was a divorcee. She ran a beauty parlour near Madhu's
home, and frequently dressed in jeans and blouses. All this,
combined with her short hair, made her appear as considerably

more 'modem' than Madhu, not to mention the sari-clad Sharma

women. Both Kiran and Madhu happened to be born under the
Libra star sign, and so was another friend of theirs. Halfjokingly,
half-seriously, they had staned a Librans' Club which, as Madhu
explained, aimed to do social work through assisting women who
had problems with their husbands and families. 17 I was surprised
to learn about this, as Madhu had not shown any interest in social
work on previous occasions, and as she had seemed contemp-
tuous of people whose background she considered inferior to her
own. Madhu, however, explained that the Librans' Club only
extended help to 'upper-class ladies' (this was her expression),
panly implying that her social consciousness was limited to this
segment, and panly that neither she nor Kiran had the right kind
of life experience to assist women beyond it. According to what
Madhu told me, one of the women they had assisted had poured
her hean out in Kiran's beauty parlour, crying that her husband
had left her for a young and beautiful Bengali girl. Another of the
women had almost died when she slit her wrists as she felt
neglected by her sons and their wives, on whom she depended
for survival. Kiran's and Madhu's assistance was never eco-
nomic., but included visiting the women regularly, giving advice,
and boosting their self-confidence. Their competence, they said,
was their own life experience: Kiran was divorced and Madhu's
own marriage had been a roller coaster of ups and downs. The
Librans' Club, then, did not expand Madhu's and Kiran's net-
works beyond the segment of other 'good' women, but the aim
to do social work-however shon-lived it might be-had the side-
effect of expanding Madhu's and Kiran's respective networks of
acquaintances. This network integrated women from several
castes but, as Madhu pointed out herself, was nevenheless
limited to a particular class segment, namely to women who were
'good'-<>r even upper-class, to use the term Madhu preferred.
The scarcity of female friendships among my acquaintances in
Mohanganj does not allow me to generalize from the case of
Manju, Kiran, and the Librans' club, but I nevenheless find it
17
Jnterestingly, the astrology that inspired Madhu and Kiran to form this
club was not of Indian origin, but of the kind found in 12-zodiac newspaper
horoscopes and books such as Linda Goodman's best-sellers, of which
Madhu had a couple at home.

A Web of 'Good', Upper-Caste People • 149
noteworthy that this friendship not only was clustered according

to class, but also self-consciously so.
Young girls and boys, whether attending school or college,
·appeared to have many friends. As the case had been with their
parents and grandparents, vinually all the friendships among
the youngsters had been formed at school or in college. Boys and
young men spent so much time with friends that they hardly were
at home except when doing homework, taking tuitions, eating or
sleeping. If the boys were out and I asked where they were, a
common reply would be that 'Jiisi dost lie sath ghumta Jwga ([he
is} probably roaming around with so1ne friend or the other)',
often said with a brush of the hand that I interpreted as total lack
of worry about their whereabouts as long as they did their school-
work properly and returned well before bedtime. Girls and
unmarried women did not have the same freedom of movement
as it was considered inappropriate and unsafe for them to 1nove
about in public places without a male guardian. Hence, girls
rarely got an opportunity to meet their friends outside school
hours. Not that their brothers or cousins were unwilling to drop
them and pick them up again from time to time, but not too
often-and who would like someone to overhear their giggling
secrets anyway? Leaving the pretexts created by binhdays and
marriages, girls and unmarried women largely stayed in touch
with their friends by telephone, making sure that their voices
were so low that nobody could overhear their conversations.
With girls maintaining friendships on the phone and boys
constantly roaming around town, I had practically no opponu-
nities to make first-hand observations of friendship among young-
sters. Even so, the educational pattern in Kanpur allows me to
offer some speculations as far as clustering and boundary-
transgression are concerned. Since their grandfathers' school-
days the average literacy level in Kanpur had grown dramati-
cally-from 39.0 per cent in 1951 to 68.75 per cent in 1991 .18
The great-est change was undoubtedly in the weaker sections.
A survey 1nade in the 1970s of one of Kanpur's working-
class streets-whereof four-fifths of the residents were SCs-
showed that 42 per cent of the men had studied up to Class 7
•~The 1951 figure is derived from Awasthi (1985: 70); the 1991 ligure
from Cen~-us of India 1991, cited in Mode Research ( 1995: 2).

or above. 19 In 1993, a survey of 2500 randomly selected house-

holds in Kanpur-whereof 12.5 per cent were SCs and 23.2
per cent BCs-showed that 81.7 per cent of the children of the
age-group of 6-14 years went to school (Mode Research 1995:
14). The two surveys are not commensurable with each other,
but both indicate a steady increase of the number of low-caste
and untouchable children who went to school. This, however, did
not necessarily bring .'good' upper-caste children in Mohanganj
in touch with more low-caste and untouchable children than
what their parents and grandparents had experienced in their
schooldays. The reason was the existence of private schools.
For my acquaintances in Mohanganj, private English-medium
schools such as Huddard,Jaipuria, and St Mary's Convent topped
their preference list, while government schools had a very bad
reputation. Everyone I knew sent their children to the best school
they could afford-and sometimes hardly afford. Due to the
steep school fees, the youngsters would hardly have any children
from 'small' family background as classmates, something that
reduced the number of low-class and untouchable classmates
drastically. The only possible exceptions would be rich low-caste
children, or 'small' children who got their school fees paid by
well-wishers, as when 'good' families paid for the education
of one of their servant's children. 20 None of the upper-caste
children I spoke to in Mohanganj, however, mentioned having
classmates of any of these categories. 21
19 Calculated from Molund (1988: 79-89) .

:io None of the master-servant relationships examined in Chapter 3
entailed this kind of patronage, but some neighbours of the Sharmas, the
Mehta family, had paid for their maid's son to be educated up to Class
12. When 1 saw him last, he worked in the laundry department of thc-
Landmark Hotel, Kanpur's only !>-star hotel, and proudly showed me
around the room where all the bedsheets and towels were stored. More
about the Mehta family follows in Chapter 7.
~· I made no inquiries about the selection criteria of the schools that
my acquaintances' ch ildren attended, but it could well be that they went
beyond school fees and/or e ntrance tests. As Anne Waldrop argues (2002),
many of the prestigious English-medium schools in New Delhi favoured
children whose parents had gone to the same school, and who were
graduates or post-graduates, something that made it next to impossible
for 'small' children to get admission even iftheir school fees were covered.

A Wtb of 'Good: Upper-Caste People • 151
This brings me over to what the youngsters' said about their

classmates, friends and friendships. Most of the time when they
mentioned the name of a friend and I asked for the friend's
surnall,le, the name would indicate an upper-caste background.
Interestingly, the exceptions were neither low castes nor un-
touchables, but Muslims, something I will return to in the next
chapter. For.now it will suffice to conclude that, if upper-caste
youngsters in Mohanganj transgressed social boundaries
more freely than adults, it was religious boundaries that were
being transgressed, not the boundaries towards low castes,
untouchables or 'small' people, as in the Osellas' case from
n1ral Kerala. For my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj,
then, friendship was a category of relations that integrated them
with the world beyond their own kin, jati, and vafl.la, but that
nevenheless remained clustered within the upper-caste and
'good' social segment. The social world generated by friend-
ship, then, was fairly homogeneous-though not fully as homo-
geneous as the networks generated by kinship and caste.
CONTACTS
In contrast to the relationship categories examined above, con-
tact relations were mostly referred to by help of English idioms.
Even in the midst of a Hindi sentence, the English words 'con-
tact' or 'pull' were more frequent than the Hindi term sampark
(relationship, connection) or the local slang .jhogar (makeshift
arrangement), as in the sentence 'Kbi pull hai tumhiirii us office
me'"? (Do you have any contact in that office?)' As I have men-
tioned, contact relations were most significant for adult men. A
contact was someone with whom they created or nurtured a tie
in hope of some future utility, whether it concerned getting a job,
finding a place to live, getting children admitted in a prestigious
school or college, getting a telephone connection, pushing appli-
cations through the bur~aucracy, getting income tax reduced,
avoiding court cases, and so on.
In sociology, ties to people who may provide such favours are
often analysed in terms of 'social capital'. This concept was
originally coined by Pierre Bourdieu ( 1985), but is just as strongly
associated with James Coleman (1988, 1990), Robert Putnam
(1993a, 1993b), and Francis Fukuyama (1995). As Alejandro

152 • Blernkd Boundaries
Portes summarizes the social capital concept, it aims to capture

'the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership
in social networks or other social stn1ctures' (Portes 1998: 6).
Social capital, then, foregrounds the instrumental aspects of
social networks and covers all the people who can contribute to
them, regardless of the nature of the tie. As far as contacts were
concerned, the instrumental aspect was even more pronounced
given the fact that utility not only was a side-effect, but often also
the motivating or perpetuating force. Some of the tasks for which
my aquaintances sought contacts crossed the boundary to state
institutions or other institutions, and required that laws or regu-
lations be evaded or bent. In such cases, the use of contacts could
also have been analysed in terms of nepotism or corruption. As
Diane Singerman (1995) argues, however, this would not only
idealize the idea of the State, but also fail to capture how contacts
and networks constitute 'the political lifeline' (1995: 133) of a
person or household. In agreement with this viewpoint, I will
downplay the way contact relations undermined the state or other
institutions in order to attempt to understand the motivations that
drove my acquaintances to build contacts. This angle, as it were,
will also be most fruitful when examining what kind of people my
aquaintances got in touch with through their contact relations.
Most everyday concerns could be met with the help of friends,
relatives, or caste-fellows, particularly if they included 'big people'
and VIPs. Nevertheless, all the men I knew considered it crucial
to develop and maintain ties with people far beyond their regular
network. Dinesh Mehrotra, one of my friends from Hari Mandi,
told me that the turning point that had made him realize the
importance of contacts came when he was denied admission to
Christ Church College, a prestigious college in which he had
badly wanted admittance. Failing to secure sufficient marks in
the entrance test, he had to opt for another college instead.
'From that day itself I started,' he said, 'and only two years later,
I managed to secure admission to Christ Church for a friend of
mine who only had 45 per cent marks.' When I wanted to know
whom he had built contacts with, Dinesh evasively replied, 'I
know many. I know people everywhere now. Contacts, contacts,
contacts.'
There were many ways to develop contacts. One was to
s trengthen or resume the relationship with someone they already

A Web of 'Good: Upper-Caste Pe<>pk • 153
knew or had known at some point-whatever the category of

relationship. In anthropological network theory, such people are
referred to as reachable in one step (Mitchell 1969: 16), and as
constituting a person's 'first order star' (Barnes 1968: 113).
This happened when Pramod Sharma resumed contact with a
man he had played cricket with 30 years earlier, after learning
that he had recently been transferred from another city to the
Income Tax Department in Kanpur, which handled Pramod's
tax papers. Contrary to what Mary Hanchett (1975) observed in
Karnataka in the late 1960s, sports teams proved a very useful
source of contacts in Mohanganj-also for people way past the
age of schooling. In fact, several of my male acquaintances
stressed the importance of 'the cricket connection'. As one of
them argued, there are 11 players on a cricket team, and if one
adds up all the teams each player has joined from the age of,
say, 15 to his college graduation, one reaches quite a number
of people. Men who once had played cricket, then, had extensive
first-order stars that could be approached for assistance later
on. Besides, the 'cricket connection' was regarded as having the
benefit of the team spirit. The cooperation on the cricket field,
I was told, tended to be transformed to a loyalty so enduring that
it lasted for decades, thereby making the large first-<>rder star
a particularly potent source of contacts.
Another way in which my upper-caste acquaintances devel-
oped contacts was to build relationships with people beyond
their own personal acquaintances by pulling people from their
second-order star or beyond, into their first-<>rder star. This was
what happened when Rakesh Agarwal befriended his wife's
rakhi brother, Gopal Arora, in the hope that the latter would link
him up with his neighbour, a lawyer who might be persuaded to
help him in the court cases that followed his bankntptcy. A third
way was to attend meetings, social gatherings, and venues in
which influential people might be encountered and approached,
sometimes with the help of a mediator entrusted to make a
proper introduction. In Mohanganj, weddings appeared to be the
archetype of such congregations.
Given the purposes for which contact-building was practised,
virtually all those my acquaintances sought as contacts were
either wealthy; had influential positions, or both. Since contact-
building involved resuming or strengthening an existing relation,

or getting introduced through a common relation, most of those

my acquaintances approached as contacts hailed from the same
segment of people that they made friends from, except that the
contacts tended to be 'big' rather than merely 'good' in terms
of class. Nevertheless, not all their contacts were of upper-caste
origin. The growing representation of low castes and untouch-
ables in influential positions-a development facilitated by
positive discrimination of SCs, STs, and OBCs in governmental
offices (see also Chapter 8)-made it impossible to overlook
non-upper-<:astes as contacts.
My Mohanganj acquaintances' use of low-<:aste and untouch-
able contacts was rare. After all, people of such origins were still
underrepresented in higher administrative posts, as the percent-
age allotted to SCs, OBCs, and STs still remained to be filled.
Moreover, my acquaintances did not expect someone who was
not of upper-<:aste origin to feel the same compulsion to assist
them as a friend of a friend, a distant relative, or a caste fellow
would. On the contrary, they feared that if they approached an
OBC or SC government official for assistance, they would either
be turned down or asked for an outrageous bribe. This, at least,
was the attitude that Gopal Arora reported to have experienced
when approaching an SC government official to persuade him
to reduce the sales tax on the rice he manufactured. The official
had agreed to do the work, but only if given three bags of rice.
Gopal told me that he had been taken aback by such a steep
demand, but since the government official had refused to do the
work for only two bags, Gopal had no option but to relent. This
and similar experiences were extensively discussed among 'good'.
men in Mohanganj and supported their belief that government
officials of SC origin were more greedy than other government
officials. Some reasoned that all SCs who ascended to power
became greedy, while others explained the greed they claimed
to have experienced as a personalized revenge for centuries of
upper caste oppression. Whatever their explanations, such no-
tions made upper castes in Mohanganj regard contact-building
with low-<:astes and untouchables as a last resort.
When the contact-seeker and potential assistance-giver hailed
from the far ends of the caste hierarchy, the caste barriers-
which both undoubtedly were painfully aware of-had to be
carefully subdued. Being a Brahmin, Pramod Sharma had felt
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A Web of 'Good: Vpper-Ca.ste Peopk • 155
it necessary to develop a particular technique of confidence-

building when dealing with SC government officials. What he
normally did, he said, was to invite the official home, get one of
the women to serve them paJwriis (deep-fried snacks) on sepa-
rate plates, finish his own ponion fast and then, on the pretext
of still being hungry, lean over anc;l grab a pakora from his
visitor's plate. This technique, Pramod claimed, was very effec-
tive: 'AfterwaTds they always talk about it. They say, this Pramod
Sharma, the Pai:ic;lit, he eats food from low-caste platesl' 22 The
technique of co-eating is well-known from studies of how upper-
caste politicians have sought suppon from low-caste voters (see,
for exa1nple, Mayer 1966) but is evidently in use far beyond
electoral politics as well. What Pramod never did during such
visits, however, was to drink alcohol with his SC visitors. 'There
are Iimtis to how close I want to get to them,' he explained. Not
that it was only SCs that he was reluctant to drink with. Neither
he nor his friends would drink with men they considered superior
either. Consuming alcohol, as it were, required an intimacy and
mutual trust that could only be obtained in in-groups where the
participants considered each. other as roughly equal. 23 Still, the
reluctance to develop such intimacy suggests that caste re-
mained a barrier to contact-building with SCs even for those who
were willing to share food with them for the sake of 'getting their
work done'. For upper castes more concerned with their caste
purity than Pramod-Mamaji Sharma, for example-such a
strategy would have been unthinkable.
When my upper-caste acquaintances were sought as potential
assistance-givers rather than seeking contacts themselves, the
social boundaries that were crossed were of a different kind.
No~e of my acquaintances held influential positions, but they
could nevenheless provide mediation by linking contact-seekers
with their network of influential friends, relatives, or acquaintan-
ces. Most contact-seekers were from their own social segment,
but there were also quite a few choie log among them. My
acquaintances were not likely to offer mediation to 'small' people
to whom they had no prior relation. When approached by servants
-ri Pa1:u;lit is an honorific term of address for Brahmins.

2
' The inappropriateness of drinking alcohol or smoking in front of one's
parents was another manifestation of this cultural model.

or employees, however, they commonly agreed to broker assis-

tance. Such assistance could also be extended to the servants
and employees of their friends, as when Tilak got hold of a doctor
to operate on the cook employed by a good friend of his brother.
When my upper-caste acquaintances offered assistance to
'small people', the interaction was very different from when they
sought contact from SC government officials. It was brief and
almost dismissive-partly because of the differences of income,
education, and other class features between an SC government
official and a servant or employee, but also because it entailed
brokerage and mediation rather than direct favours. 'Small'
contact-seekers were never asked to sit down when asking for
a favour, let alone offered food or beverages. Instead, they stood
modestly, speaking with eyes glued to the ground, as the ethos
of subordination and respect prescribed. Yet, requests for as-
sistance could also be denied, even ifthe assistance-seeker was
a long-term employee. For example, Lakshman, who had worked
as a tailor for the Sharmas for decades, was turned down when
he asked for help to get his son released from the police station.
According to Lakshman, his son had been arrrested by mistake
when passing by a quarrel that developed into a minor Hindu-
Muslim tussle. Knowing about Pramod's contacts in the police
department, he hoped that some strings could be pulled. Pramod,
however, was unwilling to leave his friends, beer, and card-game
for Lakshman. When I asked why Pramod asked if I had not
noticed that Lakshman had been dead drunk (which I had not),
and argued that Lakshman would probably be able to sort the
matter out himself anyway, as it did not take more than Rs 500
to get someone released on bail. 'So why s hould I get involved?'
he rhetorically asked, continuing, 'How often can one do these
things? One thousand times?' Evidently, Pramod was afraid of
exhausting his police contact and wanted to give priority to
assitance-seekers who would be able to reciprocate in case the
need should arise.
Apart from this incident, my acquaintances were generally
forthcoming when approached by employees in need of a favour.
Even so, the employees did not always receive the assistance
they asked for. Batik, one of the carpenters who worked for the
Sharmas, once asked Tilak whether he knew someone who could
give him an eye-checkup, as he had become so short-sighted that

he could no longer read from the RamayaI}a for his illiterate

brothers at night. Though Tilak persuaded an optician acquain-
tance of his to give Balik a free checkup, the checkup was so
lackadaisical that it was virtually worthless to Balik. 'He didn't
check my eyes at all,' Batik said. 'He didn't even touch me. All
he did was to ask my age and scribble some numbers on a paper,
telling me that this was the prescription for spectacles. It all took
less than two minutes.' Whether the optician had wanted to avoid
the proximity of a low-caste-looking patient, considered it point-
less to spend time on someone unable to pay the regular fees,
or doubted Tilak's willingness to reciprocate his favour is hard
to say. It is even possible that Tilak implicitly conveyed to the
optician that it was more important that Balik thought he brokered
assistance than that he actually got a proper eye-checkup.
Whatever the reasons, this incident-as the previous one-dem-
onstrates that contact relations in which my upper-caste ac-
quaintances were the potential assistance-brokers were brief
and occasionally futile. Even so, they exemplify the only category
of relations examined in this chapter that had potential to bring
my upper-caste acquaintances together with 'small' people be-
yond their own servants and employees. Whereas contact-seek-
ing brought them in touch with influentially-positioned people of
low-caste and untouchable origin-people who appeared as
slightly anomalous because they defied the conflation of caste
with class-assistance-brokerage increased their interaction
with people who were 'small' as well.
CONCLUSIONS
The relationship categories examined in this chapter have cov-
ered most kinds of face-to-face relations that my upper-caste
acquaintances in Mohanganj had with the world beyond their
own homes. It virtually goes without saying that kinship ties and
inter-caste relations were homogeneous in terms of caste, but
friendship and contact relations had potential for a far greater
heterogeneity. As we have seen, however, the heterogeneity was
limited in practice. Friendship intesrated people of different
jatis and varQas, but only within the upper-caste segment, and
none of those I knew had friends beyond those they acknowl-
edged as 'good'. Contact relations had the largest potential for

boundary-crossing, as it brought my upper-caste acquaintances

in touch with low castes and SCs as well as selected 'small'
people. The incidents in which this happened, however, were
rare, brief, and complicated by mutual prejudice. When these
relationship categories are added up in order to assess the
composition of my upper-caste acquaintances' total social net-
works, it becomes quite evident that their social world com-
prised a thick web of 'good', upper-caste people. Cho~e log and
low caste people hardly entered their world at all, except as
subordinates or as an undifferentiated mass on the street.
The reasons were numerous and complicated. In this chapter
I have only been able to explore a few of the processes that made
the social world of my hosts, friends, and associates so solidly
upper-caste. One was the clustering of caste and class in the
venues in which friendship was made and the ground for contact-
relationships founded. Another was the personal qualities that
made friendships evolve and mature, many of which depended
on a hi'gh level of education that tended to exclude the 'small'.
The clustered social world of my acquaintances in Mohanganj
is cn1cial for understanding the way they perceived the society
beyond those they had face-to-face contact with. The upper-
casteness and acchaness of the social web in which they 1noved
was elevated to a social and cultural standard, a 'normality',
against which different looks and lifestyles were compared.
Having examined the most important notions and models
that influenced the way my upper-caste aquaintances in
Mohanganj interacted with Hindus of other social segments, it
is time to move on to the way they related to Muslims. To what
extent did they conceive of Muslims as a different kind of other
than low castes and 'small' people? In what ways did the values,
notions, and models that influenced their interaction with Hin-
dus of other segments than their own, spill over to their relations
with Muslims as \Yell? With these questions in 1nind, I will now
turn my attention to how my upper-caste acquaintances in
Mohanganj related to Muslims.
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. .. . --
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6
Ties with Muslims
One late night on the terrace I found Ritu and her mother sharing
their memories from Rampur with the youngsters in the family,
fondly remembering all the ikkiis and tongiis (horse carriages)
that used to traverse the streets. 1 This reminded Ritu about a
man who, bewildered, had seen a covered tonga stopping, ' ... and
out of it came one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten, oh, my God, fifteen burqa-clad Muslim women!' Ritu reit-
erated the man's humorous remark at this sight, and they all
laughed heartily. Stories like this were also part of everyday life
among my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj, and this
chapter and the next will examine this and other ways in which
Muslims entered their lives. When living in a city in which 20
per cent of the population was Muslim, exposure to Muslims was
inevitable-particularly in public places, like in Ritu' s story. If
Muslims were virtually absent from the three previous chapters,
it was simply because there were few Muslims among the ser-
vants, friends, and others whom my upper-caste acquaintances
most commonly associated with, and because Muslims were
rare in the streets of Mohanganj, as this was a predominately
Hindu neighbourhood.
Despite the scarcity of interreligious encounters and ties,
Muslims entered the lives of my upper-caste acquaintances in
several ways. I find it fruitful to distinguish three ways in which
they did so: (i) as strangers who could be recognized as Muslim,
1 An ikka is driven by one horse, a tonga by two horses.

such as the burqa-clad women in Ritu's story; (ii) as people they

interacted with, whether once or repeatedly; and (iii) as an object
of discourse, be it locally or in the media. This chapter is devoted
to item (i) and (ii), while item (iii)-the imagination of the
Muslim Other-is deferred to Chapter 7. TI1e present chapter
will devote particular attention to the personal ties between my
upper-caste acquaintances on the one hand, and Muslims on the
other, and I will argue that, at the level of personal interaction,
Muslims entered their networks in st rikingly similar ways as
acche log and choie log. Even so, Muslims were c learly perceived
as 'good' and 'small' in different ways, something that induced
my informants to regulate the contact with them a little differ-
ently. By comparing the degree to which Muslims and low-caste
or 'small' Hindus were accepted as friends and marriage part-
ners, I will a lso suggest that, at the level of personal relations,
boundaries of caste and class ran deeper than religious ones.
Both these arguments will have implications for the issues I am
going to discuss in the chapters that follow.
In terms of theory, my examination of encounters and rela-
tions with Muslims sustains the interest in network analysis and
everyday practices that influenced the previous chapter. The
introductory outline of visual recognition of Muslims, however,
draws on the cognitive science perspective I employed when
discussing the categorization of strangers in Chapter 4. It should
be noted that the empirical basis for this chapter is not as sound
as in the previous chapters. This could hardly be otherwise since
my friends and informants in Mohangartj interacted far less with
Muslims than with others. To be able to trace patterns in inter-
religious interaction I will therefore have to move further out in
my network of acquaintances and rely more heavily on verbal
statements than on first-hand observations. Without having con-
ducted fieldwork among Muslims, I must also depend on sec-
ondary sources for background infonnation on Muslims in Kanpur
and beyond.
RELIGIOUS IDENfIFICATION AND ClASSIFICATION

As several historians and social scientists have pointed out, the
clear-cut division between Hindus and Muslims is more recent
than the Hindu nationalist ideology presupposes. As late as

Ties with Mu.slims • 161
towards the end of the nineteenth century, a number of commu-

nities were as influenced by Islamic beliefs as by Hindu prac-
tices, as Rafiuddin Ahmed (1981) exemplifies with the gradual
formation of Muslim identity in Bengal, and Shail Mayaram
(1997) with the oral history of the Meos in eastern Rajasthan.
In the early days of census enumeration, several communities
resisted binary classification as either Hindu or Muslim. Sumit
Sarkar (1999) describes how a superintendent for the 1911
Census, scratching his head over the mixed religious practices
and self-definitions in Gujarat, recorded a 35,000-strong com-
munity as ' Hindu-Muhammedans'. His superior promptly sent
him back to the field, ordering him to find a way to categorize
them as either Hindus or Muslims, in accordance with the
British colonial view of religious identities as discrete (cf. S.
Sarkar 1996: 279). Even in localities where people clearly iden-
tified themselves as either Hindu or Muslim, there are numerous
examples of saints and places that ~ttracted both Hindus and
Muslims (see, for example, Currie 1989; Pandey 1990: 128;
Stewart 2002), of Hindu patronage of Muslim institutions and
vice versa (see, for example, Gordon 2000; Nandy et al. 1997
(1995): 2) and of participation in religious rituals of the other
community. In Lucknow; for example, Hindus frequently partici-
pated in Muharram processions in the early nineteenth century
(Freitag 1989: 258-9), whereas Muslims panicipated in divali
at least until the 1940s (Bhatty 1999: 311). Towards the end of
the twentieth century, however, what Kaviraj (1992) terms fuzzy
communities had long lost way to clear-cut religious identities,
not the least in the cities. Kanpur was no exception. The very
thought of someone presenting themselves as Hindu and Muslim
at the same time would have been unthinkable in this city-
with the possible exception of offspring of interreligious mar-
riages. Taking part in religious rituals associated with the other
community was equally unthinkable, but until recently it had not
been uncommon for Hindus to visit their Muslim friends for id-
ul-fitr and for Muslims to drop by their Hindu friends for divali-
until the Hindu nationalist wave put an end to that too, at least
tern porarily.
The clear-cut religious identities in Kanpur by no means
entailed that every stranger one encountered in the streets
and markets could be accurately identified as either Hindu or

Muslim. Muslims without markers associated with their reli-

gious community-for example, an ordinary fellow dressed in
shirt and trousers-could easily melt into the mass of strangers
whom my acquaintances simply categorized along the cho~a
accha scale. Compared to class-categorization, religious clas-
sification rested even more on visual markers, whereof the most
important was clothing. As Ritu's story reveals, women were
immediately recognized as Muslim if wearing burqas, which
were long cloaks in dull colours-usually black, brown or beige-
that covered their clothing. The burqlis had matching headgear
that covered the hair, with attached veils that could be lifted over
to cover the face as well. Burqa-clad women were a rare sight
in Mohanganj, but my acquaintances could also recognize fe-
male strangers as Muslim by the chunnis (thin scarves) that
some used to cover their hair or faces with. Veils appeared to
be an object of fascination among many non-Muslim girls. The
kids in Hari Mandi were experts in tying mock veils of thin
chiffon chunnis, and on one occasion they even dressed me up
in one and paraded me around in the courtyard while giggling
'Look, look, Kitty has become a Muslim!' A young Christian
woman was fond of imitating what she termed 'the Benazir
look'-a shawl loosely draped over her hair in the style ofBenazir
Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan-in front of the mir-
ror at home, but would never wear it outside lest people mistake
her for a Muslim.
Among the clothes that could identify male strangers as
Muslim were pa0an suits. These were similar to the kurta-
pajamlis worn by Hindu men, but had rounded tails instead of
squared ones and shirt collars instead of rounded necks. More-
over, Muslim men were more often seen in grey, brown, or
black clothing than Hindus, who normally got their Indian-style
clothing made in white. However, white pa~hlin suits were also
common, not the least on religious occasions. Whenever I spot-
ted a large congregation of white-clad men it was either a
Muslim funeral procession or Muslims on the way to or from
Friday namiiz (prayers). Many working-class Muslims dressed
in lungis, a blue and green-chequered cloth tied around the
waist like a skirt. Beards that grew all the way around the face
rather than being concentrated around the mouth and chin were
also considered as characteristic of Muslims. Finally, men

Tin with Muslims • 163
wearing topis (round caps) were also immediately understood

to be Muslim.
People without Muslim clothing could still be assumed to be
Muslim by the lack of visual markers associated with Hindus.
This was especially the case for married women, as vinually all
Hindu wives wore binars (red dots) on the forehead, sindur
(vermilion powder) in the parting of their hair and mangol.siitras
(necklace worn by married women) . Middle-aged women with
none of these markers were often assumed to be either Muslim
or ultra-modern. Several of those I associated with also claimed
to be able to identify the religious background of strangers
merely by looking at their facial features. Muslims, they held,
had broader cheekbones, and some added that the look in their
eyes was 'more sinister and angry' than the 'innocent looks of
Hindus '. The latter was probably a manifestation of the Hindu
nationalist stereotype that Muslims are violent and Hindus
peaceful, which I will return to in the subsequent chapter. Having
guessed at the religious denomination of a stranger on the
street, it would hardly be appropriate to test the guesswork by
asking. Thus, religious categorization was no more subjected
to falsification than the cho~a-accha categorization, something
that ensured the longevity of assumptions concerning 'typical
Muslim' facial features and expressions. Even those who held
themselves able to determine religious background from facial
features had to admit that their own Muslim acquaintances were
exceptions.
Religious categorization and cho~a-accha categorization oc-
curred simultaneously. A stranger with henna-dyed 'Muslim-
style' beard, greying T-shirt, lungi and chappals could fully
well be seen as both Muslim and 'small' at the same time. Thus,
the religious heterogeneity of Kanpur provides an additional
dimension to the analysis of categorization that I presented in
Chapter 4. By square-minded logic, one might infer that there
were not only two, but four prototypes at play: cho~e Hindus,
cho~e Muslims, acche Hindus and acche Muslims.Judged by the
verbal idioms that my upper-caste acquaintances used, however,
this was not the case. The idioms they used were cho~e log,
acche log and Muslims-or, more commonly, Muhammedans or
Mussalmans. In most contexts the Muslim category was simply
incommensurable with the other two, as 'Muslim' was contrasted

with 'Hindu' and not with any class category. In other contexts,
however, 'Muslim' emerged as a special case of the class catego-
ries. According to this logic, on the one hand there were 'good'
people, and on the other, there were 'good' people who happened
to be Muslim. This logic was not made manifest in any lexical
idioms or verbal expressions, but I will nevertheless argue that
this was the principle according to which upper castes in
Mohanganj regulated their face-to-face interaction with Muslims.
NEITHER SHIA AND SUNNI, NOR 1\JLAF AND ASRAF

Before providing empirical suppon for this clain:i, it may be
useful to outline some of the internal subdivisions that Muslims
in Kanpur themselves were likely to consider significant, but
which my upper-caste acquaintances were unconcerned with. In
addition to contrasting the cultural logic that structured their
interaction with Muslims, it also allows me to provide some
background information on Muslims in Kanpur. The largest
concentration of Muslims was downtown, in the city centre. This
was also repeatedly pointed out by my upper-caste friends, for
whom the stereotypical Muslim locality was Chamanganj, a
densely populated, relatively poor, and overwhelmingly Muslim
muhallii (old urban neighbourhood) in the hean of Kanpur. The
urban concentration of Muslims is also reflected in the census:
in 1991, Muslims comprised 17.4 per cent of the population
within the administrative unit of Kanpur Nagar (city), and some-
what more-20.4 per cent-if we exclude the pans of the admin-
istrative unit that are characterized as rural. 2 As my fieldwork
included limited interaction with Muslims, I have no first-hand
knowledge on internal subdivisions among Muslims in Kanpur,
but I -assume that occupational differences and class were just
as significant among them as among my Hindu acquaintances.
Here, howe\.er, I will be mostly concerned with subdivisions that
were unique to the Muslim minority, namely those between Shias
and Sunnis on the one hand, and between ajliifand airaJMuslims
2 Despite its name, the administrative boundaries of Kanpur Nagar
include some of the rural outskirts. Most of the rural areas that surround
Kanpur, however, fall within Kanpur Dehat (countryside). The percentages
are calculated from the figures in Census ofIndia 1991, C9 Religion Table.

Ties with Muslims • 165
on the other. When I assume these distinctions to have been

significant in Kanpur, it is either because they kept cropping up
in local newspapers, or because they are frequently mentioned
in the scholarly literature on Muslims in this part of India.
The newspapers were only concerned with the distinction
between Shias and Sunnis.' Their relative strength in India is
uncenain, as the Census of India has abolished sectarian count-
ing of heads. According to the 1921 Census, the Sunnis consti-
tuted an overwhelming majority of the Muslim population in all
the provinces ofB1·itish India, the Shias not exceeding 4 per cent
in any of the provinces (M. Hasan 1998: 357).4 As far as Inde-
pendent India is concerned, all we have are loose estimates,
most claiming that Shias comprise about 10-15 per cent of the
total Muslim population in India (for sources, see M. Hasan
1997: 4, note 5), though a few sources (such as Singh 1990)
claim the percentage of Shias to be as high as 30. If the rela-
tionship between Shias and Sunnis was troubled in Kanpur at the
time of my fieldwork, it never reached the newspapers. In
Lucknow, however, it had been somewhat strained ever since
the 1930s (M. Hasan 1998). 5 The main source of contention was
3
Shias and Sunnis differ somewhat in religious faith and practice, a
difference originally rooted in a disagreement on the successor of the
Prophet. In early Islamic history the Shias were a political faction that
supported the power of Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad and the fourth
caliph of.the Muslim community. While the Shias claimed that Ali and his
lineage were chosen by the Prophet as an imiim (religious leader), the
Sunnis were pragmatically willing to accept the leadership of any caliph
with the desired personal qualities.
4
According to David Gilmartin, however, the Census figure is probably
too low, since Shia identity was often concealed, and since the Shia-Sunni
distinction was less clear<ut than today. The reason, Gilmartin suggests,
is that many families contained both Shias and Sunnis. In some areas
women were more likely to be Shias than men, but were registered as
Sunnis after the religion of the family head. Furthermore, many Sunnis
venerated the family of the Prophet and displayed Shia tendencies though
they still considered themselves Sunnis (Gilmartin, personal communica-
tion). A study from the early 1940s puts the figure at about 8 per cent
(Smith 1946 (1943): 372).
5 The Muslim minority in l.AJcknow comprised 25 per cent of its urban
population in the 1990s, but the relative strength of Shias and Sunnis was
as uncertain as for India as a whole. According to Mushirul Hasan ( 1998:

the annual ten-day period of Muharram, which, according to

Pandey, 'Muslims, especially Shias, observe in memory of the
martyrs Imam Hasan and Imam Hussein who lost their lives in
battle at the Karbala' (1995 (1990]: 34).6 The Azdari proces-
sions during Muharram included an element in which Shia
processionists publicly denounced the first three caliphs who
succeeded the Prophet, thereby upsetting and provoking the
Sunnis. Violent clashes between the groups in 1974 and 1977
made the federal government in Uttar Pradesh impose a ban on
Azdari processions altogether. 7 During my fieldwork in 1997,
newspapers reported that the Shias agitated for lifting the ban
through demonstrations, self-immolations (two causing deaths),
and painting parts of the city black.8 Fearing that the agitation
would spread to Kanpur, the district administration deployed
police forces around the Shia mosques in Kanpur, as well as on
the rooftops in areas thought to be sensitive. 9 Kanpur remained
peaceful, but the existence of separate mosques and the fear
that violence between Shias and Sunnis might erupt for the first
358), Shias constituted 10.7 per cent of the Muslim population in Lucknow
in 1882. This was more than elsewhere in the United Provinces (which
covered roughly the same a rea as Uttar Pradesh today), and more than
the percentage of Shi as in India on the whole, but little considering their
political strength in Lucknow during navabi rule. The only estimate I have
seen of the relative strength of Shias and Sunnis in Lucknow in the 1990s,
was in a newspaper article which claimed that the old city was inhabited
by about 30 per cent Shias and 70 per cent Sunnis ('Shias take out protest
march against ban on procession', the Times of India, Lucknow, 19 April
1997).
6 For closer descriptions ofMuharram in Lucknow, see M. Hasan (1998)
and Ansari (1998). For a fictional account, see Vikram Seth's novel A
Suitabk Buy (1994 [1993): 1144), which describes Muharram in Brahmpur,
an invented city that could well have been a hybrid of Lucknow and Kanpur.
7
'Curfew in Lucknow area after Shia, Sunni clashes', the Times of India,
29 April 1999.
" The ban on Azdari processions was eventually lifted in 1998, at the
•
initiative of the then chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh. Grati-
tude towards the political party he represented, the Bharatiyajanata Party
(BJP), made many Shias in Lucknow pledge support to this party in the
Lok Sabha election that followed in 1999 "('Lucknow Shias pledge support
to BJP', the Times of India, 16 September 1999).
~· 'ld-ul-Zuha passes off peacefully', the Pioneer, Kanpur, 20 April 1997.

Tits with Muslims • 167
time since 1976 (Brass 1997: 210) suggest that the distinction
between Shias and Sunnis remained vital in Kanpur-at least in
matters of religion.
A subdivision I never encountered in the local press, but which
I often have come across in academic literature, is the one
between ajlaf and asraf Muslims. This subdivision does not refer
to sectarian belonging, but to descent. According to Vatuk (1996),
asraf Muslims claim to descend from the various waves of
migrants from Persia and other countries west of the Indian
subcontinent. The Urdu term asraf (plural of sharift means
'noble and respectable', and asraf Muslims are further divided
into categories such as Syed, Shaikh, Mughal, and Pathan. In
contrast, the term ajlaf (plural of jilft, which a renowned Urdu
dictionary translates as 'base, mean or ignoble people; the lower
orders' (Platts 1997: 24), refers to descendants of indigenous
people who converted to Islam, most of them in the medieval
period when parts of the Indian subcontinent were controlled by
rulers from Central Asia. How and why this conversion occurred
have been questions of much political contention. Forced con-
version was probably far less common than what Hindu nation-
alists believe. Most convincing research shows that Islam
emerged as a 'Great Tradition' alongside Brahminical Hindu-
ism, and that both expanded at the expense of local beliefs and
practices (Eaton 1994). The egalitarian tenets of Islam seem
to have been particularly attractive to low castes and untouch-
ables.10 Many ajlaf Muslims are still identified by names that
indicate their occupation or caste, such as Ansari or Julaha
(weaver) . 11 Yet, as a Muslim woman in l.Alcknow maintained,
'people take on names today but there are all sorts of people
under that name. ... So if I tell you I'm a Khan, you won't believe
me.... It's all mixed up these days.' (Wilkinson-Weber 1999:
JO Low-caste conversion to Islam is not only a phenomenon of the past.
Mujahid ( 1989) gives an account of the conversion of several thousand ex-
untouchables to Islam in Tamil Nadu ir 1981-2. However, ex-untouchables
seeking to improve their social status and self-dignity by religious conver-
sion today more commonly convert to Buddhism and Christianity than to
Islam.
11 For accounts of Ansari weavers in urban Uttar Pradesh that stress
other aspects of their lives than traces of caste, see Mehta (1997) for
Barabanki and Kumar ( 1988) for Banaras.

73). The scholarly literature on Uttar Pradesh holds that asraf

Muslims are predominately Shias and ajlaf Muslims predomi-
nately Sunnis. In particular, this holds true for Lucknow, where
the former princely rulers--the navabs-were Shias, though
some of the asraf Muslims in the administration were Sunnis as
well (M. Hasan 1998: 348-9; Srinivasan 1989: 50). Asrafs are
often referred to as a Muslim elite (see, for example, Bayly
l 975a: 129; M. Hasan 1997: 38; Raju 1993: 82). If generalized,
Sunnis are often described as a 'lower class' (Bayly 1975a: 139),
and several scholars unquestioningly translate ajlaf as 'of low
origin' (Engineer 1985: 275), 'low-horns' (M. Hasan 1997: 38),
or 'low caste artisans' (Srinivasan 1989: 50). 12
During my fieldwork I frequently took the train between Delhi
and Lucknow, Kanpur being one of the main stations on the route.
My fellow passengers were often curious to know what a foreigner
was doing on the train. When I told them about my research
interests, my mention of the word 'Muslim' triggered a widely
different response from passengers from Lucknow than from
passengers from Kanpur. The Lucknovites tended to associate
'Muslims' with the navabs, who ruled Awadh for a century follow-
ing the disintegration of the Mughal Empire, and who used
Lucknow as their capital. Almost everything the Lucknovites took
pride in about their city--the architecture, the poetry, the 'sweet-
ness' of the Urdu-derived language, the pahle lip (you first)
politesse-was attributed to the navabs and their influence. For
passengers from Lucknow, then, the word 'Muslim' had a pre-
dominantly positive connotation. Passengers from Kanpur, how-
ever, squarely associated the term 'Muslim' with poverty, illiteracy,
and a number of other negative features to which I will return in
the next chaptei;-. This was probably because a larger proportion
of the Muslims in Kanpur were descendants of rural artisans who
12 A few sources mention a third category of Muslims known as anal
(plural of rcu.il), which Plan's dictionary translates as 'low mean, or com-
mon people; the vulgar; the rabble' (Platts 1997: 40). Those who mention
it claim that it comprises descendants of untouchable and low-caste con-
verts to Islam, and that ajlafs are middle- and upper<aste converts.
Ironically, this is maintained by as politically antagonistic persons as the
radical Muslim leader Syed Shahabuddin (1997) and the Hindutva propa-
gator Sita Ram Goel (1998), but I have not come across any scholarly
support for this view.

Tia with Muslims • 169
migrated to Kanpur in search of unskilled work in the nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries, when Kanpur was transformed
from a village to an industrial centre. Most of the Muslims here,
then, were probably ajliif. There was cenainly a majority of ajliifs
in Lucknow as well-including the famous chilwn embroiderers
and zariweavers 15-but the navabi history of Lucknow seemed to
make Hindu notions of Muslims more nuanced.
While Muslims in Kanpur presumably considered themselves
subdivided into Shias and Sunnis, and ajliifs and a8rafs, I never
heard my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj r_e fer to these
distinctions. In pan, this was probably because topics penaining
to religion and the minority situation were carefully avoided in
direct interaction with Muslims, and in part because their edu-
cation had taught them little, if anything, about Islam (or Hin-
duism, for that matter). I remember asking someone what he
knew about Islam, only to be asked back: 'What do I have to know
about Islam?' Though my upper-caste acquaintances were un-
concerned with Muslim notions of descent and purity, they cer-
tainly distinguished between Muslims of different social status.
It is possible that most of the Muslims they perceived as 'good'
were a8raf·while most of the rest were ajliif. Nevertheless, if
self-ascribed Muslim subdivisions overlapped with the upper-
caste Hindu logic that structured interreligious relations, it does
not entail that they were similar. I will argue that they were
different, and as I hope to substantiate below, my acquaintances
structured their personal interaction with Muslims in roughly
similar ways as they structured their interaction with Hindus of
different kinds.
INTERRELIGIOUS MARRIAGE
As I noted in the previous chapter, my upper-caste acquaintan-

ces in Mohanganj hardly had any relations with people of 'small'
or low-caste background beyond employment relations. Among
r3 Chikan work is a particular style of embroidery on thin conon,

believed to be a speciality of Muslim craftswomen in Lucknow. Women all
over North India wear salvar-kurtas and saris of chikan work in the hot
season. Zari is a style of weaving that resembles golden brocade, often
used in exclusive silk saris..

170 • B/,ewkd Boundaries
the reasons, I argued, was their low representation in the settings

and venues in which personal relations were formed, including
private schools and colleges, particularly in the past. However,
educational institutions had long brought upper-caste children
and youngsters together with Muslims, thereby resulting in friend-
ships, romance, and even marriages across the religious bound-
ary. Let me start by looking at interreligious marriages, which
were dreaded by almost all parents of marriageable youngsters.
Leaving Gopal Arora and Ritu Sharma, most said that they would
probably excommunicate their sons or daughters in case they
married so1neone of their own choice without prior permission.
,.The worst scenario, most said, would be to experience their
children marrying an SC or a Muslim. While such statements
juxtaposed untouchables and Muslims as the most unsuitable
marriage partners they could think of, actual cases of interreli-
gious marriage appeared to be 1net with weaker sanctions than
marriages across wide gaps of caste or class.
One of the most problematic Hindu-Muslim marriages within
the social circles of my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj
concerned a young Khatri girl named Neha who had eloped with
and married her Muslim classmate. I never spoke to her parents
about it, but her 12-year-old sister, Tanu, told me that they had
been, and still were, quite upset, not the least because their
daughter had converted to Islam and taken the Muslim name
Heena, as her parents-in-law requested. At first the parents had
tried to sever contact, but they missed Neha/Heena too much to
stick to their decision. Now, some four years later, they visited
each other now and then but, as Tanu said, 'the relationship is
not as close as it used to be'. While I would assume that marriage
and change of residence alter the relationship between a young
woman and her parents whoever she marries, Tanu interpreted
the change as solely rooted in the husband's Muslim background.
Moreover, she claimed that the husband had started to leer at
other young women on the street, and that, whenever Neha/
Heena complained about it, he told her that he regretted mar11•-
ing her. 'A Khatri man would never have behaved like this,' Tanu
concluded. Her interpretation of her sister's marriage left little
doubt of her disapproval, though everyone in the family, including
herself, seemed to do their best to 1nake the relationship as
smooth as possible.

Tw with Muslims • 171
A somewhat Jess problematic interreligious marriage con-

cerns the younger brother of Kallu, the Khatri lecturer. Roshan,
as his name was, worked as a medical doctor in England, and in
the mid-1970s he had fallen in love with a woman he met there.
Her name was Sheyla, and she was a Kashmiri Muslim. When
Roshan and Sheyla informed their respective families that they
were to get married in England, Roshan's parents were not
exactly jubilant. Yet they took it relatively lightly-partly because
Roshan lived abroad and had a life of his own, and partly because
the family had already resigned to inter-caste marriage once,
when Kallu married the Baniyli girl next door. Realizing that there
was little they could do, they gave the couple their consent and
blessings. But Sheyla's family was furious. Two of her brothers,
I was told, came down from Kashmir to Kanpur a few days prior
to the wedding to threaten the Malhotras to persuade Roshan and
Sheyla to give up their marriage plans, or else. Nobody remem-
bered exactly what the 'or else' involved, but everyone recalled
that the incident had been quite scary. When I was told about this
marriage over 15 years later, the couple reportedly lived happily
in England. They visited Kanpur and Kashmir every second year
or so, and the family in Kanpur had long overcome whatever
misgivings they originally had about the marriage.
The third interreligious marriage I encountered had resulted
in divorce years before I entered the scene, and concerned an
acquaintance of Gopal Arora named Anjali. Anjali, a Brahmin
woman, had married a man from the Muslim elite in Lucknow.
I do not know their respective families' reaction to their mar-
riage, but, judging from Anjali's family background, I assume
that her parents had considered the alliance relatively
unproblematic. Though Brahmins by birth, they held little esteem
for Brahmin ideals, and this was not the first violation of caste
endogamy in the family. Moreover, Anjali's mother had spent
several years abr.oad for education and work, and the family had
long been politically liberal. Anjali and her husband had a son,
but divorced some ten years later. I did not know her well enough
to find it appropriate to inquire about her divorce, but would be
greatly surprised if she had ascribed it to religious differences.
However, people who knew Anjali through hearsay, such as the
Sharmas, were quick to use her divorce to support their convic-
tion that interreligious marriages-as other marriages based on

romantic love-were more divorce-prone than arranged, caste-

endogamous 1narriages.
Even the Sharmas, however, had an interreligious marriage
among their caste-fellows and in-laws, as Ritu's younger sister
had married a Muslim. 14 Ritu had grown up in Ram pur, a city
in which the percentage of Muslims exceeded 50, and where the
pattern of residence was less segregated with respect to religion
than in Kanpur. Many of their neighbours and friends had been
Muslim but, according to Ritu, she and her siblings had hardly
given religious differences a thought. When her younger sister
fell in love with her brother's Muslim friend and declared her
intention to marry him, it seemed but natural to Ritu and her
family. The eldest sister had already got married outside their
Brahmin jati (to a Punjabi), and Ritu reckoned that the only
reason why she had ended up in an arranged marriage herself
was that she had reached marriageable age without having fallen
in love. Ritu had only positive views about her sister's marriage:
'They are a perfect match. They are made for each other. You
should see the way they look at each other. And he is so hand-
some!' Ritu thought her sister fonunate to have been brought up
by a liberal family, adding that if she had been raised by a family
like the Sharmas (into which she was married herself) , she
would never have been allowed to marry a Muslim. Fonunately,
the Shar1na fa1nily' s disapproval of interreligious marriages did
not affect their behaviour towards Ritu's Musli1n brother-in-law.
He was always invited for weddings along with other in-laws, and
his Muslim background was never an issue on such occasions.
An interreligious marriage that I learned about as late as
2001, concerned one of Gopal Arora's good friends, Naresh
Shukla. He was a medical doctor who had lived and worked in
Dubai for 15-0dd years (which was why I did not meet him
earlier), but who now had returned to Kanpur with his wife,
Duha, a Muslim woman he had met in Dubai. Naresh's parents
were onhodox Brahmins and had been strictly against this
marriage. According to Gopal, they were still to accept her as
14
In tenns of descent, Ritu and her sister were cousins, but since Ritu
had been brought up in the joint family of her maternal uncles, she
regarded her cousins as sisters and brothers by sentiment as well as by
kinship terms.

TiM with Muslims • 173
their daughter-in-law even though Duha had done her utmost to

appropriate their habits, tastes, and traditions. She had learned
Hindi, forsaken Islam, and performed all important Hindu ritu-
als such as divali and karvachauth. Out of respect for her hus-
band and in-Jaws' dietary habits, she only cooked and ate
vegetarian food at home. However, in accordance with the wide-
spread belief that Muslims need meat, Naresh took her out to
a restaurant once a week 'so that she could have some meat',
as Copa! expressed it.
The five interreligious marriages mentioned above had all
occurred within the first-order networks of my upper-caste ac-
quaintances in Mohanganj. Of these, two had been sanctioned
from the upper-caste Hindu side, whereof only one permanently.
The three final cases were either unsanctioned or indetermi-
nate. In contrast, the same first-order networks contained only
one marriage that crossed a notable difference of class, and I
had to search far beyond the first-order networks to find a
marriage across the opposite ends of the caste hierarchy. The
intercaste marriage concerned a distant relath~e of the Sharmas,
a young woman in Lucknow, who eloped with a fellow student in
the late 1980s. The boy, I was told, was 'son of a minister from
one of the Scheduled Castes', 'probably some chamar', they
said when I asked them to specify. After the couple ran away to
get married, her family was quite upset, but found it hard to turn
their back upon their daughter, as some families do. Hence, they
reluctantly accepted their son-in-law after a while and, as far as
the Sharmas knew, the couple was still happily married. Despite
the happy ending, we should note that the Sharmas remembered
the girl more for the elopement than anything else. They did not
even remember her name; she was always referred to as 'the one
who ran off with a Scheduled Caste', something that in itself
indicates the inappropriateness of such a match. The class-
crossing elopement concerned a friend of the Sharmas and
Aroras, Ved Tiwari, whose youngest daughter ran off with a young
Sindhi man and married him in court. This was an intercaste
marriage too, but what was problematic in this case was the
young man's low-class status. He hailed from a poor family, had
no education to speak of, and sold sweets in a small sweetshop
at the end of the lane in which Ved's family lived. 'Sitting on the
ground he was selling them!' Ved exclaimed. 'Such was the

174 • Blended Boundarns
status of that boy.' Even worse was Ved's suspicion that it was
the boy's mother who had persuaded him to seduce a girl from
a better-off family, as one of the other residents in the lane had
overheard the mother telling someone that 'when they die, we
will get 50 per cent'. 15 Ved's solution was to do what the Sharma
family's relatives in Lucknow found themselves unable to do: he
refused to talk to his daughter and did his utmost to pretend she
was dead. Only time will tell if he will soften his stance.
The first-order networks of my acquaintances in Mohanganj
did not only contain more interreligious marriages than alliances
between upper castes and low castes, and between 'good' and
'small' people; the average interreligious marriage also seemed
to be met with weaker sanctions. The scarcity of marriages that
crossed such significant boundaries renders it impossible to
draw firm conclusions, but the same pattern was reflected in the
local newspapers. Not once did I encounter a press repon on
violence following an interreligious love relationship or mar-
riage, but several times a week there were repons on violence or
killings following the elopement of young upper-caste women with
men of low or untouchable caste background. 16 Once I even met
a person who had experienced such violence himself. This man,
who had no connection with my acquaintances in Mohanganj, was
a thiny-six-year-old I accidentally met while waiting for a delayed
train at Kanpur Central Station. After the usual opening lines
about home country, work, and family, he told me how unhappy
he was over being unable to marry his girlfriend, as she was a
Jain while he was a Thakur. When I asked why he didn't opt for
a love marriage, he replied that he feared his father's reaction:
when he was younger, his cousin sister had run off with some
fellow, and his father had shot them both. Due to the family's
political connections, he had never been taken to coun.
The actual love marriages that I was told about or encountered
in the newspapers, then, suggest that interreligious marriages,
15
If the boy's mother really had said this, it was probably because she
reckoned that Ved's two daughters would inherit 50 per cent each of their
parents' property.
16 Most of these incidents occurred in villages near Kanpur or elsewhere
in Uuar Pradesh. Whether this indicated a lower occurrence of such

elope1nents in the cities, or that they were sanctioned in less violent ways
and thus kept out of the newspaper, is hard to say.

Ties wilh Muslims • 175
though by no means readily approved, were somewhat more

acceptable than marriages across wide differences of caste and
class. Though few in number, the cases I encountered suggest
that the acceptability of interreligious marriage depended just
as much on the family's political outlook and history of inter-
caste marriages as on its caste background. Most important,
however, they indicate that the upper-caste reluctance to accept
a Muslim or low-caste daughter-in-law or son-in-law was softened
if he or she hailed from a background that was as 'good' in terms
of class as it could get without being upper-caste Hindu. This is
something I will pursue further in the next section, which shifts
the attention to interreligious friendship.
INfERRELIGIOUS FRIENDSHIP
The friendship circles of my upper-caste acquaintances in
Mohanganj were so strongly clustered according to caste and
class that I failed to find a single low-caste or •small' person
within them. Yet they did include a few Muslims, and in this
section I will draw out a few points concerning interreligious
friendship by describing some of the cases I learned about,
starting with children. The first child I approached with my
curiosity about interreligious friendship was Kailash Kapoor's
eight-year-old nephew Munna, who went to a boys' class in Meth-
odist School, one of the prestigious schools in Kanpur. When I
asked him how many Muslim classmates he had, he staned to
count, raising one finger for each name: 'Salim, Rashid, Kalim,
Azeer, and the other Kalim ... hmmmm [pauses] ... Sadiq. Six.'
Besides telling us that at least six of his 35-40 classmates were
Muslim, the thought process he went through indicates an inter-
esting paradox: his ready recognition of cenain personal na1nes
as Muslim shows that he was raised in an environment with high
awareness of religious differences, but at the same time he
seemed unable to recognize his classmates' religious back-
ground without the help of their names.
Classmates, however, are not the same as friends. At least
Munna didn't think so, because he only counted one of his six
Muslim classmates as a friend. This boy, however, lived so far
away-in Jajmau, the satellite town in which Kanpur's leather
tanneries are concentrated-that the two were rarely able to

meet after school hours .. Gurbiya Sharma told me a similar story

fro1n her school days. Like Munna, she had had six or seven
Muslim classmates, but Gurhiya counted none of them among
her friends-not because they were Muslim, she assured me, but
because 'we are already six friends who are close, and that's
enough'. However, Munna's elder sister Madhuri, who was 15 at
the time, had made several good Muslim friends at school.
Religious belonging, she said, made no difference whatsoever
in her class. Indeed, the most popular girl in class was the
Muslim girl at the desk behind her. One of the reasons for her
popularity was that she was brave enough to whisper naughty
words about the teacher when the latter turned her face towards
the blackboard. Along with this girl, Madhuri and a handful of
others had formed a clique they called The Gorgeous Seven, a
clique that ca1ne into being because the girls considered each
other witty and had fun together. Interreligious friendship among
children, though by no means as common as friendship between
upper-caste Hindu kids, seemed to be structured by similar push
and pull factors as friendship among adult men: meeting venue,
practicalities, and mutual liking. Religious background seemed
significant to the extent it influenced these variables, presum-
ably because the children mostly met during school hours and
rarely visited each others' homes.
While 'youngsters' may be a dubious category in many Indian
settings (cf. Gupta 2002), it serves a purpose in this section as
it captures the time between high school and family responsi-
bilities in which friendships had matured and the meeting ven-
ues had shifted fro1n classrooms and schoolyards to homes and
public places. Home visits also enabled me to observe Hindu
and Muslim friends together, and my first opponunity arose at
the very beginning of 1ny fieldwork, when I was staying with the
Kapoors. One evening, twenty-<>ne-year-<>ld Ajay, with whom I had
discussed Hindu-Muslim relations on several occasions, told
me that one of his Muslim friends had dropped by. Would I like
to meet him? Ajay added that Mukhtar, as he was called, was
one of his closest friends, and that they had known each other
since Class 1. I had to answer fast, but a sudden-and in hind-
sight probably unwarranted-worry that emphasizing religious
differences could affect their friendship negatively, made me
decline. Ajay and Mukhtar retreated to Ajay's room with their

T~s with Muslims • 177
lunch trays, where they remained until they left for a wedding in
Faridabad a couple of hours later.
An interreligious friendship I got to observe closer was that
between Anoop, Gopal Arora's twenty-one-year old son, and
Hanif, the son of Anjali and her Muslim husband. Hanif had a
Muslim father and a Muslim name, but lived with his Brahmin
mother and grandparents. He claimed to be neither Muslim nor
Hindu by belief, but both in terms of identity. Yet, since Anoop
occasionally made a point of Hanifs Muslim background, their
friendship deserves a place in this section. Like most male
youngsters from 'good' families, Anoop, Hanif, and a third friend,
Samu, spent much of their leisure time roaming all over Kanpur,
occasionally dropping by one of their respective homes for a
shower, a TV film, or a meal-or to beg money from their
parents for Pepsi and takeaway kebabs. Shortly after my 1997
fieldwork, Hanif moved to Chennai and Anoop to Delhi, both to
pursue a job. Due to homesickness, I presume, both started to
send me e-mails, in which a recurring theme was how much they
missed Kanpur, their friends and, especially, each other. To the
extent this friendship was interreligious, the crossing of reli-
gious identities was entirely unproblematic. However, it was not
always so. The friendship between a twenty-five-year-old Brah-
min girl named Jyoti Dixit and her best friend since her early
schooldays, Leyla, was dealt a serious blow by a prank Leyla
played on her. Jyoti was a strict vegetarian. At home her family
did not only abstain from meat, but also from onion, garlic, and
even tea. In contrast, Leyla and her family were Muslims and
fond of meat. Jyoti had never feared eating in Leyla's house as
long as she was served pure vegetarian food. One day, however,
Leyla offered her ajackfruit curry with a funny smell, and, when
Jyoti asked, Leyla laughed that it was mutton curry. By the time
Leyla had put the real jackfruit curry on the table, Jyoti had
already lost her appetite. Jyoti told me that she was sure that
Leyla would have stopped her before she had taken a bite of the
mutton curry, and that she still tntsted and appreciated her, but
their friendship was no longer as unconditional as before. This
suggests the importance of different dietary habits and food
avoidances as sources of friction in interreligious friendship,
something I will discuss in more detail below. It also suggests
the kind of contexts in which such friction could emerge, namely,

178 • Blnuied .Boundaries.
when friends met outside school, college, or work to eat food

other than lunch packs from home.
The push and pull of affection and dietary avoidances also
recurred in interreligious friendship among adults. To illustrate
how these features were intertwined with other push and pull
factors, I will concentrate on the interreligious friendships of
Pramod Sharma who, just like Jyoti Dixit, was a Brahmin and
a vegetarian. One of his oldest Muslim friends was Talib, whom
he got to know in college. They met rarely nowadays, as Talib
had left Kanpur many years ago to settle in Saudi Arabia. 'He
happens to 1un a business with King Fahd!', Pramod proudly
maintained. I clearly remember the day Talib arrived unexpect-
edly at his door. Before rushing out to meet him, Pramod told
me that Talib had attended the party Pramod had a1Tanged for
his twentyfifth wedding anniversary, but had to leave Kanpur
shortly after for some urgent business. 'And now he is back, and
came straight to my place,' he concluded happily. Another of
Pramod's Muslim friends was Nasir. They were not as close as
they once had been, but Nasir still dropped by, was still spoken
of very fondly and was still referred to as a friend. Nasir was a
tall, stout, fair-complexioned, and well-dressed man. I met him
only once, when he dropped by Pramod's house on his way to an
elderly Punjabi neighbour whom Nasir was to accompany to
another elderly man who had left Kanpur during Partition, who
had lived in Pa kistan ever since, and who was now visiting his
birthplace for the first time since 1947. Pramod did not com-
ment on this. Instead, he wanted to share some of the humorous
memories that Nasir's visit had just evoked. Nasir was one of
Pramod's many 'cricket connections'. While Pramod had been
captain of the c1icket team at DAV College, Nasir had been
captain of the cricket team at Christ Church College. Until
recently, Nasir had been the one to arrange the old boys' matches,
which were partly pretexts for trips down memory lane com-
bined with drinks and laughter. Pramod's favourite story about
Nasir and his wit related to a fisticuff that broke out among the
audience, and which spread to the cricket players. A Christian
player named Madan had hit Nasir so hard that the latter's teeth
turned inwards permanently. 'But Nasir was not angry,' Pramod
giggled, 'he was just irritated over having been knocked down
by a man as tiny as Madan!'

T~s with Muslims • 179
A Muslim who visited the Sharma compound far more regu-

larly than Talib and Nasir was Jalal. Originally from Lucknow,
Jalal came to Kanpur to study at the medical college in town, and
had lived there ever since. Pramod and Jalal got to know each
other through Tilak, Pramod's younger brother, who occasionally
stopped by Jalal's clinic to promote medicines and tonics for the
pharmaceutical company he worked for. Tilak and Jalal got
along so well that they gradually extended the relationship to
private visits, which was how Jalal and Pramod became friends.
True, Jalal did not visit the Sharmas as frequently as Gopal,
Kishore, and the other friends mentioned in the previous chap-
ter, but dropped by once every two or three weeks for a chat over
a cup of tea and a snack. However, he never joined the card-
playing or drinking sessions, primarily because Jalal disap-
proved of drinking and gambling, but also because he was not
considered sufficiently close to be allowed into the inner circle
of gossip andjokes. Nevenheless, Tilak, Pramod, andjalal had
developed some sort of friendship that was partly rooted in
mutual liking and partly in mutual utility. To Jalal, the Sharmas
were a bottomless source of humorous remarks and gossip about
common friends and acquaintances, and their recurring politi-
cal discussions gave Jalal invaluable insight into the political
reasoning that prevailed among many upper-caste Hindus in
Kanpur at the time. Not wanting to be the odd man out,Jalal never
contributed much himself, but he listened attentively and was
always keen to discuss their views with me whenever we met
outside the surveillance of the Sharmas. In addition, the Sharmas
were a source of contacts and security, as Jalal had beco1ne
alienated from his own relatives and their network after a row
with his former father-in-law and when he remarried a Christian
woman without making her conven to Islam.
For the Sharmas,j alal was of little use as a source of contacts,
favours, or metlical skills--their other connections and medico
friends took care of those requirements. Jalal's main asset was
his ability to provide infor1nation from a locality and social
segment to which the Sharmas had no other direct links. J alal,
whose clinic was located in a Muslim 1nuhalla downtown and
whose patients were residents of this locality, could inform
Pramod and Tilak about emerging societal and political trends
before they were reported> in the newspapers or information

ISO • Blended &undarns
could reach them through longer chains of contacts. For ex-

ample, I heard Jalal telling them about the overrepresen-tation
of dengue, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases associated
with the poor in this locality, about the psychological distress
that many female patients suffered from, and about the kaµiis
(country-made pistols) he had discovered when his male pa-
tients undressed. Such information.boosted the Sharma broth-
ers' stereotypical notions that Muslims were overrepresented
among the poor; that Muslim women were badly treated by their
husbands, and that Muslim men in Kanpur were armed to the
teeth. At first I suspected that Jalal ponrayed his patients like
this to gain acceptance among the Sharmas and their circle of
friends. But he expressed similar viewpoints when I met him in
private and, as it turned out, my initial expectation that he would
withhold information that could be used against Muslims rested
on a false assumption that the religious identity he shared with
his patients would overwrite the class differences between them.
This brings me to Jalal's perception of himself as a man of
a 'good' family background. As far as I could ascenain,Jalal had
all the features required of an accha man except an upper-caste
Hindu background. He was always impeccably dressed in high-
quality shins, pants, and newly polished leather shoes except
at home, where he dressed in a casual, white paµian suit and
sandals. He mastered the refined Awadhi dialect and Lucknow-
style politesse better than most Kanpurites, including the
Sharmas, as he was from an aftluent and educated family in
Lucknow and had attended a Catholic boarding school. He
always went around town by car or scooter, and his complexion
was fair-not only by genetic heritage, but also because Jalal
protected himself from the sun more religiously than any other
man I met in Kanpur. I have lost count of the times he has asked
me to bring or send sunscreen lotions of Western brands from
Norway. Jalal's acchaness distanced him from his patients,
whom he referred to as poor, uneducated, and involved in bribery
and fraud. Jalal even described Haji Mushtaq Solanki, Kanpur's
sole Muslim representative in the Assembly, at the time, 17 as
0
17
Solanki, who represented the Sa1najwadi Party, became a Member
of the Legislative Asse1nbly (Ml.A) in 1996. He was elected from the Arya
Nagar constituency. Source: Election lists from M11khya Nirvachan Adhikari
(Main Election Office) , Lucknow. •

Tits with M1islims • 181
'totally illiterate, never been to school', though he added praise

of Solanki's wealth which, according to Jalal, derived from tan-
nery business in J ajmau. Jalal's distancing from uneducated
people also surfaced in his reluctance to let his son play with the
boys in the neighbourhood out of fear that it might 'decrease his
IQ', a form of reasoning I will elaborate on in Chapter 8. In shon,
whether Jalal was in the company of the Sharmas or myself, he
always presented himself as a doctor and as a man of class and
education. As far as I could ascenain, his upper-<:aste friends
accepted him as such too, though they never forgot thatJalal was
a Muslim as well and not quite one of them.
The friendship between Jalal, Tilak, and Pramod suggests
that Muslims could well gain upper-<:aste acceptance as 'good'
in terms of class. True, consciousness of religious differences
turned them into 'good people' of a special kind, but the acchliness
they were ascribed nevenheless sufficed to ensure them accep-
tance. The other interreligious friendships funher suggest that
Muslims entered upper-<:aste networks in similar ways as other
people of 'good' background, but that different dietary habits
could cause friction (as with Jyoti and Leyla), though did not
necessarily do so (as with Pramod andJalal). Perhaps it is time
to take a closer look at the imponance of food and dietary
avoidances in interreligious relations.
DIETARY FRICTION
For upper-<:aste Hindus not panicularly concerned with ritual
purity, close relations with Muslims entailed no problems as far
as food was concerned. For those who ate meat, such as the
Aroras, some of the Kapoors and Ritu Sharma, who all relished
a good mutton dish, Muslim background could even be consid-
ered an asset, as they perceived Muslims as 'expens' at handling
meat and preparing meat dishes. To upper-caste vegetarians,
however, maintaining a relationship with Muslims could well
cause friction, as when Leyla tested Jyoti's ability to smell the
difference betweenjackfruit curry and mutton curry. Such pranks
might not be common, but I often heard upper-<:aste vegetarians
express fear that food served by Muslims would not be fully
vegetarian. So1ne said that the cook might inadvenently use the
spoon from a meat dish when stirring the vegetarian dishes;

1s2 • Blended &undams
others that utensils and glasses 1night be improperly washed. By

not showing such fears, Jyoti was considerably more easygoing
than her elder brother, who did his best to abstain from eating
or drinking anything seived by his Muslim friends and acquain-
tances. Trying not to hurt them, he alternated between claiming
not to be thirsty or hungry, and to be on a vrat (religious fast),
which he reckoned no Muslim would keep track of anyway. 18
Several other vegetarians said that when they attended Muslim
wedding panies, they arrived late and left early to prevent the
hosts from noticing that they neither ate nor drank. Even the
friendship between Jalal and Pramod would probably have be-
come strained if Pramod had visitedjalal's home more often, as
even Pramod was reluctant to accept water and food seived by
a Muslim. However, this situation hardly arose since the men
nearly always met in the Sharma family compound, and since
Pramod had no hesitation against seiving water, tea, and edibles
to Jalal. Nevenheless, I met other vegetarians who, as a matter
of principle, never seived Muslims anything at all, rationalizing
it as a fear that, as Muslims eat meat, traces of meat might be
transferred from their mouths to the utensils. But if we take
their rationalization at its face value, why could they not simply
solve the problem by getting the utensils properly cleaned after-
wards? And why did this apply only to Muslim meat-eaters and
hardly to upper-caste meat-eaters? 19
One reason might be that they assumed that all Muslims ate
beef though they never specified it beyond the word goit (meat).
In principle, gost may refer to any kind of meat, but was most
commonly used about mutton and goat ( bakri JW. goit), which
were the most common kinds of meat in Kanpur, and the only
'~ I assun1e that most Muslim hosts who met such excuses saw through
them, but pretended to believe them anyway. If so, the friction that different
dietary habits and avoidances could cause in interreligious relations was
glossed over by politeness from both sides.
'''There did exist people who never shared their utensils with any kinds
of n1cat-eaters. One was Madhu"s mother, an elderly baniyii woman who
never allowed anyone but her closest family members to use her steel
utensils. Another was no upper-caste Hindu, but a Jain stockbroker
who refused to se ll stocks to others than strict vegetarians, and who
proudly claimed to have persuaded a few Muslims to become \'egetarians
this way.

kinds my non-vegetarian acquaintances would eat. For them,

eating beef was unthinkable. According to the principle of gutias
(substances, qualities) mentioned in Chapter 3, beef is strongly
tamasik, that is, containing large proponions of a substance
named tamoguti, which engenders stupidity and inenia. Mutton,
in contrast, is rajasik and believed to make the eater strong and
passionate. In upper-caste circles it seemed to be widely agreed
that tamasik food is more harmful than rajasik food and, con-
sequently, that beef is more harmful than other kinds of meat.
I never heard my informants explaining their avoidance of beef
in terms of the gulJ model, but I think it probable that it under-
pinned their dietary avoidances just as much as it made them
stay away from cenain household tasks.
The abhorrence of beef was reinforced by the deep reverence
for the cow as a symbol of life and wealth, a sentiment dating
back to Vedic times (Lipner 1994: 46) and popularized by the
cow protection movement in the late nineteenth century (Freitag
1989, 1996). Muslims, in contrast, had no principles against
eating beef. Some Bengali Muslims have reponedly even claimed
that eating beef is a token of civilization, symbolizing the trans-
formlttion from a Hindu past to the morally superior Islam
(Kotalova 1993). To my knowledge, however, beef was not com-
monly eaten in Kanpur. The cow protection movement had suc-
ceeded in weaning the low-caste proletariat from beef almost a
century ago (Gooptu 1997) , and the agitation for a total ban on
cow slaughter in the 1990s made the sale and consumption of
beef so risky that even Muslims are believed to have turned from
beef to buffalo meat (Bellwinchel-Schempp n.d.). Ironically,
however, this agitation reinforced the common upper-caste
conception of Muslims as beef-eaters.
Vinually all upper-caste vegetarians who rejected food from
Muslims or refrained from sharing utensils with them, rational-
ized their actions in terms of what they believed Muslims to
eat. As far as 'small' Muslims were concerned, however, an
additional factor came into play, namely the 'smallness' in
itself. Whether this was because the caste expectations of
'small' people in general rubbed off on to 'small' Muslims or
because upper castes were conscious about the probability that
most 'small' Muslims in town descended from low-caste con-
vens is hard to say. In either case, it made my upper-caste

184 • Blended &unaaries
acquaintances regulate their contact with 'small' Muslims in

strikingly similar ways as with low castes and untouchables. It
was not often that such relations involved exchange of food or
beverages, but when it did, it could activate a dietary friction that
was not immediately reducible to assumptions of beef-eating. A
water dispute between the plumber and the electrician em-
ployed in Pramod Sharma's construction business can probably
be interpreted in this vein.· Neither was from Kanpur, and to-
gether with a few other workers they lived in the servants' quar-
ters in the back of the Sharma compound, right next to the
constn1ction site. The plumber, a tall Thakur, refused to drink
water from the same tap as the electrician, a short, skinny
Muslim, and asked him not to use the tap inside their temporary
shelter. The electrician protested but had to relent, presumably
because their colleagues and employers were all Hindu and felt
committed to side with the plumber. Hence, the electrician had
no option but to fetch his water from the other side of the
compound. When I asked the plumber why he could not share
a tap with the electrician, he made no mention of meat or beef.
The only answer he was able to give was to repeat that it was
because the electrician was Muslim. As far as I can see, his
demand for 'pure' water was a striking parallel to the archetypical
dispute over wells in village India, where upper castes denied
untouchables the right to draw water from 'their' wells out of fear
that it would pollute the water.
None of my close acquaintances were this rigid, but Pramod
told me that, when he was a child, his mother had refused to let
him and his brothers eat bread from the bakery in Mohanganj,
since one of the employees was a Muslim. Nevertheless, upper-
caste reluctance to eat food prepared by Muslims was not en-
tirely a feature of the past. One evening I tagged along with
Gopal, Pramod, and Urmila to visit Suk.h Ram Poddar, a Baniyli
jeweller whom the men knew from college. Suk.h Ram lived in
a mixed neighbourhood in the centre of town, and a narrow
s taircase led from the dusty street to a spacious apartment with
more mahogany furniture than I had seen in any other home in
Kanpur. The men were served whisky and rum while Urmila and
I befittingly sipped our Pepsis and listened to their talk. After
a couple of hours, Suk.h Ram's wife guided Urmila and me into
the kitchen where we were to eat dinner while the men continued

drinking. The ro~is that were served with the food were riimiili
ro~is, which are larger and thinner than the phulkii. rofis that
Urmila and my other upper-caste acquaintances normally ate.
Urmila asked the hostess if they were 'from outside, from the
bazar', something Sukh Ram's wife confirmed. As soon as the
hostess left the room, Urmila whispered to me that such rofis
were made for non-vegetarian food and were 'typical Musalman
chapatis'. She tore off a few pieces to pretend that she had eaten,
but left it all on the plate. On the way home she complained about
the food: 'Accha nalu tha (it was no good),' she said, but without
specifying further. When she reached home she found herself
some leftover dinner before going to bed. Urmila's inability to
eat the n1mali ro~i demonstrates the complexity of upper-caste
vegetarians' apprehension regarding Muslims and the food they
are asso.ciated with. On the one hand, she explicitly connected
the n1mali ro~i with non-vegetarian food and, by extension, prob-
ably to beef. But, given the unlikelihood that these ro~is had
been in contact with meat of any kind, Urmila's apprehension
must have been equally firmly rooted in a fear that the ro~is had
been made by some unknown Muslim <f,habhii.vii.li.i (roadside
restaurant
•
worker), in all likelihood a 'small' fellow from the
poor Muslim locality near Sukh Ram's house. Hence the avoid-
ance of certain kinds of food and of certain kinds of people and
their touch might well go hand in hand, separable only at the
level of analysis.
I wish to reiterate that the dietary friction that interreligious
friendship might involve was related to vegetarianism and not
to caste background. Even though the stereotypical pattern is
that Brahmins and Vaishyas are predominately vegetarians while
Punjabis, Khatris and Kayasthas are not; ideals should not be
confused with practice, particularly not in a contemporary urban
context. Among my acquaintances, at least, vegetarianism and
its potential to cause interreligious friction did not only cut
across jatis, but also across families. That Ritu and Urmila, who
were both married into the Sharma family, had different atti-
tudes to meat and Muslims is understandable due to their
different upbringing. But the case of Jyoti and her brother
shows that even children who grew up in the same family might
develop different dietary do's and don'ts. This may be an ad-
ditional reason why ties with 'good' Muslims-whether through

186 • Blnukd &undaries
friendship or intermarriage-had developed among people rep-

resenting all the upper jatis I related to during fieldwork.
TIES WITH 'SMALL' MUSLIMS

While the transfer of food and beverages from 'small' Muslims
to upper-caste Hindus was rare, the transfer of other things was
not uncommon. As with 'small' people in general, upper-caste
interaction with 'small' Muslims was based on exchange, typi-
cally with the latter offering commodities or services in ex-
change for money. Such ties were most common when Muslims
had specialized in, or even monopolized, a commodity or skill
that was in high demand. One commodity that Muslims special-
ized in was milk. Several neighbourhoods housed a s mall com-
munity. of Muslim dudhvale (milkmen), whose 1~20 buffaloes
provided milk for the other residents. In Hari Mandi these
milkmen traversed the streets every day with their milk buckets
hanging on their bicycles, and when they shouted their charac-
teristic cries, the housewives-whether upper-caste or not-
rushed out with their steel pots to purchase the amount of milk
they needed until the next day. In Mohanganj there was also a
community of Muslim milkmen, but most of my upper-caste
acquaintances stopped purchasing milk from them when milk
became available in packets. The packets of Parag milk, they
said, were less likely to be diluted with water, and when Parag
invented a subscription system in which milk was delivered on
the door every morning-even on the top floors of the apanment
buildings-the Muslim milkmen with their milk buckets were
defeated.
Another commodity that brought my upper-caste informants
together with Muslims was Kashmiri shawls. The salesmen were
not local, like the milkmen, but Kashmiri Muslims who toured the
lowlands a couple of times a year with huge bundles of beautifully
e1nbroidered shawls. While some supplied shawls to shops and
emporiums, others went from door to door in middle-class and
affluent neighbourhoods. Ifthe residents let them in, the women
would gather around them, scrutinize the s hawls they.displayed
and possibly even buy a few, at least if there was a fonhcoming
wedding in the family that required presents for future in-laws.
As Tapan Bose ( 1999) remembers from his childhood in Calcutta,

'shawl ties' might endure for generations, with salesmen from

the same Kashmiri family visiting the same upper-class Bengali
families year after year. I did not find traces of stable 'shawl ties'
in Kanpur, leaving the ties that had developed between the
Kapoors and some Kashmiri shawl salesmen that happened to
be relatives ofSheyla, the Kashmiri Muslim woman whom Roshan
married in England. Their visits, however, were just as much
courtesy calls en route to the emporiums and shops in the city as
efforts to sell shawls in private homes, and they appeared to be
of a better class background than most other shawl-sellers-at
least according to what I could judge from their clothing.
Whether 'shawl ties', 'milk ties' or even 'meat ties', were
enduring or not, the transactions tended to be brief, not extend-
ing the interaction beyond the transaction itself. Commodity
transfer, then, held little potential to generate ties between
upper-caste Hindus and 'small' Muslims. Exchange of services,
however, could well do so. Even so, there were several services
from which Muslims were excluded, not the least domestic
services. As I noted in Chapter 3, my upper-caste acquaintances
in Mohanganj tended to employ Bhangts (sweepers) and Chamars
(leather-workers) to clean bathrooms, floors, and courtyards,
and non-untouchable low-caste Hindus for taks that required
entry to the kitchen. None of my upper-caste informants had ever
employed a Muslim domestic servant. In part, this was due to
the ready availability of cheap labour of the preferred castes,
and to the tendency to recruit servants through personal net-
works. When Madhu Agarwal searched for a new servant she
asked her other domestics if they had any eligible relatives,
neighbours, or friends, and requested her own friends to ask the
same question of their servants. In this way, information about
domestic vacancies hardly even reached Muslims, as the friend-
ship and master-servant networks through which the information
travelled were overwhelmingly Hindu. However, the absence of
Muslim servants in upper-caste households was also due to a
reluctance to employ Muslims. The assumptions that Muslims
ate beef and descended from people of low caste or even un-
touchable origin· rendered them unsuitable for work that re-
quired access to the whole house, let alone to the kitchen. Madhu
also reasoned that a Muslim would celebrate different festivals
than her own family and therefore had to be given leave on days

188 • BJend«i Boundaries
that were ordinary as far as she was concerned. For her, then,
a Muslim would even be unsuitable as a sweeper.
It was the employment or exchange of services in non-domes-
tic positions that were most effective in generating long-term ties
between upper-caste Hindus and 'small' Muslims. In such po-
sitions, their religious background did not seem to be of any
importance whatsoever, at least not to the employers. The
Sharmas, for example, had employed three Muslim workers in
their construction of apartment buildings. One was Rashid, the
electrician who was denied access to the tap. Rashid had worked
there ever since the construction started in the mid-1980s, and,
like the others who were employed from the very beginning, he
was recruited through a friend of Pramod' s father-in-law who was
also in the construction business. Tariq, who worked as a painter,
had been employed through the same contacts. He first came
to Kanpur to do a minor painting job for Pramod in 1989 or 1990,
and returned as a full-time employee in 1993. The third Muslim
employee was Tariq's assistant, who had been recruited directly
by Tariq. Regrettably, I never inquired about his background,
but since he did not reside on the premises I assume that he
was a Kanpuriya. The Sharmas had been so uninvolved in re-
cruiting and paying him that they didn't even know his name. If
they needed him, they merely shouted 'He painter!' The way the
Sharmas related to and talked about their Muslim employees
did. not differ in any way from their behaviour towards Hindu
employees. That Rashid and Tariq were employed in the midst
of intense political debates that caused considerable upper-
caste resentment against Muslims-Rashid during the Shah
Bano controversy and Tariq when the Ayodhya imbroglio was
on the rise-their being Muslim had not been hindrances for
employment. 20 As with servants, the most important crite1·ion
for employment was recommendation from someone the em-
ployers knew and trusted-be they friends, family, or subordi-
nates.
If Muslim employees or providers of services proved them-
selves competent and trustworthy, the employment might last for
years and even decades. Furthermore, if the job content enabled
I will return to these controversies and the upper-caste resentment

'1<J
they caused in the following chapter.

personal communication beyond orders and work-related inquir-

ies, the relation could also acquire an affectionate aspect. This
was what had happened in the relation between Madhu Agarwal
and her Muslim tailor. Madhu's stable exchange with her
Muslim tailor was a stark contrast to her reluctance to employ
Muslim servants and to her inability to make her servants stay.
For twenty-<>dd years now, this tailor had stitched all the clothes
and pillow-covers that the Agarwals needed. Madhu respectfully
addressed and referred to her tailor as Masterji, a title that
emphasized his skills and thereby downplayed religion and
caste. Masterji lived and owned a small tailor shop in Birhana
Road, a busy street in the heart of Kanpur. Madhu proudly told
me that Masterji had once said that he would not have travelled
all the way from Birhana Road to Mohanganj had it not been for
her. Once a month or so, Madhu called Masterji up to use one
of the two crank-driven sewing machines owned by the joint
Agarwal family. If there was much work to do, Masterji brought
another tailor and an embroiderer along. Masterji was in charge
of the cutting, which Madhu considered him an expert in. From
a length of cloth intended for a salvar-kurta, Masterji often got
enough leftover material for a child's dress as well. Once Madhu
even tried to make a profit out of Masterji's cutting skills. She
made him stitch children's dresses and trousers from leftover
pieces she collected at home and from her friends, and tried
to sell them from a small boutique she set up in the garage
behind her house. However, the shop was no success. When she
explained why, she never once blamed Masterji, but always
herself: she had not made a sufficiently strong effort, and the
boutique was so hidden away that it failed to attract customers
beyond her immediate neighbours and friends.
The clearest sign of Madhu's affection for Masterji emerged
the day she learned of the murder of his son, who worked as a
taxi driver in Sitapur, north of Lucknow. According to what
Madhu had heard so far, Masterji's son had been approached
late one night by two men and a burqa-clad woman who wanted
to be driven somewhere. The next day he was found dead in
some bushes in a deserted area outside Sitapur. I do not know
how Madhu had learned about this incident, and she was unable
to provide much detail. Nevertheless, when I asked whether
Masterji's son could have been involved in some underworld

190 • .8leruJed .Boundaries
activity, Madhu's denial wa's prompt: she could not even imagine
the possibility, as Masterji, the victim's father, was such a 'clean
man' and a 'good Muslim'. In this context, the word 'good' was
no idiom of class. When I asked her to specify what she meant,
she said that Masterji believed in 'what was true' and would
never indulge in any wrong activities. Nor would any of his sons,
she added. Madhu was very disturbed after hearing about the
murder. Wanting to write a condolence letter to Masterj i, she
searched high and low among her acquaintances in Mohanganj
for someone who could write Urdu, the only language that Masterji
could read. Not finding anyone, she decided to visit him instead.
Coming. to think of it, she also said she needed to get some
blouses and petticoats made on short notice, as she wanted to
wear some brand new saris for a high-status wedding two days
later. And, as Madhu reasoned, which tailor in Mohanganj would
agree to stitch these things in only one or two days except
Masterji? Madhu was not the kind of person who would let
affection and empathy overwrite the raison d'etre of her relation
with Masterji, namely the exchange of a service for money. Yet
her relation to her tailor nevertheless exemplifies that exchange
between upper-caste Hindus and 'small' Muslims could be long-
lasting and thereby allow affection to develop, just like certain
master-servant relationships.
CONCLUSIONS
By mapping the ties that brought my upper-caste acquaintances
in touch with Muslims, this chapter has aimed to trace the
principles according to which Muslims were incorporated into
upper-caste Hindu networks. These principles, I have argued,
were an extension of the class principles that regulated the ties
between people of different backgrounds within the Hindu com-
munity. As I argued in Chapter 4, the class principles revolved
around the categories acche log (good people) and cho~e log
(small people) and the continuum between them. I never heard
these idioms used about Muslims, but their relevance surfaced
in my acquaintances' tendency to develop different kinds of ties
with Muslims of different class backgrounds. Muslims acknowl-
edged as being of a 'good' background or, more correctly, as
'good' as they could get without being upper-caste Hindu, could

enter my acquaintances' networks as friends or even marriage

partners. In fact, it seemed more common to befriend and marry
Muslims than. low castes and 'small' people of Hindu origin,
something that led me to suggest that religious differences were
more easily bridgeable than broad gaps of caste and class.
Muslims who were not accepted as 'good', however, would only
enter my upper-caste acquaintances' social networks as provid-
ers of goods and services.
There were, however, cenain features that hampered my
upper-caste acquaintances' relations with Muslims. One was
their lack of principles against eating beef, though I believe that
Muslims consumed less beef than they were believed to. How-
ever, unless the upper-castes in question were vegetarian and the
interaction with Muslims involved eating or drinking, this need
not be a problem at all. For chote Muslims an additional hin-
drance came into play, namely the implicit assumption that they
descended from untouchable and low-caste convens. This made
several of my acquaintances take similar precautions with
Muslims as with low castes and untouchables. The most impor-
tant features that regulated upper-caste relations with Muslims,
then, were class and dietary differences. We should note that
differences in religious beliefs and practices hardly figured as
obstacles to interreligious relations in Mohanganj at all, presum-
ably because my acquaintances had related to people who re-
vered different gods and worshipped them in different ways than
themselves ever since they were small, given the enormous
diversity within the label 'Hinduism' and their experiences from
Christian schools. The only time that different religious beliefs
surfaced as a problem during my fieldwork was when Madhu
explained her unwillingness to employ a Muslim servant in terms
of the probability that s / he would follow a different ritual cal-
endar than herself.
Approaching the interreligious relations of my upper-caste
acquaintances by exploring their social networks, which I have
done in this chapter, can only capture one aspect of their rela-
tions to Muslims. The next chapter will turn the attention to
another imponant aspect, namely, the way my acquaintances
talked about Muslims as a generalized category of people. The
verbal exchanges that I base my discussion on are from 1992,
a year in which Hindu-Muslim relations were heatedly debated

192 • B/,erukd Boundaries
in political fora and the news media. Were the verbal references
to Muslims that I heard in Mohanganj mere reflections of the
arguments delivered by politicians and journalists, or did they
have a local flavour? If yes, what did the local flavour entail, and
in what way was it related to the principles of interaction dis-
cussed in this and previous chapters? And vice versa, to what
extent did the essentialization of Muslims affect interreligious
face-to-face relations in such friendships? These are some of the
questions I will turn to in the next chapter.

7
-
1992: Essentializing and
Foregrounding Muslims
'To be quite frank, we are against the Muslims. If they live in

India and earn their daily bread here, why do they keep on
dreaming of Pakistan?' To ask Kamini,Jyoti Dixit's sister, about
the Muslim minority in India was like opening a can of worms,
because her opening sentence was followed by a flow of misgiv-
ings about Muslims. She held them to be disloyal to Inaia, to
ignore all calls for family planning, to collect arms, to do every-
thing in the opposite way than H.indus, and a number of other
things that I came to hear repeatedly in Mohanganj in 1992,
whether in the Dixit house or in other upper-caste homes. This
chapter will examine such misgivings and the verbal exchanges
they were part of. As such, it sustains the interest in interreli-
gious relations, but shifts the attention from face-to face ties and
individual Muslims to abstract interreligious relations and the
imagined Muslim Other.
1992 was an extraordinary year in Indian politics, as this was
the year in which the Bahri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished
and thousands of lives were lost in the Hindu-Muslim riots
that followed. The demolition, which happened on 6 December,
was preceded by a handful of political controversies that had
put Hindu-Muslim relations at the centrestage in political fora
and mass media throughout northern India. The main contro-
versy was the question of the Bahri Masjid, which Hindu nation-
alists claimed had been built on the ruins of an ancient temple

marking the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the most revered

deities in the Gangetic Plains. Another was the status ofjammu
& Kashmir, which, because of its Muslim majority population
and contested inclusion in India in 1947, had been granted more
autonomy in the Indian Constitution than other Indian states,
something that Hindu nationalists agitated strongly against. A
third controversy was the divided civil code, which allowed the
Muslim minority to follow the Muslim Personal Law, based on
the Shariat. The agitation for a uniform civil code went back to
the Shah Bano controversy in the early 1980s, but was kept alive
by Hindu nationalists well into the 1990s. A fourth controversy
pertained to the Muslim rate of growth. Though it was only
slightly higher than the average rate of growth, Hindu national-
ists frequently hinted that Muslims would eventually outnumber
Hindus and gain control over India. 1 These and other issues that
had bearings on Hindu-Muslim relations in India were intensely
discussed in political meetings, tea shops, and homes through-
out North India. A steady focus on these issues helped catapult
the BJP-the political wing of the Hindu nationalist 'family' of
organizations-to power in Uttar Pradesh in 1991. All the seven
representatives elected from Kanpur were from the BJP, some-
thing that indicates the enormous resonance that these contro-
versies had evoked in this city. It is this resonance I intend to
examine in the present chapter, focusing on the period from
August 1992, when I started my fieldwork, to the demolition and
riots that occurred in December the same year.
The ways in which my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj
talked about Hindu-Muslim relations in this period had much
in common with the debates that dominated the political and
public spheres, as my acquaintances were influenced by several
1
Believing these controversies to be well known to a readership presum-
ably domindted by South Asian(ist)s, 1 provide no fun.h er details here.
Those in need of more information may consult van der Veer ( 1994) on
the Ayodhya controversy, Hewitt (1995) on the Kashmir question, Engineer
(1987) and Kishwar (1986) on the Shah Bano and civil code issues.Jeffery
&Jeffery (1997, 2000) and Wright (1983), and on the Hindu and Muslim
growth rates, and Bhatt (2001), Hansen (1987), or Pandey (1990), for
useful over-views of Hindu nationalism. These references are by no means
exhaustive, but may serve as useful starting points for readers with limited
acquaintance· with Indian politics.

Essentializ.ing and Forrgruunding Muslims • 195
of the arguments that circulated there. However, rather than

interpreting the local discourse as a mere example of the na-
tional one, I wish to emphasize some of the ways in which the
local discourse differed from the nationwide public debates it
was triggered and influenced by. In upper-caste homes in
Mohanganj, I will argue, it was the 'nature' of Muslims that
emerged as the prominent theme. I will further argue that the
way Muslims were essentializcd and stereotyped was influenced
by the choia-accha categorization. Since my acquaintances mod-
elled the Hindu category on themselves and other 'good people',
their imagination of the Muslim Other came to include several
of the characteristics they ascribed to choie log. The final pan
of the chapter will examine the effect of the foregrounding of the
Hindu-Muslim boundary in 1992 on interreligious face-t<>-face
relations, and I will suggest that, whereas weak ties were funher
weakened or snapped (at least temporarily), stronger tics held
potential to serve as security nets during the riots that the
Hindu-Muslim controversies eventually culminated in.
Examining local conversations about abstract interreligious
refations and the Muslim Other necessitates a shift from the
theoretical and methodological frameworks that underpinned
the previous chapters. Here the main point of depanure will ~ie
in the intersection between discourse analysis and conversa-
tional analysis. Discourse analysis, which primarily has come
to be associated with Michel Foucault, is concerned with how
verbal and textual representations shape the objects they rep-
resent, and how regimes of truth develop (Foucault 1972; Mills
1997). Foucault's own examples concern European notions of
madness (1965) and sexuality (1980), and his perspective has
since been applied to a host of other themes, including Hindu
nationalism (Hansen 1999, 2001) . Whereas a Foucauldian dis-
course analysis concentrates on overall patterns, large corpora
of statements, and the longue durie (cf. Braudel 1980), conver-
sational analysis-which also was known as discourse analysis
until the label was c<>-0pted by Foucault's followers and critics-
concentrates on specific texts or verbal sequences. This allows
conversational analysts to go in for funher detail, and the analy-
sis 1nay revolve around anything from choice of words and
arguments to conversational pauses and repetitions (see, for
example, Boden and Zimmerman 1991; Farnell & Graham 1998;

196 • Blended .Boundaries
Moerman 1998). When I take my own approach to be a hybrid

of these perspectives, it is because I will restrict the following
examination to concrete conversations that I witnessed or par-
ticipated in myself, at the same time as I acknowledge their
connection to a wider discourse that by far exceeded Mohanganj
and the duration of my fieldwork.
Another analytical point of departure f<?r this chapter con-
cerns the connection between the discourse in upper-caste
homes in Mohanganj, on the one hand, and the wider public
discourse it was influenced by, on the other. Both were part of
the flow of local everyday life, but I nevertheless separate them
analytically since my acquaintances derived them from differ-
ent sources--the local discourse from people in their surround-
ings; the wider public discourse from the news they watched on
1V or read in the newspapers and political journals. The media
were by far the most important source of information about
political events and discussions beyond Kanpur, given my ac-
quaintances' lack of direct contact with politicians or journalists
of importance. My understanding of how the wider public dis-
course influenced local conversations and opinions is inspired
by communication theorists and others who ground their study
in a group of media consumers--or 'recipients'-rather than
restricting the analysis to the media 'messages' and those who
produce them, which is the dominant trend in cultural studies
(Howell 1997). The strength of the recipient approach is that
it enables us to examine how news bulletins and commentaries
are filtered, appropriated, and transformed the minute they
reach their audience. My main theoretical inspiration has been
Wolfgang Iser (1978) and Stanley Fish's (1980) arguments
about how readers virtually c<>-author the texts they are reading,
and Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson's (1986) thoughts on the
meaning-production that occurs when a message meets its
recipient. Purnima Mankekar's ethnography of 1V-watching in
New Delhi (1999) is an excellent empirical example of the
recipient perspective. Yet Muslim-related news tended to create
far s tronger ripples than the 1V serials and films that Mankekar
studied, at least in 1992. To pursue some of these ripples, this
chapter will also benefit from former studies on rumours and
urban legends, which are transmitted through social networks
in similar ways.

Essentializing and Foregrounding Muslims • 197
PATIERNS OF NEWS CONSUMPTION

The main sources of news in Mohanganj were newspapers and
television. Occasionally I saw news magazines such as India
Today lying around, but these were not widely read, and I only
met one person who still listened to the radio. Of the newspa-
pers, the most common choice was Dainik]agran, a Hindi daily
published in Kanpur. Many academics and leftists held Dainik
jagran to represent Hindu nationalist viewpoints and dissemi-
nate inflammatory news reports, but its readers in Mohanganj
considered it 'the only paper that is not pro-Muslim nowadays',
as one of them put it. Families in which some 1nembers had
English-medium education, such as my upper-caste acquaintan-
ces, tended to subscribe to a national newspaper in English as
well, most commonly the Delhi edition of the Times of India. The
news media that reached the widest audience, however, was 1V.
This was particularly so from 1992, when the launch of Zee 1V
lifted the monopoly of Doordarshan, the state-owned 1V chan-
nel. The news readers on Zee 1V were understood to use a less
literary and Sanskritized language than those on Doordarshan,
something that turned Zee News into the preferred news
programme virtually overnight.
The interest in news and the choice of news medium varied
with age, gender, and educatipn. News magazines and English
newspapers were largely read by adult men, while Dainik Jagran
was a paper that my female acquaintances also occasionally
flipped through-though mostly, I believe, when they did not have
anything else to do. While reading newspapers was a solitary
affair, watching 1V involved many people. Even those who were
completely disinterested in the news programmes would often
sit through them anyway when their male relatives entered the
room and demanded that they switch over from the movie or
serial they were watching. Those who followed the news closely
would often display approval or disapproval by means of ges-
tures, nods, or comments, and in social gatherings later on, they
would often refer to what they had heard and seen on the news.
Through such processes all my acquaintances, whatever their
degree of interest in news and politics, had at least a general
idea of the most contentious topics that were debated in the news
media-if not by watching or reading news themselves, then at
least by overhearing the comments of their family members.

Initially one might think that the most obvious way to study
how the daily flow of news served as 'input' to local conversations
and opinion-formation would be to begin with a handful of news
reports and examine the way my acquaintances received them,
summarized them, and referred to them afterwards. In their
local exchanges, however, it was hardly possible to identify
singular news reports. Once they had heard or seen the news,
their memory merged each news report with all the past news
on the same topics. News reports, then, appeared to lose their
individuality, or 'itemness', shortly after reception, something
that rendered it impossible to trace their trajectories all the way
through the transmission-reception-conversation process. 2
Another feature that such a method would miss includes the
many instances in which local comments on the Muslim Other
differed radically from the controversies and issues discussed
in the public sphere. While the issues of a uniform civil code,
Kashmir, Bahri Masjid etc. normally were debated separately
in the media, their local ripples lie in their combination. As all
the issues revolved around the Muslim minority, their combina-
tion communicated that Muslims somehow 'stood apart' in India.
Consequently, to try to trace singular news reports would have
led us to overlook the local flavour of the way my acquaintances
in Mohanganj referred to the Muslim Other in their everyday
talk. For this reason, the best option is probably to leave the word
to my acquaintances themselves.
THREE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE MUSLIM OTHER

In the autumn of 1992 I overheard and participated in a number
of conversations in which my upper-caste acquaintances dis-
cussed and criticized the Muslim Other. In this section I will
present excerpts from three fairly typical conversations-all
occurring before anyone knew that the Bahri Masjid would be
demolished and riots would break out. Two of the conversations
are from families that recurred in the previous chapters, namely,
2 Exceptions are news reports so unique that they have been referred
to as turning points ever since, such as the Indian declaration of Indepen-
dence, 15 August 1947, the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya,
6 December 1992, and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in
New York, 11 September 2001.

the Sharmas and the Kapoors. The third excerpt is from the
Mehtas, a Punjabi family living next door to the Sharmas that
so far only has entered this book in a note in Chapter 5. Though
I participated in all the conversations, and though they, in a
sense, came into being because of my presence, I tried not to
influence the course of the conversations too much. Fearing that
tape-recording would have curbed my acquaintances' willing-
ness to express themselves freely, I did my best to memorize
the conversations while jotting down key idioms and expressions
which were used as the conversations proceeded. Hence, the
excerpts below are not fully accurate, but I believe they are
sufficiently accurate to capture the gist of the real-life conver-
sations. In addition, I have made a few omissions (marked with
ellipses) to save space and inserted a few translations (in
parentheses) and contextual expla,nations [in square brackets).
The first conversation I got the opportunity to participate in,
occurred shortly after I moved in with the Sharmas in Septem-
ber 1992. A cousin of the Sharma brothers, Vivek, had come over
from Allahabad for a three-day visit. Pramod, knowing my inter-
est in the growing tension between Hindus and Muslims, invited
me to sit down with the men outside the bungalow. While the men
and I talked, the women and youngsters moved to and fro,
listening as they passed, but not attempting to join the conver-
sation. Pramod opened by telling me what kind of people he
looked for as buyers of the flats in the apartment buildings he
was about to construct:
PRAMOD: When I built this house [nodding towards the first apartment
building), I was a cosmopolitan. I wanted all religions to be
represented-Hindus, Muhammedans, Christians, all. I even tried
to persuade some of my Muhammedan friends to move in, but with
no success. Only Hindus came, and one Sardar [Sikh). But now
my attitude has changed. In the new apanment house I constn1ct
right behind here, I don 't want any Muhammedans. Now, one
Muhammedan friend wanted a flat, but I said they were all booked
even though 50 per cent of them were still free. I don't want them
here. Yes, they are my friends, they still are, I eat with them, even
from the same plate, but I don't want them in Mohanganj. Not in
my house. Something has changed. Two or three years ago. every-
thing changed. I don 't know exactly what, but something has
changed inside me. [The others nod in agreement.)

200 • Blended &undarie.s
VlVF.K: Look, it's like this: I have many Muhammedan friends. We used
to visit them at Id, bringing them presents, touching their feet,
and eating with them. Likewise, they used to come to us at divali.
But for the last two or three years we have avoided each other
during these festivals.
TU.AK Ar.;o PRA:o.ioo [almost simultaneously): Yes, everything has changed
now.
VIVE.IC (looking at me): If you want to study Hindu attitudes towards
Muhammedans, you should come to me in Allahabad. You should
meet my brother. He is a Hindu, but teaches the Koran to other
Hindus. Why? Because he wants e\.erybody to learn how to argue
with Muhammedans from their own standpoint, the Kon-n. We
can really show them what kind of religion it is.
PRA.'dOD: As I told you, I've always been a cosmopolitan. I always voted
for Congress. But in the last election I voted for BJP. Why? This
is the only party that speaks about this country, about India, about
its future. Suddenly this has become important. I will vote BJP in
the next election too. BJP is my party.
KATillNKA: What do you think about the central government led by
Narasimha Rao?
PRAMOD: They can do nothing. They can try to calm down things, but
really, there is nothing they can do.
v1VE1C Some years ago the daughter of one of my Muhammedan friends
got married. I attended the wedding, but didn't eat. My whole
family went without dinner that day just because we decided not
to accept their food. And do you know why we didn't want to eat
with them? I don't know. This feeling inside me tells me 'no'.
Tit.AK: I'll give one example. One of my friends, a Muhammedan, was
thinking about moving up here to Mohanganj. He looked around
a little, but changed his mind. He said he wouldn't feel safe here.
So he continued to stay in the Muhammedan area in which he
lived.
TU.AK: Whenever there are cricket matches between India and Paki-
stan, you can see for yourself. If you go to areas like Chamanganj
(a Muslim neighbourhood downtown), you will find big posters of
top Pakistani players in every house. Their loyalty goes to Pakistan,
not to India. They are Muhammedans first, anything else later.
rRA:o.ioo: When the riots started in Kanpur (in October I 990, after an
attempt to 'reclaim' the Bahri Masjid), we were all afraid. When
we tried to find out how many weapons there were in the whole
apartment building, we only found a single one. A pistol. The
Hindus are like that. They do not kill. They don't like blood.
We do not even kill small insects, we say: let them live. But
Muhammedans are not like that. Even fron1 childhood most of

Essmtializing and Foregrounding Muslims • 201
them have been taken to meat shops and slaughterhouses. But we

Hindus are afraid of blood. You can go to any Muhammedan
home, even a little jhiipri (shack). and find at least 12 weapons.
KATillXKA: How can poor people afford so many weapons?
Tlv.K [speaking with difficulty after having taken a mouthful of pan
masaia): Foreigil aid. Smuggling.
KATHJXKA: From where?
TIIAK [hesitating): From P11kistan, I suppose.
PRA.\IOD: When I went to school, I had many Muhammedan friends. I
still have. But my children, how many Muhammedan friends do
they have? Not a single one, I tell you! They go to school with them,
but do not make friends. I don't know why, but something has
definitely changed.
vrvt:K: And their numbers are growing so quickly. At the t.ime of Pani-
tion, Muhammedans fled to Pakistan. But basically only the upper-
class Muslims could afford to go. The lower and mediocre classes
were the ones who remained in India, with a few exceptions. Before
Panition the Muslims comprised only 4 per cent, but now they are
above 30 per cent!
KATJllXKA: But surely, according to the Census of India, India has only
about l 1-12 per cent Muslims?
v1vE1c Really? Well, you must know since you work on this.
rRAMoo: Just see what's happening in Kashmir, where the Muslims
have taken over. Most of the Hindus have fled. A Hindu is not even
allowed to purchase land in Kashmir anymore. And that in our
own country!
This conversation begs for comments, but rather than discuss-
ing each verbal exchange separately, I will move on to a second
conversation about the Muslim Other, which took place when I
stayed with the Kapoors in mid-November 1992. The following
is an excerpt from an hour-long conversation between a young
man, Ajay, his mother, Soni, and myself:
AJAY [looking at me): It is a very controversial topic you work on.
Hindu- Muslim relations have become worse during the last years.
soi-:1: Just nearby there is a mosque. During the riots (in 1990), some
30-50 terrified women and children had gathered inside. Some
of them were even crying. We took them into our house and
protected them. They all stayed downstairs .... What had fright-
ened them was an incident that had occurred in the neighbouring
area. Some Muslims there had killed a whole Hindu family except
a 16-year-old daughter. She was raped, her face was scraped up,
one of her ears was chopped off, and so were two of her fingers.

202 • Bl.ended Boundams
KATl nNKA: Did you see this yourself?

SONI: No, but it was all in the papers, and even some of our chaprii.siS
(errand boys) saw her. She was put in a bag and dumped some-
where, but she survived and was hospitalized.
AfAV: ••• The Muslims have so many weapons. AK-47s, bombs, rifles,
etc., while we Hindus, non-violent people, are afraid to kill. When
we cannot even bear the thought of an ant being squeezed under
our shoes, how can we kill a human being? In our house you won't
find any weapon, except vegetable knives, which are too small for
killing anyway.
KATI 11NKA: So are the Muslims more violent?
so:-11: Ever since they were born these people have witnessed slaugh-
tering of goats and all that. One gets hardened by that. Besides,
there is illiteracy. Maybe 80 per cent of the Muslims are illiterate,
compared to 50-60 per cent of the Hindus. Illiteracy makes them
more liable to fighting, you know. Their main problem is that they
believe in a religion of scripture. They consult their book, the
Koran, for all sorts of questions, and so they become brainwashed.
KATlllNKA: How many Muslims are there in Kanpur?
SONI: Hindus are in majority, maybe with 60 per cent. So around 40
per cent Muslims? About 30-40 per cent? It's all because they get
so n1any children. You know, a Muslim man is allowed to have four
wives. If each wife gives him six children, the whole family will
have 241
KATI 11i-:KA: But that must be extreme. The average Muslim family surely
has less children than that?
SONI: I'd say the average Muslim family has about 10-12 children.
KAT111i-:KA: So many? What about family planning?
SONI: Very few use it. Only the high class. But even among them, having
as few as two children is very uncommon. Just see the area right
behind here, there you will find families with 10-12 children,
seldom less. They are not influenced by the governmental family
planning programmes at all. They don't understand them, much
because of their illiteracy.... At least Christians are proper In-
dians. The Muslims are not. They even get money from foreign
countries. Not Pakistan perhaps, but at least Kllwait-and maybe
other countries too.
A fAV: During Partition in 1947, Muslims were given the option: Go to
Pakistan, or stay if you like. The majority chose to stay in India.
Now, we have given them four decades, but they still refuse
to become Indian. Of course there are exceptions such as
Azharuddin (one of India's top cricket players at the time) and
Mukhtar [Ajay's friend). but you cannot judge from exceptions,
can you? ... After the creation of Pakistan, about 7 per cent
Digitized by Go.ogle Original from

UNIVl;RSITY OF MICHIGAN
Essmtializing and FortgroUnding Muslims • 203
Muslims remained in India. But now the official numbers are

about 17 per cent.
KATI llNKA: But the Census....
,-,iAv: I know the Census says something else, but the problem is that
we cannot trust it. We already know that it underestimates the
pop1dation of India. It is definitely over I 00 karor (I billion)
already, 3 but the government does not want to present such a grim
picture to the surrounding world. [Ajay's sister, who had arrived
silently, nods).
SONI: Muslim women are treated like slaves. First they get married
when they reach Class 10, far earlier than Hindus do nowadays.
Moreover, their husbands treat them like servants. A Muslim
woman has to work day in and day out, giving him at least 6-7
children, cook all the food ...
KATlllNKA: But I have seen this among poor Hindus as well?
sos1: Yes, we Hindu wives work hard too, but we are not slaves. We
do it as pujii (worship) and out of devotion to our husbands and
Bhagwan (God), not because our husbands force us to. Besides,
if we fall ill, we can rest. A Muslim wife has to do her household
chores anyway.
~JAV: Mother is right. That is a basic difference.
The third conversation I present took place in mid-October 1992,

over dinner in the Mehta family's flat in the apartment building
constructed by the Sharmas. The participants included an eld-
erly couple, here addressed as Nana (maternal grandfather)
and Nani (maternal grandmother), their daughter, Anuradha,
and her 14-year-<>ld daughter, Vandu, who introduced the topic of
Muslims far more abruptly than I had expected:
VANDU: Nani says that Muslims are dirty.
NANI: Yes, in fact they are. Their personal hygiene is poor. In general,
they have a bath only once a week, normally on Fridays. I don't
know why, maybe because their religion originated in Arabia,
where there is a shortage of water. But here in India, where they
get as much water as they want, what's the harm in taking a bath
every day as we Hindus do?
KATHl!l:KA: Are you not comparing poor Muslims with middle-class
Hindus?
l'ANI: No. My point is their personal hygiene only. Apart from that, all
Indians are dirty, throwing garbage and leftover food everywhere.
3 This conversation took place seven years before India's population
officially crossed the l billion mark.

204 • Blentkd &undams
Even my daughters do. As you have seen, there are no dustbins

in the streets. The Indian society just doesn't work that way.
Anyway, when we lived in the Cantonment [two years ago], a
Muslim friend of ours came to visit us virtually every day. He
was well-off, educated and everything, but even he changed
his clothes as rarely as once a week. And he never had a bath
either.
KATI UNKA: How do you know?
NANI : I know.
KATlllNKA: Why did you choose to nickname your grandson Iqbal? Isn't
that a Muslim name?
NANI: 1 liked the name. His real name is Nikhil. His father's family
wanted a Hindu name for him, but we in our family have always
called him Iqbal, after the great poet.
NAXA: Urdu has 70 per cent of its vocabulary from Sanskrit. Why
shouldn't we choose an Urdu word if it gives meaning to us?
KATlllNKA: What is your opinion on the Ayodhya issue?
NANI: Oh, that! A stupid issue. People are being exploited by the
politicians. I say: Let the mosque stay as it is. Let this issue die.
It is all fanaticism.
VANIJU: I am f<rr the Muslims.
:-.-A:-.-A: Hmmf. You shouldn't be f<rr any community or the other, you
should try to look at things from both sides.
VANllU [overhearing his correction]: I think what the BJP is doing is
wrong. See now, they take advantage of Hindu feelings in the
conflict in Ayodhya. There is a mosque there, built by, I think
Bahar, more than a thousand years ago.
NA:-.-A: No, only four hundred years ago.
VANIJU: ... and suddenly now the BJP claims that this was the birth-
place of Lord Ram.
KATI 11:-.-J<A: Don't you believe that Ram was born there?
VANllU: Nobody knows. Besides, I don't believe in any gods .. .. My
grandfather knows everything. I don't read newspapers, n1aga·
zines, or books. No need to read them since Nana tells me
everything I need to know.
NANA: Hmmmmf.
VANDU: I hate the BJP. Congress had many big personalities, Nehruji,
Gandhiji, Rajiv Gandhi, and his mother of course. Rajiv Gandhi
married a Greek woman, and . ..
NANA: No, Italian!
VA.'\;DU: .•• and her name is Sonia. She is very pretty.
ANURAOllA: Last elections [in 1991), everybody in this apartment build·
ing had BJP flags on their verandahs except us. We had a Congress
flag. But do you know what happened? Pramod Sharma told us to

Essmtializ.ing and Fcnrgyuunding Muslims • 205
take it down and put up a BJP flag too, so that the whole building
became a BJP building.
KATillNKA: Really? Was he serious?
NANA: No ... I think he must have been joking.
When I visited the Mehta family again a few days later, Tilak
Sharma happened to drop by too.
111.AK (looking at me]: So, you're talking to this Muslim again [nodding
towards Nana]?
KATHINKA: Muslim? What do you mean?
TIVJ<.: Didn't you know that Mr Mehta was a Muslim?
NA.'II: Yes. He is a Muslim!
NANA: Just because I'm not against them doesn't mean that I am a
Muslim myself!
In addition to exemplifying how my upper-caste acquaintances in
Mohanganj talked about the Muslim Other in homely settings,
these conversation excerpts suggest some interesting differ-
ences in intra-familial power relations and the expression of
disagTeement. While the women and youngsters in the Sharma
family would never dream of participating when the men dis-
cussed politics, intra-generational and two-gender discussions
were common in the Kapoor and Mehta households. Yet it was
only in the Mehta household that the youngsters and wives felt
free to express their opinions even if they contradicted those of
their elders or husbands. The last conversation vignette, in which
Tilak termed Nana Mehta a Muslim in an attempt to disqualify
his political views, also exemplifies a common way of sanctioning
disagTeement. Similar sanctions were common in the public
sphere. The most common target was Samajwadi Party supremo
Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was often referred to as 'Mullah
Mulayam' by his political opponents-partly due to his efforts at
attracting Muslim voters, but above all because Hindu national-
ists held him responsible for the deaths of several Hindu activ-
ists who attempted to attack the Babri Masjid in October 1990.4
What I primarily want to look into, however, is how the local
4
Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh at
the time, had ordered the police to protect the mosque at all costs, a
decision that made the police open fire on the activists that neglected their
orders to stay away from the mosque. Videotapes that showed the swollen,
dead bodies circulated illegally in Mohanganj in 1992.

conversations about the Muslim Other were influenced by, and

yet differed from, the discourse about the Muslim Other that took
place in political fora and the media.
THE 'NATURE' OF MUSLIMS

In local conversations about Muslims, references to the Shah
Bano case, the Bahri Masjid or Kashmir were fairly rare ..Initially
I thought it was because there was a wide agreement on these
issues among the upper-caste people I met. As it turned out,
however, the agreement was by no means as large as I had
expected. Even those who virtually competed in expressing criti-
cal views on Muslims could disagree sharply with each other-
and with Hindu nationalist leaders-on the questions being
debated in the public sphere. Ajay Kapoor, for example, held
that it would be better to 'give Kashmir to the Muslims' than to
keep striving for a fuller integration of Jammu & Kashmir into
the Indian Union and uphold the claim on the part of Kashmir
that was contr9lled by Pakistan. To Ajay, internal peace was
worth the sacrifice of at~rritory. Similarly, a Baniya retiree from
the Indian army whom I inet through the Sharma brothers, held
that the Ayodhya issue was exploited by politicians. In his opin-
ion, the Bahri Masjid should not be touched, and if Hindus so
badly wanted to offer their prayers where Ram was born, they
should do so in the existing shrine, alongside Muslims. Likewise,
another friend, a Brahmin businessman, held that, though he had
'feelings for the Ram temple', he considered it more important
to maintain peace in the country than to press demands for the
disputed shrine. Whatever the local viewpoints on the controver-
sies discussed in political fora and in the press at the time,
virtually all the upper-caste Hindus I met in Mohanganj con-
verged when discussing the 'nature' of Muslims. With the excep-
tions of Nana and Vandu Mehta, none of them expressed
reservations against essentializing Muslims in negative terms.
In this section I will look into four of the features that charac-
terized the local essentialization of the Muslim Other: (i) its
influence by the local construction of class; (ii) its restructuring
effect on past experiences with Muslims; (iii) its influence by
rumours and urban legends; and (iv) the elevation of the 'typical
Muslim' as a transcendent truth.

Essenbalizing and Fmrgrounding Muslims • 207
I
Among the most obvious features of local exchange~ about
the Muslim Other was how the panicipants, rather than refer-
ring to themselves in terms of caste or class, as they usually
did in other contexts, suddenly ponrayed themselves as 'Hin-
dus'. In his analysis of the connotations of the word 'Hindu' in
Hindu nationalist rhetoric, Gyanendra Pandey scrutinizes the
writings of M. S. Golwalkar, one of the main former leaders and
ideologues of the RSS. According to Pandey, Golwalkar's two
books-We, or Our Nationhood Defined (first published in 1938)
and Bunch of Thoughts (first published in 1966)-revealed a
strong male, upper-caste, and probably Nonh Indian bias in
their notion of 'Hindu' (Pandey 1993: 253). My acquaintances'
use of the term 'Hindu' revealed the same bias, but in addition,
I will argue, it also had a considerable bent towards acchaness.
The reason was that their portrayal of the 'typical Hindu' was
little but a generalization of themselves as 'good' upper-caste
people in urban Nonhem India, a generalization in which low
castes, choie log, and people from other pans of the country
hardly had a place. When Nani Mehta implied that Hindus had
good personal hygiene, she overlooked the millions of poor
people classified as Hindus who were unable to have a daily
bath-despite her insistence to the contrary. Likewise, when
Pramod Sharma and Ajay Kapoor argued that Hindus were
apprehensive of blood and killing, they overlooked the many
segments of Hindus for whom non-violence had never been the
overriding moral principle it was in Gandhian philosophy or
Hindu nationalist self-imagery.5 Given the multi-layered bias in
local connotations of the term 'Hindu', my acquaintances' shift
from class- or caste-related self-referents to a religious self-
referent implied a change of signifier rather than of the signi-
fied, to borrow the terminology of Ferdinand de Sassure (1986).
This begs the question of whether the shift entailed a change
of identity salience or was a mere relexicalization, something
I unfonunately do not have the space to go into funher here.
''Traditionally, Hindu morality is not universal, but caste- and occupa-

tion-specific. Scriptures such as Kautilya's Arthashastra and Manusmriti
suggest that, for kings and Kshatriyas, physical violence and killing may
be a morally legitimate means of fulfilling their dharma, which is to protect
and expand their political domain.

208 • Blended .Boundaries
A corollary to the accha bias of the Hindu term was that its
alter-Muslims-were imagined as the opposite of 'good'. My
acquaintances' essentialization of Muslims turned out to be an
inversion of their own upper-caste self-image that in this context
was labelled 'Hindu'. The common generalization of the Muslim
Other as illiterate, child-breeding, and dirty was, I suggest, a
means of pushing them as far down on the chot.a-accha con-
tinuum as possible. Interestingly, several of those who charac-
terized Muslims in this way-though none in the excerpts
above-were also inclined to use the word ganda (bad/ dirty)
about Muslims, a term that embodied the ambiguity of poor
hygiene and ritual impurity, as I argued in Chapters 3 and 4.
Projecting Muslims as 'small' transformed them far more effec-
tively into an object of contempt than simply mimicking the
'official' Hindu nationalist rhetoric of Muslims as disloyal to
India and appeased by successive governments. Interestingly,
to lend credibility to the projection of Muslims as 'small', it did
not seem necessary to extend it to Muslim acquaintances who
in other contexts were accepted as acche. True, Nani Mehta
insisted that their Muslim friend (whose 'good' class back-
ground I only presume) washed himself once a week, and Billu
once claimed that his former tennis coach, Mr Syed, had 'at
least nine children' though he spoke very fondly of him in other
respects. But Ajay never ascribed any 'smallness' to his friend
Mukhtar, or the Sharmas tojalal or their other Muslim connec-
tions. This does not necessarily indic;:ate that my acquaintances
thought of their 'good' Muslim connections as exceptions. Jalal,
for example, was often said to be disloyal 'in his heart', some-
thing I will return to later.
A second feature of the local meaning-production caused by
the heated public debates concerning the Muslim minority in
India, was that past and present experiences with Muslims were
restructured and reinterpreted. The reinterpretation included
interreligious friendships of the past, which frequently were
idealized to exaggerate the deterioration of interreligious rela-
tions in the present. It might well be true that Vivek and Pramod
used to visit their Muslim friends on religious festivals and vice
versa in their school and college days, but I find it hard to believe
that they had kept up with such visits well into adulthood. As
noted in the previous chapters, Pramod was even reluctant to

Essentializing and Frn-egi-ounding Muslims • 209
leave his house to visit his best friends. I also find it hard to
imagine the men touching .the feet of their Muslim friends, as
Vivek alleged. Touching the feet of another person is a gesture
of respect that normally is reserved for superiors and elders,
and if Vivek touched any feet- while visiting his Muslim friends,
it was probably those of his friends ' parents or grandparents, not
those of his friends themselves. Pramod's assertion that he used
to eat 'from the same plate' as Muslims seemed more inventive
still, coming from a man who admitted to refusing water from
his friend, Jalal. Also, quite recent experiences with Muslims
could be restructured, reinterpreted, or simply filtered out. This
was probably what happened when Pramod claimed that he had
offered his newly constructed apartments to Muslims, but ended
up with only Hindu and Sikh buyers. Strictly speaking, this might
be true, but what Pramod neglected to mention was that one
buyer, a large company, used the flat to accommodate their
secretary, a young Muslim woman. In several other contexts
Pramod had used her presence to strengthen his self-image as
a tolerant cosmopolitan; yet she was conspicuously absent in his
argument about deteriorating interreligious relationships. Fi-
nally, when Pramod claimed that Muslims cheered for Pakistan
rather than India during cricket matches between the two coun-
tries, he overlooked his own experiences from a multi-religious
cricket team as well as the irrelevance of religious background
on India's national cricket team. 6 Nevertheless, I heard exactly
the same allegation from a number of people, including Jyoti
Dixit, the young woman of the mutton prank. Knowing that nei-
ther Pramod nor Jyoti tended to venture far from home, and
certainly not into Muslim-dominated localities, I wondered how
they had come to know that Muslims cheered for Pakistan. The
answers were normally evasive, spanning from 'I have heard it
from someone' and 'I have seen it on TV' to 'I have heard the
sound of [celebratory} crackers from the Muslim side of town'.
• Religious background had not always been irrelevant. According to

Guha (1998), cricket teams in colonial Bombay tended to be organized
along religious lines, with Hindu teams and Muslim teams. Guha also
describes how upper<aste cricket players had problems in relating to a
Cha1niir team mate outside the cricket field and were reluctant to accept
him as captain though he was the most talented player on their team.

210 • BJended &undams
Of all the people I met who forwarded the cheering-for-Pakistan

argument, Tilak was the only one who claimed to have witnessed
it himself, something he illustrated with a description of how the
residents in Chamanganj, the stereotypical Muslim muhalla
downtown, hoisted green flags and distributed sweets after
Pakistan had beaten India in sports.
This brings me to the importance of rumours and urban
legends. I hesitate in employing these concepts since they are
often used to emphasize the shoddy truth-value of the informa-
tion in question. Certainly, local notions about Muslims did not
always conform to the kind of truth that a scientific method could
establish. The main utility of these concepts, however, lies in
their attention to how information travels through social net-
works. The claim that Muslims sided with the Pakistani cricket
team was not as much a rumour due to its content as to the way
it travelled. A rumour is a narration with content sufficiently
spectacular to make it travel rapidly through personal networks,
thereby ensuring wide distribution. The bottom line of this
rumour--that Muslims were disloyal to India-was hardly novel
to supporters of Hindu nationalism, and a simple reiteration of
this allegation would have been far too conventional to travel.
The power of the claim that Muslims cheered for the Pakistani
cricket team lay in its spectacular way of communicating a
conventional message, thereby also exaggerating the message
itself to 'how extreme the disloyalty of Muslims actually is'. An
effect of such rumours was that local conversations on Hindu-
Muslim issues tended to cluster around similar examples, thereby
developing a strikingly standardized content: I was often con-
fronted with surprisingly similar examples, phrased in remark-
ably similar choices of words, in localities that were far apart,
and in social networks that seemed completely disconnected
from each other.
In·addition to the cricket argument, there were several other
allegations against Muslims that traversed upper-caste networks
in n1mour-Jike ways. One was that Muslims were armed to the
teeth and had witnessed the killing of animals since childhood.
In the excerpts above, this was mentioned independently by
Pramod and Soni to sustain the view that Muslims were more
prone to violence than Hindus. Another allegation was that non-
Muslims were barred from buying land in Kashmir, something

that was used to exemplify the assumed appeasement of the

Muslim minority. Repeated refutations in several secular news-
papers and news magazines, which correctly stated that it was
non-Kashmiris, and not non-Muslims, who were barred from
purchasing land in Kashmir, were simply overlooked. The as-
sumptions that Muslims comprised 17 per cent or 30 per cent
of the population in India and 30-40 per cent of the population
in Kanpur, that Muslim men had four wives and begot six chil-
dren with each also had rumour-like features. This was not
because the allegations so clearly went against official knowl-
edge, but because they became widely shared so rapidly, and
because they were expressed in more or less the same words
in different upper-caste circles in Kanpur throughout 1992. True,
there was no clear agreement on what the percentage of Mus-
lims might be, or on how ritual slaughter of goats translated into
violence against human beings. However, the frequency and
intensity with which such allegations buzzed about in Mohanganj
and elsewhere in Kanpur in 1992, left little doubt that they had
taken people by complete surprise. Exaggeration, as it were, did
not only make a rumour travel. Paradoxically, exaggeration also
lent it credibility.
Less standardized allegations against Muslims often took the
shape of urban legends. Urban legends have many similarities
with rumours, but differ from them in that the narrator usually
tells the story as if it had happened to himself or someone he
knows (af Klintberg 1999 (1986]} . An urban legend may travel
as far and rapidly as a rumour, but is co-opted by the narrator,
who pulls the chain of narration after him, so to speak. Not until
the chain crosses itself and the listener hears a familiar story
but with new characters in the lead roles, can a narrated event
be revealed as an urban legend. Tilak seemed to pull such
chains now and then, and I think it quite probable that his claim
to personally having seen Muslims celebrating Pakistan's vic-
tory in cricket was a case in point. Though Tilak's work cenainly
required occasional visits to Muslim localities, he never stayed
on after work- panicularly not during cricket matches, when he
always rushed home to watch lV. During panicularly important
matches, Tilak often stayed home from work to sit in front of
the 1V the whole day. His claim to have seen Muslims distrib-
uting sweets in Chamanganj, then, was probably a friend's or a

212 • Blended &undariu
friend of a friend's observation rather than his own. Moreover,

Tilak's statement that a Muslim friend had wanted to move to
Mohanganj but chose to remain 'in the Muhammedan area in
which he lived' was also a possible case of chain-pulling. As I
learned when I got to know Tilak better, he did not have a single
friend in a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood. This leaves us
with three possibilities. One, that Tilak had heard the story from
someone else and retold it as if it concerned one of his own
Muslim friends. Another, that he contextually had 'promoted' a
brief Muslim acquaintance to a friend to make his point more
persuasive. A third, that the person he referred to was Jalal, who
once told me that he had considered moving to Mohanganj but
decided against it. Jalal, however, had never lived in a Muslim-
do1ninated locality after moving to Kanpur as a young man.
To suggest that 1nany of the local statements about Muslims
were not entirely true is not to suggest that they were deliberate
lies. What they reflect, I suggest, is that the essentialist imagina-
tion of the 'typical Muslim' was elevated to a truth so transcen-
dent that it provided a way of filtering, interpreting, and even
adjusting past experiences. In other words, my acquaintances
simply perceived the stereotypical image of Muslims as belong-
ing to a different, and more perfect level of reality than their own
personal experiences. Let me explain by drawing an analogy to
structural anthropology. Structural analysis, I believe, reveals an
implicit belief in two separate layers of reality, the first consisting
of the everyday complexities that anthropologists may observe in
the field; the other of an almost transcendental ordering struc-
ture. Some stn1cturalist texts even make the observable world
co1ne across as a reflection of the transcendental structure
rather than as a complex whole that needs to be studied in its own
right, with all the diversity this would include. In a similar vein,
I suggest, the stereotypical image of Muslims-that they were
child-breeding, dirty, violent, fundamentalist, sinister-looking,
poor, illiterate and so on-was so frequently evoked in 1992 that
it seemed to have acquired status as a transcendent truth. The
observable world was seen as a mere reflection, and, hence, my
acquaintances granted their own experience with Muslims a
subordinate status. Personal experiences that conformed to the
stereotypical image were magnified, and those that did not, were
seen as hnperfect reflections that were either reinterpreted to

Essentializing and F<n~nding Muslim.s • 213
suit the transcendent reality, silenced, or dismissed as excep-

tional. It was probably its transcendent status that made the
stereotypical image of the Muslim Other repel counter-examples
and factual corrections. Consequently, the stereotypical image
was less effectively weakened by counterarguments than by being
overwritten and silenced by an entirely different public debate.
The transcendence of the stereotypical image of Muslims
may also contribute to explain why the 'nature' of Muslims
became such a predominant dominant topic in local conversa-
tions. To comment on the Bahri Masjid issue, the Shah Bano
controversy, the status of Kashmir and so on required consid-
erable knowledge, memory, and attemion to detail, given the fact
that the news reported on new developments, statements, and
viewpoints on these issues virtually every day. In contrast, the
'nature' of Muslims could be discussed as if there were an
unchangeable truth beyond-but yet manifest in-the complexi-
ties of the news and ongoing everyday life in Mohanganj. Even
those who were leas t interested in politics and news were able
to contribute to local Hindu-Muslim conversations by inserting
an example or two that supposedly demonstrated the tn1e 'na-
ture' of Muslims, either by drawing on own experiences or by
recirculating stories heard from others. The attractiveness of
transcendent truths-including the structural principles postu-
lated by structuralist academics-lies in their ability to create
a remarkable sense of order in what appears chaotic and com-
plex on the surface.
RIOTS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON INTERACTION

WITH MUSLIMS
On 6 December 1992 an unruly 1nob of Hindu nationalist activ-
ists attacked and demolished the Bahri Masjid in Ayodhya. This
event triggered outbursts of violence in a number of North Indian
cities. Kanpur was among the cities that were strongest affected,
with riots that lasted about a fortnight and left 110 people dead. 7
7
Figure reported by an unnamed police representative to a newspaper
some months after the riots ('Another riot victim dies', the Pion«r, Kanpur,
20 February 1993). Virtually everyone I met, however, believed that the
police underreported the numbers and that the 'real' death toll was about
ten times higher.

Paul Brass ( 1997), who has examined the police records from
the riot period in Kanpur, states that the riots started when
Muslims, hurt and provoked over the demolition of the mosque
in front of cheering onlookers, set fire to houses and shops owned
by Hindus. When Hindu rioters retaliated, there was, as Brass
phrases it, a 'rising crescendo of riotous activities directed
against Muslims' (1997: 220). The areas that were most af-
fected were Muslim neighbourhoods, boundary areas between
Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods, and some poor localities.
Mohanganj was not riot-affected, and the curfew in this neighbour-
hood was of shorter duration and less strictly enforced than in
many other localities, where shoot-at-sight orders were imposed
for days on end.
The riots started only a few days after a wedding in the
Sharma family, whom I had stayed with until then. To make
space for incoming relatives, I had just moved to a hotel down-
town. Consequently, I have no first-hand observations of what
the Sharmas and my other acquaintances in Mohanganj did
during the riots. To the best of my knowledge, however, none of
them were involved in the post-demolition riots, whether by
direct participation or by what Brass terms 'riot engineering'.
Not being active in any of the Hindu nationalist organizations
or criminal networks, they were not a part of what Brass terms
'institutionalized riot systems', that is, the nexus between local
grn:u!,iis (mafia dons), organizational leaders, and politicians
who plan the riots, and the local badmii.Scs (bad guys) who
implement their sinister plans. That institutionalized riot sys-
tems were responsible for most of the serious riot incidents in
Kanpur in 1992 is amply documented in Brass' portrait of Kala
Baccha, one of the main riot engineers. What I heard in Mohanganj
and elsewhere supports Brass' conclusions. A few months prior
to the riots, the leader of a local branch of the RSS told me that
he trained and supplied weapons-including bombs, kanAs ( coun-
try-made pistols), and swords-to his 'boys' and kept them
ready to act in the event of Muslim provocation, as he put it. When
I moved to Hari Mandi after the riots- a lower middle class,
religiously heterogeneous neighbourhood that did not escape the
riots as painlessly as Mohanganj-my neighbours ~old me that
those who had attacked the local Muslims and torched their
houses were strangers arriving in a van. This suggests that the

Essentializing and Fongrounding Muslims • 215
miscreants were from another part of the city, but knew exactly
in which streets there lived Muslims, something they could not
have known without prior investigations or assistance from locals
with anti-Muslim sentiments. The main riotous activities, then,
were by no means spontaneous outbursts of anger.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the only riotous activity
that any of my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj had
been involved in, dated back to the previous attack on the Bahri
Masjid in October 1990. During the interreligious tension that
followed, Gopal and Pramod admitted having pelted stones at
a small mosque on the outskirts of Mohanganj. This, however,
appeared more of an act of drunken foolery than a serious riot
activity. As Gopal and Pramod recalled amidst outbursts of
laugher, it had happened dw:ing a drinking spree with a third
friend, Suresh. Inspired by booze, hostility against Muslims, and
the general craziness they ascribed to him, Suresh demanded
that they jump into the car, find a mosque, and burn it down.
Suresh was so persistent that they eventually relented. Having
driven from mosque to mosque without finding one that was
sufficiently deserted, they finally remembered the tiny, secluded
mosque in one of the residential streets in Mohanganj. By the
time they reached it, Suresh was too drunk to get out of the car,
but Gopal half-heartedly threw a few stones at it, returned to the
·car and told Suresh, tongue in cheek, that now he could relax
as the mosque would soon be burning. The reason why I believe
this was the only riot-like activity that any of my acquaintances
participated in, is that such involvement would surely have sur-
faced at some point in the years that followed. To expect poten-
tial riot participation to be disclosed is not as na1ve as it may
seem. As time went by and my acquaintances developed trust
in me, they became surprisingly open-hearted concerning their
own involvement in other illegal or morally dubious acts, includ-
ing corruption, contact with local mafia dons, rape attempts, and
even worse acts. When violence against Muslims or Muslim
property never surfaced again, I believe it is because there was
nothing more to tell.
Non-participation in riots does not entail that my upper-caste
acquaintances' relations with Muslims were .unaffected by the
political turbulence in 1992. Anna Simons, who ·conducted field-
work amidst acute street violence in Mogadishu, Somalia, claims

that insecurity and distrust made social relationships 'contract'

by fixing individuals in their kin groups (Simons 1995, 1997).
A parallel contracting in Kanpur ~ould probably have fixed
people in their religious communities. As I will suggest, however,
contracting tended to be short-lived despite the increased mutual
distrust between the religious communities. More important,
contracting was balanced by concern, compassion, and assis-
tance acr-oss religious boundaries. I learned about several in-
stances in which this happened-some from my acquaintances,
others from the newspapers. A decade later, similar incidents
were reported from the riots in Gujarat. All the same, interre-
ligious assistance is usually filtered out from academic riot
studies because their attention usually is directed at how and
why riots occur, who were responsible, and what kind of atroci-
ties the victims suffered. By making my point of departure an
entirely different question-namely, how actual interreligious
relations were affected by the intense Hindu-Muslim discourse
and the subsequent riots-I hope to show that deterioration was
only one outcome among many.
What surprised me most was the compassion that the riots
suddenly catalysed towards the riot victims, most of whom were
Muslims. In one of the conversation excerpts above, Soni Kapoor
claimed that her joint family once sheltered and protected a
large group of Muslim women from possible retaliation after a
rumoured mµtilation of a young Hindu girl. Likewise, the Mehtas
told me how they had supplied vegetables, milk, and other
necessities to Muslim acquaintances 'trapped' in curfew with
little possibility of leaving their house, and with all the nearby
markets closed. This was no heroic act, the Mehtas assured me:
as the market in Mohanganj remained open, all they had to do
was to arrange for a car and a curfew pass, which was no
problem if one had the right contacts. Tanu, whose sister eloped
with a Muslim boy (see Chapter 6), told me that her father
collected blankets and food in the neighbourhood and distrib-
uted it among the 2000 riot victims (mainly Muslims) who had
fled their homes and huddled together in Green Park, under
conditions described as 'bitter cold, lack of civic facilities, food
and medicines' in one of the local newspapers. 8 Pramod Sharma
8 'No help for the helpless', the Pirm«r, Lucknow, l' December 1992.

Essentialiung and Ftmgrrmnding Muslims • 217
stated that he phoned his Muslim friends and connections during

the riots to inquire about their safety and to ask whether there
was anything he could do for them. Though he told me so to
emphasize that he cared less for their safety now than before,
when he would try to visit them rather than merely give them a
call, his statement reveals a strong concern with their well-being.
Whether such statements should be taken at face value or as
attempts to impress the visiting anthropologist, they point to the
sudden elevation of compassion as a dominant value once the
context shifted from rhetoric to rioting. That compassion was
more than empty talk was nowhere as clear as in Sajeda Momin's
repon from one of the refugee camps in Kanpur. Among the
victims she met was a Muslim girl who, after having watched her
entire family bum alive as she hid in a toilet, escaped because
a Hindu neighbour took her away and passed her off as her
daughter. However, the benefactor was threatened and had to
S((lld the girl away to a refi.1gee camp after three days. Momin
also writes that a Muslim widow told her, 'Had it not been for
my Hindu neighbours who risked their lives to save me, I would
not have been here today'. 9 Once the riots had started, Muslims
were no longer thought of only in terms of the transcendental
stereotypical image, but also as riot victims, something that
contributed to breaking down the essentialized view of Muslims
as inherently violent riot instigators.
The effect of the political turmoil on interreligious friendships
was a little more complex. During my effort to get an overview of
the extent and quality of interreligious friendships, one of my
recurring questions was whether there had been any change in
these relations. This evoked two types of response, both equally
common. l11e first held that they were as close to their Muslim
friends as before, and that the strained political situation had not
affected their friendship at all. The second held that, though the
friendship remained, they had started to doubt whether Muslims
were as trustworthy as others. As one of them put it: 'Before they
were my friends. Now they are my Muhammedan friends.' To
exemplify this transformation, I will return to two of the interre-
ligious friendships I described in the previous chapter, namely
those between Pramod and Nasir, and between Tilak andJalal.
9 'VHP gangs plundered Kanpur', the 'J'elegraph, 15 December 1992.

218 • BJerukd Boundaries
Pramod was one of those who claimed to have begun to

distrust his Muslim friends. If this included Nasir, Pramod
glossed over it with humorous re1narks. When Nasir dropped by
in November 1992, for example, Pramodjokingly rebuked him
for not having shown up at divali some weeks earlier. 'Have you
turned communal, or what?' he laughed. During this religious
festival, however, Pramod had not shown any signs of expecting
Nasir to drop by, and his question suggests a wish to stress that,
if they didn't see each other as often as before, it was Nasir's
fault. Pramod's question also reveals his acute awareness of the
religious difference between them, at the same time as this was
the very feature he attempted to undercommunicate. Fortunatelr..
Nasir interpreted Pramod •s remark. charitably and laughed.
Afterwards he replied that he had indeed phoned Pramod at
divali, but gave up the idea of dropping by after having been told
that Pramod was busy playing cards with his friends. Even if
Nasir had not tried to call Pramod, this would have been a safe
white lie, knowing that card-playing and gambling peaked around
divali, and knowing Pramod's reluctance to interrupt a gambling
binge. In this brief exchange, both Pramod and Nasir attempted
to communicate that religious polarization had not affected their
friendship whatsoever. Yet, I believe both knew it had. Though
the weakening of their friendship had started way before 1992,
the political turmoil that year seemed to give the weakening a
further push. Nasir continued to drop by Pramod's house now
and then-also after the riots-but with longer and longer inter-
vals. To borrow Mark Granoveuer's notion of 'weak ties' (1973).
the case of Pramod and Nasir shows the weakening of a weak
friendship.
The relationship between Tilak and jalal did not have such a
negative outcome, though the mutual.suspicion seemed far stron-
ger than in the case of Pramod and Nasir. Since I followed the
friendship between Tilak and Jalal from both sides from 1992
to 2002, it may be worthwhile to delve into this relationship at
some length, as it brings forth the complexities of the effect of
the Hindu-Muslim discourse on interreligious friendships. In
the previous chapter, I noted that the friendship between Tilak
and jalal was partly motivated by mutual liking, and partly by
utility. The first change that occurred was that the men became
slightly suspicious of each other's intentions. For Tilak, this

Essentializ.ing and Foregrounmng Muslims • 219
involved a foregrounding of Jalal's Muslim background and an

interpretation of his actions that conformed to the transcendent
'truth' about Muslims. Once, when India had lost a cricket match
against Pakistan, Jalal happened to visit the Sharmas after the
match. Jalal had been working during the match, and inquired
about the result as soon as he reached his friends. To Tilak and
Pramod, however, it was inconceivable thatjalal did not know the
result already. 'Everyone followed this match!' they exclaimed. In
their interpretation, Jalal had merely asked about the result to
humiliate them by reminding them of India's loss. To Tilak and
Pramod, this 'confirmed ' that Jalal was more loyal to Pakistan
than to India 'in his heart'. They never confrontedjalal with their
interpretation of his match enquiry, and consequently Jalal was
not able to remember this episode although he could recall a few
similar ones.
Another token of distrust from Tilak's side was that he rein-
terpreted J alal's anxiety. As long as the men had known each
other, Tilak had thought ofjalal as a 'psychological case'. Fear-
ing political unrest and robbery, he stayed at home after dark;
fearing burglary, he kept his gate locked and guarded by a
barking Doberman; fearing kidnapping of his son, he did not
allow him to be outside after school hours; and fearing future
religious persecution, he had given his son a religiously neutral
name and avoided bringing him up as a Muslim. wJalal's anxiety
was probably related to his alienation from his relatives, and,
for understandable reasons, the anxiety intensified in 1992-3.
During the heated Hindu-Muslim discourse of 1992, Tilak staned
to refer to a local saying, which held that 'a man who distrusts
others is not to be trusted himself. This, he said, showed that
not even Jalal could be exempted from the caution with which
one had to handle Muslims. When the riots were over and the
intensity of the Hindu-Muslim controversies subsided, however,
"' This did not only entail not teaching his son how to pray, but also
concealing his own religious activities. Jalal did not do regular nan1az
(prayer) regularly. Once, however, his son entered the room when he was
praying, and when the boy asked him what he was doing, Jalal replied that
he was looking for a coin that fell out of his pocket. jalal's anxiety was not
Tilak"s invention; it also caused considerable worry to Jalal's wife, who
persistently tried to persuade him to go for a holiday. In Kanpur, seeking
a psychologist was only an option tor the. most extreme cases.

the distrust interpretation appeared to lose validity. Whenever

Tilak has mentioned Jalal's anxiety since, he had done so by
describing it as a 'psychological problem' and Jalal as a 'psy-
chological case'.
As for Jalal, the most obvious change in his way of thinking
about Tilak and Pramod in 1992 was that he started to think of
them not only as Hindus, but also as Hindu nationalists. This
was not surprising as the brothers made little effort to conceal
their views on Muslims and Muslim-related political controver-
sies in his presence. When I met Jalal outside the surveillance
of the Sharmas in 1992, he often mentioned the dilemma he felt
trapped in: 'The moment I say something wrong, or something
slightly in favour of Muslims, they will remember it forever, note
it down-I know they keep a record-discuss it, and maybe
throw me out [of the circle].' Jalal probably exaggerated Tilak
and Pramod's reactions to being contradicted, but Jalal's fear
was real enough, and it made his position increasingly uncom-
fortable, as he could not afford to be ostracized. Not only did
he fear that Tilak or Pramod had the contacts it required to ruin
his career if they wanted to; he also considered himself depen-
dent on their information, contacts, and assistance. The politi-
cal tension heightened his feelings of dependency at the same
time as it increased his political self-censorship. The discomfort
this resulted in was so strong that he eventually felt as if he was
about to become a chamcha ofTilak. The word chamcha, which
literally means 'spoon', was commonly used to ridicule those
who entered patron-client-like roles as clients, and had conno-
tations as negative as their English equivalents, yes-man, lackey,
lick-spittle, or toady. Jalal's characterization of himself as a
chamcha does not only suggest that potential utility had started
to overshadow his other motives for maintaining the friendship,
but also that he was reinterpreting his relation with Tilak from
a symmetrical one to a hierarchical one.
Before these changes had a chance of reversal, the riots
started and Jalal found himself in potential danger. As the sole
Muslim amidst upper-caste Hindu (and some Sikh) neighbours,
Jalal got terrified when his distant colleague, Gagan Babu, phoned
to pass on a n1mour he had just heard, namely, that 'a gang of
Hindus' was on its way to Jalal's neighbourhood. About Gagan
Babu I know nothing more than that he was a medico in a leading

E.ssentialWng and Foregrounding Muslims • 221
administrative position, but his name reveals him as a Hindu,

and the Babu title signifies that Jalal considered him superior.
Gagan Babu asked Jalal to be on the lookout, and in fear, Jalal
spent the night on his roof with his shotgun, which he kept for
safety reasons. His upper-caste Hindu neighbours, who presum-
ably had heard the same rumour, spent the night on their roofs
as well, but in contrast to Jalal, they blew conch shells and
shouted 'jay Sri Ram (Victory to Lord Ram!)' throughout the
night. 11Jalal did not know whether they aimed to threaten him or
merely to identify themselves as Hindus in the event that rioters
arrived. At four in the morning, he saw no reason to ponder any
more, but packed his bag and drove off with his family to Gagan
Babu's house, where he stayed until the riots were over.
Gagan Babu's telephonic warning and willingness to house
Jalal during the remainder of the riots was yet an example of
compassion across religious boundaries. Yet this incident also
made Jalal disappointed with Tilak and Pramod. He could not
help asking himself why it was Gagan Babu, and not the Sharmas,
who stood up for him in times of trouble. He had not been in
touch with Gagan Babu for the past eight months, but had visited
the Sharmas every fortnight or so for many years. To reformulate
Jalal's question in Granovetter's terms (1973), why was it a
'weak tie' and not a 'strong tie' that saved him? In asking this
question, Jalal overlooked the possibility that the rumour could
have reached Gagan .l}abu long before it reached the Sharmas
in Mohanganj, if it ever reached them at all. Perhaps this inter-
pretation was reinforced by Jalal's disappointment that Tilak
had only called him once during the riots, and that too without
showing much concern for his safety.
Tilak might not have met Jalal's expectations regarding
concern and protection, but nothing suggests that he attempted
to pull out from the relationship, even temporarily. On the con-
trary, a fortnight after the riots had subsided, Tilak seemed tntly
worried aboutjalal, wondering why he had not showed up despite
several invitations and asking me if I had any news about him.
One week later, Jalal phoned me to say that Tilak had invited
him over again, asking for my advice on whether he should
11
Conch shells (siikh) are often blown before or after major pujas
(rituals of worship), and were appropriated as one of the symbols of the
Hindu nationalist movement.

swallow his pride and go or not. Fortunately, Jalal provided the

answer himself when admitting his thirst for 'news about the
situation'. As it turned out, Jalal was to visit the Sharmas even
sooner than he planned. The next morning Tilak asked him to
come immediately, as Pramod had suffered an attack of angina.
A cardiologist had already arrived with a respirator, but they
wantedjalal to take a look at Pramod as well. This visit did much
to heal the relationship between Jalal and Tilak. Not only did
Jalal stand up for the Sharmas when they needed him; their
conversation also revolved around a new rumour that, rather than
stressing the boundary between Hindus and Muslims, held
potential of uniting them against a third party, namely, myself.
As I 1nentioned in Chapter 2, the trust I had been about to
develop crumbled when my acquaintances started to doubt
whether it could be coincidental that one of the fault lines I had
taken interest in was the very fault line that had just caused so
1nuch pain and misery in Kanpur. Fortunately, Jalal did not
believe the rumours about me, but was nevertheless relieved that
Tilak no longer seemed to distrust him, but once again treated
him like a confidant. Whatever the negative consequences the
spy allegations had for me and my fieldwork, they obviously held
potential to heal societal fissures.
The distrust between Tilak and Jalal had grown too deep to
be erased by a single visit. But they did maintain contact, though
their friendship was not fully restored until the public blame
game about the riots had given way to other issues. During my
next major field visit in 1997, Jalal was once again a regular
visitor though he-as noted in Chapter 6-never dropped by as
frequently as many other friends, and never took part in the
drinking-cum-gambling sessions in the evenings and weekends.
With the advantage of hindsight, it is safe to conclude thatjalal's
worry that the political turmoil of 1992 1nade interreligious
friendships weaken only characterized a temporary state. In
comparison with Pramod's friendship with Nasir, it was the
relative strength of the friendship between Tilak and Jalal that
made it survive the tense political situation in 1992. I might add
that Jalal's neighbourhood remained safe despite the rumours,
and that Jalal was able to return to his house a few days later.
By then, the nunours had also reached the newspapers, which
were now able to dis1niss them as 'false reports', adding that

Essenlializing and Foregrounding Muslims • 223
the shouts of 'jay Sri Ram!' had left many people panic-stricken
not only where Jalal lived, but also in two other neighbourhoods. 12
CONCLUSIONS
Given that 1992 was such an extraordinary year as far as public
debates and political events were concerned, what this chapter
says about my upper-caste acquaintances' attitudes to Muslims
was anything but typical. What it does suggest, however, is how
local interreligious relations may be influenced by heated public
debates and dramatic events that emphasize the same fault
line, but that occur elsewhere. In the first part of the chapter I
employed a hybrid of a discursive and conversational analysis
to examine what effects the controversies debated in political
fora and mass media had on local conversations among my
upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj. While they certainly
reinforced their conceptualization of Muslims as the Other, their
way of talking about Muslims was no simple reflection of the
public and political debate. The latter revolve!! around the Bahri
Masjid, the status of Kashmir, and other specific controversies,
but it was the 'nature' of Muslims that dominated the conversa-
tions of my acquaintances. In a number of different ways, they
exemplified how violent, child-breeding, fundamentalist, dirty,
illiterate, and disloyal they held Muslims to be. While many of
these characteristics were drawn from Hindu nationalist rheto-
ric, I have argued that the local portrayal of Muslims as illiterate
and dirty appeared to be rooted in local constructions of class,
which were now employed to construct Hindus as acche log and
Muslims as choie log. Moreover, I have argued that my acquain-
tances' stereotypical image of Muslims literally attained the
status of a transcendent truth. This created a remarkable sense
of order and stability in a political context that grew more and
more complex every day, and made the stereotypical image of
Muslims practically inwlnerable to incidents that did not con-
form to it, let alone to contradictory information.
The second pan of the chapter made a brief return to the
network perspective in order to examine how the interreligious
relationships from Chapter 6 were reconfigured by the intense
12'Admn. in a fix over curfew passes', the Pioneer, l.AJcknow, 14 Decem-
ber 1992.

224 • Blerukd &mndaries
attention to Hindu-Muslim issues and the post-demolition riots

it cuhninated in. What I observed and heard in Mohanganj
suggested that strong interreligious friendships were either not
affected at all, or only suffered temporary setbacks. The case of
Tilak and Jalal, which I discussed at so1ne length, exemplifies
the growth of mutual distrust between men who suddenly became
very conscious of their different religious backgrounds. However,
it also shows the process by which the mistrust retreated and
their friendship was normalized. The case of Pramod and Nasir,
however, shows a weak friendship that was further weakened
during the political turmoil of 1992, and that never resumed the
closeness it once had. However paradoxical it might seem, riots
could also trigger compassion across religious boundaries, since
many of those who were uninvolved in the riots-such as my
upper-caste friends and informants-considered it a moral duty
to show concern for, and assist, Muslims in danger and distress.
Riot-induced compassion could run along pre-existing ties, as
when Gagan Babu letjalal and his family stay with him during a
rumoured attack onjalal's neighbourhood, or as when Muslim
riot victiins were saved by their Hindu neighbours. But it could
also be directed at strangers, as when upper-caste Hindus col-
lected money, food, or blankets for distribution among Muslim
riot victims. Though riot-induced compassion was short-lived
and by no means balances the gory acts committed by riot
perpetrators, it deserves attention due to its capacity to provide
life-saving ties, and to its role in de-demonizing the Other and
enabling riot-recovery and normalization.
In many ways, my upper-caste acquaintances' foregrounding
of the Muslim Other in 1992 was an 'empty' discourse, that is,
a conceptual and verbal preoccupation that hardly was acted
upon-at least not in the long n1n. This is in stark contrast to
the boundaries of caste and class, which were strongly embed-
ded in their everyday lives, and which to a large extent were
embodied, that is, incorporated in bodily movements and avoid-
ances rather than being talked about. As noted in Chapter 6, it
was mainly when interreligious interaction coincided with class
(or assumed caste descent), that it resulted in similar kinds of
embodied avoidance. This may be another reason why my upper-
caste acquaintances evoked local constructions of class when
foregrounding the boundary towards Muslims.

Essenualiz.ing and Foregrounding Muslims • 225
The verbal and cognitive nature of my upper-caste acquaintan-

ces' boundary towards Muslims may also explain its volatility.
Though intensely stressed around 1992, the preoccupation with
Muslim Otherness in Mohanganj subsided surprisingly quickly
after the riots. The curfew and the daily ghastly repons in the
press had left them 'riot fatigued' and longing for normalcy. As
early as around New Year 1992-3--despite a bomb explosion
and local rumours that Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray was
killed by it-my upper-caste friends and informants seemed fed
up of Hindu- Muslim issues. Not even the large-scale riots in
Bombay in January 1993, which mostly affected Muslims and left
more tl}an 300 people dead, renewed my acquaintances' passion
for Hindu-Muslim issues, though many responded that 'the
Muslims deserved it' when I asked. Moreover, the initial glee
over the demolition of the Babri Masjid soon gave way to a laconic
anticipation that the dispute would get stuck in the judicial
system, 15 and the VHP' s fumbling effons to extend the campaign
from Ayodhya to Mathura and Banaras in 1993 and 1994 hardly
even made an impact on the most faithful supponer of Hindu
nationalism in Mohanganj.
My acquaintances' loss of interest · in the Otherness of
Muslims was even clearer during my next field visit in 1994.
By now Mulayam Singh Yadav had been reinstalled as Chief
Minister in Uttar Pradesh, this time from the newly established
Samajwadi Pany (SP), supponed by the BSP. My upper-caste
acquaintances still despised Mulayam for his actions during
the previous attack on the Babri Masjid in 1990 and still re-
ferred to him as 'Mullah Mulayam'. Even so, the fact that he
now headed a government that put the interests of Dalits (ex-
untouchables) and OBCs in the forefront, made my acquaintan-
ces increasingly frustrated over the ongoing political assenion
of Dalits and low castes. Their fn1stration grew even stronger
when Mayawati and her pany, BSP, came to power. This process
is the topic of Chapter 8.
1' Their anticipation was correct. As l write this, more than ten years
later, the court cases that are supposed to determine the involvement of
certain high-profile politicians and organizational leaders still drag on.

8
-
1997: Essentializing and
Foregrounding Dalits ·
May 1997. The cement mixer grinds to a halt, the carpenters

stop hammering. The workers employed to construct apartment
buildings in the Sharma family's home compound retreat to the
rear of the construction site with their tiffin boxes. Inside the old
bungalow. Bablu glances at the front page of Dainikjagran while
waiting for his lunch plate. One of the headlines mentions
Mayawati, the Chief Minister, and he makes a remark about her.
His brother sighs with a resigned look on his face, but nothing
more is said. The silence gives me an opportunity to inquire
about the unskilled labourers: How are they recruited, and on
what basis? Instead of answering my question, Bablu says res<>-
lutely: 'We don't give jobs to Scheduled Castes anymore. These
people are already favoured in government jobs. What's the
point in helping them further?'
In this chapter I aim to examine such verbal remarks about
SCs or Dalits (the preferred political self-referent for oppressed
castes), who during 1997 appeared to replace Muslims com-
pletely as the salient Other of my·upper-caste acquaintances in
Mohanganj. Retaining the i:ecipient perspective and the dis-
course/conversational analysis from the previous chapter, I will
examine the effect of the political developments that put caste
at the centrestage in the news, on the political conversations and
comments among my upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj.
My main argument is that the increased attention to caste in the

Essmtializ.ing and Fortgiounding Dal.its • 227
media made my acquaintances foreground caste and back-

ground religious differences, almost like in the optical illusions
where there are two figures in one, but where only one figure can
be seen at a time.1 The way in which caste was foregrounded,
however, had little to do with the complexity of occupations and
caste identities reflected in the previous chapters. As Bablu's
remark suggests, it was the difference between those who were
entitled to preferential· treatment and those who were not that
was foregrounded. In this sense, caste was digitalized. By com-
paring my acquaintances' conversations about low castes with
their exchanges about Muslims, I will further argue that, contrary
to what one might assume, the former entailed fewer references
to essentialist notions about 'their nature' and borrowed less
from local class categories. I will further suggest that the upper-
caste foregrounding of caste was more of a male occupation than
the foregrounding of the religious boundary had been. Finally, I
will argue that the foregrounding of caste had limited effect on
face-to-face interaction between upper and lowe.r castes, and that
intentions of boycotting low castes were rarely carried out in
practice. Even so, it reinforced the subtle everyday practices of
exclusion by galvanizing the upper castes in terms of political
and interpersonal loyalty and providing a new source of legitima-
tion for securing employment and state benefits through per-
sonal networks.
NEWS THEMES IN 1997

To make sense of the local arguments and of the local conver-
sations I am about to present, it will be useful to begin with a
summary of the .:opics that recurred in the newspapers com-
monly read in Mohanganj in 1997. By then it was already several
years since Hindu-Muslim-related controversies had dominated
the news. Instead, the headlines revolved around issues as dis-
parate as a transport strike, the fate of the Union government,
1
The best known optical illusion is probably Sigmund Freud's 'What's
on a man's mind' drawing that combines the figure of a male face
with beard and glasses with the figure of a naked woman. This and other
optical illusions were often used to illustrate the principles of Gestalt
psychology, which are summarized by Gadamer (1960) , Iser (1978), and
Schatz ( 1971). among others.

the growing perils of corruption and crime, and the deaths of

Mother Teresa and Princess Diana. With the reinstallation of
Mayawati as chief minister in Uttar Pradesh in March 1997,
however, caste issues suddenly started to overshadow most other
topics. Not that it was the first time. Caste had also been a
recurring news theme when Mayawati first got to power in 1995,
during Mulayam Singh Yadav's chief ministerships, and not to
mention in 1990, when the Union government decided to imple-
ment preferential treatment for OBCs.
Let me open by summarizing the politics of preferential
treatment, as it also remained a topic of debate in 1997 and
often cropped up in local conversations about politics that year.
The decision made by the V. P. Singh government in 1990 im-
plied that, in addition to the government jobs and educational
seats already reserved for the SCs and STs, an additional quota
of jobs and educational seats would be reserved for OBCs with
effect from September 1993.2 The quota reserved for SCs and
STs, was proportional to the percentage of these groups in each
state-in Uttar Pradesh 21.21 per cent altogether. Another 27
per cent was now reserved for OBCs, thereby making the total
percentage of reserved seats just within the 50 per cent limit set
by the Supreme Court. One of the prerequisites of the reserva-
tion policy was that each state administration had to define
exactly which castes each category should include, 5 with the
effect that many of the groups that were left out raised demands
for inclusion or further reservations. Some agitated for inclusion
in the OBC category, such as Christian Dalits, 4 Ja~s (Muralidharan
2
For overviews on the development of the reservation policy, Galanter
( 1984), Nesiah ( 1997) , Mendelssohn & Vicziany ( 1998), and Bayly ( 1999)
may serve as usefi1l starting points.
3
ln Uttar Pradesh no less than 70 caste names were listed as SCs and
about 65 caste names as OBCs in the mid-1990s. Some casles are known
by several names or divided in to subcastes, so the lists include more
nam es than castes. The SCs are specified in the Constitution (Schedu/.ed
Castes) Order, I 950 and its amendments, issued by the Ministry of Law and
Justice. My copy was a 1994 amendment. The castes granted OBC statlL'I
in 1993 were listed in the Gaulle of India Extrtwrdi11ary in September 1993,
which appears as an appendix in Yadav (1994).
4
Moses, Brindavan C: 'Christian Dalits-victims of discrimination', the
1-lintlu 8 April 1997.

EssmtiaJiz.ing and Fortgtounding Dalits • 229
1999), and certain Muslims (Wright 1997). Others demanded

that the reservation for OBCs be extended to political represen-
tation, 5 and yet others that job reservations be extended from
government employment to private employment. 6 In addition to
demands for reservation based on caste, there were efforts to
reserve 33 per cent of all the parliamentary seats for women,
and in 1995 a 3 per cent quota in employment and education was
set aside for the physically disabled. In Uttar Pradesh, 5 per cent
of the seats reserved for SCs, STs, and OBCs (a so-called
subquota) were already allotted to the physically disabled,
dependants of freedom fighters, and ex-servicemen. Arguments
that a quota also ought to be set aside for poor upper castes were
also voiced, though such demands did not seem to gain political
acceptability until the 2000s.
In 1997, as the years betore and after, such demands for
further reservations recurred .in the newspapers. So did reflec-
tions on the adverse sides of caste-based reservation. Neverthe-
less, it was Mayawati's return to the chief ministerial post in
Uttar Pradesh in March that turned caste into an inescapable
news topic in Kanpur that year. Mayawati, who represented the
BSP and worked for the uplift of Dalits, knew from the outset
that her chief ministership would be limited to a six-month
period.7 Consequently she implemented more decisions, and
did so faster, than she otherwise would have done, something
that gave her moves a certain shock effect. Among her first
moves was to initiate a large-scale transfer of bureaucrats-
5 'Reservation demanded', the Hindustan Times, 29 October 1997.

6 ·SC, ST panel urges reservation in pvt firms·, the Times of India,
Lucknow, 24 November 1997.

7
When Mayawati became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1997, it
was as the head of a coalition government of BSP and BJP. Despite their
political antagonism, the panies decided to cooperate to reduce the power
of the then Governor, Romesh Bhandari, whom they held to be 'remOle
controlled' by their common opponent, Mulayam Singh Yadav and his
Samajwadi Pany. BSP and BJP agreed that Mayawati would occupy the
chief ministerial benh the first six months, after which she would vacate
it for Kalyan Singh (BJP) in September. For funher information about
Mayawati and the coalition government she headed, see Duncan (1997);
Hasan (1998);jatfrel0l (2003);Jeffrey & Lerche (2000); and Mendelsohn
& Vicziany ( 1998: 227).

230 • Blmded &undarns
panly to fill the SC and ST quota within the higher levels of

administration, but also to ensure that key positions were manned
by Dalits and others who were friendly to the Dalit cause.8
Shonly afterwards, she staned to get thousands of Ambedkar
statues erected throughout the state and initiated the construc-
tion of a sprawling Ambedkar Park in Lucknow, something that
attracted considerable criticism for the unnecessary costs it
would entail for an impoverished state.9 This debate, combined
with Mayawati's other effons at commemorating Ambedkar,io
nevenheless ensured that the name of this low-caste leader
appeared in the newspapers vinually every single day. A third
of Mayawati's controversial moves was to attempt to fill the
quotas reserved for SC, ST, and OBC students in postgraduate
medical and diploma courses by passing an Act that reduced
their qualifying marks in admission tests from 35 per cent to
20 per cent, something that generated widespread public worry
that doctors and other professionals would be substandard. 11
Just as controversial was her effon to ensure a more effective
imple1nentation of the SC/ST Act, which makes atrocities against
SCs and STs punishable with imprisonment for a minimum of
8 For funher details, see 'Major administrative reshuffie in UP', the
TimM of India, 23 March 1997; 'Transfer tactics', bidill Today, 30 April
l 9Y7; or Mendelsohn & Vicziany ( 1998: 228).
9 For details, see 'Mayawati's dream incomplete', the Pioneer, Kanpur,
14 April 1997; 'Will she, won't she ', the Hindusllln Times (Sund«y Maga~ine),
7 September 1997; or 'Maya Costs A Lot', India Today, 22 September 1997.
"'The moves included naming a new district and renaming an existing
village development scheme after Ambedkar, garlanding Ambedkar stat-
ues when visiting cities outside Lucknow, declaring his binhday a public
holiday, and initiating an Ambedkar fair.
11
When Mayawati was in power in 1995, s~e had passed a government
order that excepted reserved category students e ntirely from minimum
qualifying marks, but as the order was in conflict with the Indian Medical
Council Act, it was dismissed by the Supren1e Court. In August 1999, the
Act she designed in 1997-'Uttar Pradesh Postgraduate Medical Educa-
tion (Reservation for SC, ST and OBC) Act, 1997'-was also dismissed
by the Supreme Coun, on the grounds that merit, not quotas, should be
the key to admissions to the highest level courses in medicine ('SC strikes
down admission quota for higher courses', the Times of lndui, 13 August
1999; ' Fragmented Order', the 'Pion«r (Agmda supplement), 26 September
1999. For a critique of the last Supreme Coun judgement, see Pinto 1999) .

Essentiafu:ing and Fongrounding Dalits • 231
six months. •i Despite the agreement on the need to prevent such

atrocities, the strengthened implementation boomeranged in a
series of cases in which the Act was said to be misused. 13
Representatives from the Samajwadi Party and other opposition
panics were quick to side with those who claimed to be falsely
implicated, something that secured the SC/ST Act steady
mention in the news as well as in local conversations about
politics and caste. With all these issues running parallelly, there
was hardly a page in the city and state sections in the local
newspapers that made no mention of caste.
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT DAL.ITS AND CASTE POLITICS

As in the previous chapter, I will proceed by presenting a handful
of conversation excerpts uninterrupted by analytical comments
while deferring the analysis to the next section. Unlike the
previous chapter, however, I will also include some conversa-
tions in which I was the only conversation panner, as they shed
light upon some issues which I find rather interesting. In their
transcripted form, these dialogues look strikingly similar to
unstructured interviews, but such a methodological classifica-
tion would miss the conditions under which most of these dia-
logues came into being. By 1997 I had come to know my
acquaintances in Mohanganj so well that it was just as often they
who lamented the current political situation of their own accord
as it was I, the anthropologist, who actively attempted to elicit
their political views.
12
Among the atrocities made punishable by this Act is barring SCs or
STs from entering places 'of public resort', forcing them to eat 'any inedible
or obnoxious substance', dispossessing them from their land, and forcing
them to do begar (bonded labour). In addition, the Act makes it illegal to
issue false legal suits against SCs and STs and to intentionally humiliate
them in public. Source: The Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes (Prroet1tion
of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (No. 33 of 1989), as on I August 1996, pp. 2-3.
13 A1nong the incidents reported in the newspapers was that of a Dalit
man in Shivrajpur who allegedly lodged a First Information Report against

a Thakur family for violation of the SC/ST Act 'in search of an opportunity
to settle scores' with them after his wife lost the gram prculhcl11 election to
the woman in the Thakur family ('Probe ordered into false case under SC,
ST Act', the Pioneer, Kanpur, 2 September 1997) .

232 • Blmded &undariu
Let us first return to the Sharma family's home compound to

get a glimpse of how the older·generation expressed their resent-
ment about preferential treatment · and other forms of caste-
based politics. The conversation I present below occurred in
March 1997, about a week after the Mayawati-led coalition
between BSP and BSP came into being. I had been in Delhi when
this happened, and when I returned, I was curious to learn how
it was received by my hosts and friends in Mohanganj. My first
opportunity to ask appeared during a late-night gathering out-
side the bungalow, when Dr Kamal dropped by the Sharma
brothers for a peg of whisky:
KATI 11:-:KA: So what do you think about the new government?
TILAK [hesitating): What to think? It will probably not last for long ...
[Dr Kamal and Pramod nod.)
KAT111:-:KA: Is not BJP betraying its former ideology in joining hands with
a pro-reservation party?
TllAK: BJP is also for reservation now. It cannot afford not to be. If
BJP goes against it, it will lose its low-caste vote bank, which it
depends on to get to power.
l'KA~101>: It is well and good that they try to uplift these people, but not
through reservation, and not to this extent. It is a threat against
professionalism! [The discussion becomes agitated now, and
Pramod and Tilak compete in telling me 'the facts' . Dr Kamal
remains silent.)
Tit.AK: They may well have reserved seats al school so that these
people can get their education. Up to Class I 0 or 12 is fine, but
not beyond that. Give them free education, make separate schools
for them, do whatever is needed, but do not bargain with quality!
PRA.>.tou: You know what happened some ~ months back? There was
this high-caste fellow who went for admission at the medical
college here. 14 He got 90 per cent marks in his entrance test, but
was refused, whereas an SC student with minus I 0 per cent marks
was admitted.
KATI llNKA: Minus I 0 per cent? How is it possible to get negative marks?
Tn-"K: They give you plus for correct answers and minus for wrong
answers. So this caused a lot of demonstrations and brick-batting
at the medical college.
PKAMOI>: Why do you think there is no reservation in the Indian Army,
or in the astro ... sciences? Precisely because these sciences are
14
Ganesh Shank.ar Vidyarthi Memorial College, normally referred to
as G.S.V.M. College or simply 'medical college'.

E.ssentialWng and Foregroun<Ung Dalits • 233
too important for failure, and these people just do not have the
stuff in them!
KATJllNKA (turning to Dr Kamal, who had been silent until now): A.<i a
medical doctor, you surely must have opinions on this. What do
you think about reservation within your field?
l>R KA~L [somewhat reluctantly): What they say is right. There should
be no reservation within professional fields such as the medical
sciences.
TllAK: When they are out from the medical college, these poor SC
students don't even dare to start their own medical practice! How
many signs have you seen that indicate that the doctor at a clinic
is an SC?
KATI 11:-.:KA [after some thought): Hll\, I think all signs I can recall
indicate that the doctor is either upper<aste or Muslim. I haven't
thought about that.
THAK: See? They all end up in pharmacies, selling medicine, and
giving people advice. Not even in Kanpur Dehat (the rural district
adjacent to Kanpur City) will you find any SC doctor. People just
don't tn1st them. And do you think that V. P. Singh, that bastard
who increased the number of reserved seats to 50 per cent, would
ever go to an SC doctor? Oh no, never! If these politicians get ill,
they go abroad, to America, to England!
KATllll'KA: You keep stressing the importance of merit, but is it not
a contradiction that you used your contacts when trying to assist
Dr Tandon ('Child Labour') in securing admission for his daugh-
ter in the same medical college?
TU.AK: What.do you mean?
KATllll'KA: I mean, isn't it against your own principles of merit to secure
admission through the back door?
PRAMOD: I don't get you.
[I try to explain once again, but to no avail.]
rRAMoo: Some time ago it even became illegal to abuse the Scheduled
Castes. There was an incident in Kanpur some ten years back
over this. A sweeper met one of his masters on the street and
greeted him,' Nama.steAwasthi PaQ<;iit!' Awasthi replied, 'Namaste,
Ram Kumar Chamlir!' The sweeper got very angry for being
called a chamlir, though that was precisely what he was. He went
to court and charged Awasthi for caste abuse. But Awasthi de-
fended himself, saying that if he addresses me by referring to my
caste, why cannot I address him by his caste?
TllAK: One of the former District Magistrates here was a Scheduled
Caste. He had ordered people in one of the tax departn1ents to
specifically take out the files of persons belonging to Par:ic;lits,
Khatris and Baniyas so that they could be checked thoroughly.

234 • Bknded Boundaries
KATIUNKA [to Pramod): ls this the incident you told me about earlier?
PRA:-.!Oll: Yes. This DM had ordered the tax fellow to do it. This poor
man, who happened to be a Pai:ic;iit as well, had no choice. This
was back in 1994-5, I remember very well, because I was one of
the victims.
KAMM. [gets up): Well, it is getting late.
1•RA:-.1ou: Oh, I am sorry, I hope we have not bored you with this discus-
sion.
KAMAI.: No, no, no, not at all [leaves, and the gathering breaks up).
Some days later I got the opportunity to resume the discussion

with Tilak and Ritu over a cup of tea in their apartment on
the ninth floor of the apartment building. As the following
excerpt shows, the views that Ritu expressed were strikingly
similar:
1uTt1: Reservation should be done away with. You can't suppress talent.
TU.AK: If you fail to accept a student with 70 per cent marks to the
medical college and opt for an SC candidate with 5 per cent
marks instead, what kind of doctors will we get in this country?
RITU: Give them free education, all kinds of facilities free, but stop the
reservation!
KATI ui-:KA: What if they all accept this offer and get absorbed in the
upper strata of the employment sectors? Will there still be enough
people to serve as low-paid work force, say, as domestic servants
and labourers?
TU.AK: ????
KATI uxKA: I mean, does the politicization of caste threaten the privi-
leged classes in any way?
Tll .AK: Ah, so that's what you meant. No, it is no threat. There are so
large differences within the lower castes that they would start
fighting each other internally instead. A barber will not take food
from a sweeper, and because of such hierarchies you have the
internal fight going.
'fhe topics of caste-based reservation and the relation between

upper and lower castes were frequently commented upon in the
1nonths that followed. Yet they were not always discussed explic-
itly or at length. J ust as often they emerged as minor comments,
like the afternoon when Bablu watched a TV serial and happened
to read the text that scrolled over the screen afterwards. Sud-
denly, he exclaimed: 'Arre? One Dubey [Brahmin surname] and

Essentialiring and Fortgruunding Dalits • 235
one Valmiki [common lower-caste surname] as script writers?

Do they have reservation there too or what?' This made Ritu
laugh. 'Good combination,' she remarked, but that was all that
was said.
The next conversation I will present took place in September
1997, right after the chief ministership had been transferred
from Mayawati (BSP) to Kalyan Singh (BJP). I include it here
because Dinesh, the young Khatri man it involved, was one of
those who had felt the effects of the reservation policy on his own
career. During the five years I had known Dinesh, I had thought
him to be a quiet young man, on the verge of being shy. This day,
however, my questions made him more agitated than I had ever
seen him:
KATI lll"KA: Do you think things will change now that Kalyan Singh has
replaced Mayawati?
01sES11: It hardly matters. Kalyan Singh will not be able to improve
anything. India is not a democratic country anyway, the only thing
that can help is army rule.
KATlll~KA: Army nile? You mean at the state level or at the Centre? And
what help would that bring?
01s1;s1 i: At least it could put an end to comtption and to the reservation
policy.
KATIUNKA: Hm, I have heard this said about corruption-but reserva-
tion? I thought reservation was a matter of ideology and politics.
Is there no upper-caste party? What about the BJP?
01sES11: That is true , BJP is an upper-caste party, but it cannot do
anything about the reservation policy as even BJP depends on the
vote-bank provided by Dalits and OBCs. This reservation policy is
not eliminating caste differences, but creating them. When I went
for my MBBS [medical) admission exam in 1991 (his mother
wanted him to become a doctor). I got 65 per cent marks, but didn't
get in. A boy in my neighbourhood who secured only 35 per cent
marks got admitted. Why? Because he was of the lower caste....
Why did he get in and not me? What kind of doctors will we get?
And you know, this boy's father is working in the same office as my
own father, only one step higher. He gets higher salary, and yet his
son gets admitted on the reservation quota. No merit, only caste
basis.
KAT111:0.:KA: Has this affected you later as well?
01sES11: Of course! Because of the reservation system, it is next to
impossible to get a government job. When I finish my education
[as a Chartered Accountant (CA)). my qualifications will be highly

relevant within all the government bodies. They all have accounts,
so they will all need CAs. But today, with at least 70 per cent of
the government jobs reserved, what is left for upper castes like
me? Hardly anything! The competition for the remaining 25-30
per cent is so tough that without very good contacts-to the CM
[chief minister], to the DM [district magistrate]. to the DIG (Deputy
Inspector-General (of Police)], or to top politicians--or without
paying off huge amounts of money . . .
KATI 111\KA: How huge?
011'1::S11: Two liikhs or so [Rs 200,000, or about £4000). Without con-
tacts or money one stands no chance at all. Now, I do not have
this kind of money, nor do I have contacts that are sufficiently
highly placed.
KATI n~KA: I have read about people who get hold of a fake low-caste
cen1"fi1cate . ...'
ll11'ESll: Some people do, but I think it is mean to reson to such tricks.
I have many contacts by now, but none sufficiently highly placed
to help me secure a government job.
KATlllNKA: Why is a government job so attractive? I thought salaries
within private companies were higher.
011'E.'l11: That is true. But private companies make you run like any-
thing. A government job gives you more job security, longer holi-
days, fixed working hours, pension... .
KATH11'KA: So ... are you against reservation on the whole? Are you
against uplift of the weaker sections?
Uli':ESH: No, not really. I am for reservation, but it should not be made
on caste basis. Make it economical somehow! All those who
demand reservation, let them compete with us! You can reserve
seats for them, all right, fine, but let them compete with us. Don't
give them entry if they don't have the san1e qualifications that
we have!
A few \veeks later, in October 1997, Gopal dropped by for tea.
The sun was just setting, and for once I was ho1ne alone, so we
could talk without disturbances. I was eager to hear what he
thought about the way caste-based politics had been recently
highlighted in the s tate. Fearing I would sound rude if I asked
directly, I searched my mind for an entry point. Finally, I remem-
bered that Gopal's cousin was implicated in a dowry case that
his family claiJned to be false, hoping that this would make
Gopal make an association to the alleged misuse of the SC/ST
Act. So he did, and far quicker than I expected:
KATInNKA: These false dowry cases ...

Essemializing and Fongiwnding Dalils • 237
COPAL: Yes! And not only dowry cases. The SC/ST Act is just as much
misused too, you know. ,
KATlll:\'KA: Do you know about anyone who has been falsely implicated
in such cases?
COPAL: Many.
KATI llNKA: Do you have an example?
GOPAI. [laughs): I was myself some years ago. I lived in p••• then. I was
in charge of a factory there, and was well liked by everybody. In
the factory, there were also ten sweepers who kept the place
clean. I always tried to be nice to low as well as high. So I made
a point to learn their names, and usually made them bring drink-
ing water to me just to demonstrate that I didn't mind drinking
water served by Scheduled Castes. Once, one of the sweepers,
what was his name now? Chetan, that's it, yes, Chetan, this Chetan
said something to me. In a joking mood, I said, 'Chetan, tu salii
Bhangi ki.i {hai aur} Bhangi rahegii (You are born a Bhangi and will
always remain one) '. 13
KATlllNKA: Was that enough to ... ?
COPAL: Wait, I am telling you. The next day I was called up from the
police station. The police officer said, 'Should I come to fetch you,
or will you come here on your own? There's a little problem here
for you.' Now, I was pally with the police officer. After all, p••• is
not as big as Kanpur. In fact, I had been so pally with this police
officer that whenever strikes were on in the factory, he had lent
me his duty pistol. Anyway, I came down to the police station and
learned that this Chetan had filed an FIR against me, claiming
that I had insulted him by calling him a Bhangi, and that this was
against the SC/ST Act. 16 The police officer had to get a statement
and some signatures from me, so he had to call me over. But he
said he'd make a pany out of it, and commanded his subordinates
in the police to get hold of some chicken and whisky. When he
showed me the cell, it was evident that it had been cleaned and
" Though jokingly intended, this sentence contains a triple insult: ad-
dressing the listener as a bhangi, the lu form of the pronoun 'you' (mainly
only used for children, dogs, and very subordinate people), and the word
sii/a (lit.: brother-in-law), which suggests that the speaker has an (illicit)
relationship with the listener's sister, who consequently must be promiscu-
ous.
ir. An FIR is the first formal step of reponing an incident to the police.
As stated earlier, the SC/ST Ac't was implemented in 1989, and the
incident Gopal tells about here happened a few years later, but before
Mayawati came to power.

238 • Blerukd Boundams
swept properly. He had even got somebody to write WELCOME

. with chalk on the floor just outside the cell door [laughs]. The
police officer said that there was only one hitch with the pany: He
would sit outside, and I behind the bars.
KATI llNKA: Were you really jailed?
GOl'AL: No, no, listen. The police officer called this Chetan over, and
tried to settle the matter easily. I told him I was sorry and would
never do it again: 'Ga/al ho gayii; it was wrong' [puts on a sad face,
crosses his arms and touches his ears to re-enact his remorse).
But Chetan had brought a group from his union with him, and they
insisted that they wanted to let the law take its course. In other
words, I would get a coun case against me that might drag on
for years and years. The matter looked really serious, you know.
But the next day what happened: the police officer had got some-
one to prepare a small paper envelope of opium, and had man-
aged to slip it into Chetan's breast pocket. Then the police
arranged a fake encounter on the street, beat him with Lii,his
(wooden sticks), and caught hold of him 'in self-defence'. When
they ransacked him, they naturally found the opium-' Aha, what
is this?' (enacts surpriseJ-and got a pretext for accusing him of
being in possession of drugs. Now, such a charge is heavy. The
police officer called me and told me what had happened. I found
his nlethod rather drastic, so I pleaded with him to set Chetan
free-but only if he promised to withdraw the FIR against me.
Chetan and his union fellows had no choice but to agree, saying,
'Nahl sahib, ham ne galat liar diyii [No, Sir, we made a mistake).· So
there are nlany kinds of misuse.
KATHINKA: Eh ... was this a case of misuse?
<.,PAL: Well, perhaps not. But misuse has become so easy nowadays.
Just pay some money to a bhangi woman and send her to your
bedroon1, she'll come screaming out, yelling that you tried to rape
her, and you'll have a coun case against you! But this is how things
are interpreted nowadays.Just look at the newspapers: 'Harijan'
won1an raped, 'Dal it' killed ... although most of these cases have
nothing to do with the caste background of the victims! In fact,
atrocities against Harijans are becoming very rare now, except
in a few pockets in the rural areas. Even in the cities people don't
care very much about the caste background of their servants.
Have you ever heard anyone asking about the jati of their ser-
vants? Have I? Has Pramod? Look, the Bhangi woman who comes
to clean the floor and bathrooms, Sarita, once she saw that the
one who cleaned the utensils had not showed up, so she said
'Sahib, let me do the job.' I let her do it, what's the problen1?
Likewise, the woman who used to work with us before, who used

Essmtializing and Fowgrm.mdint DalilS • 239
to gi\'e A.mm a massage, food, and medicine, she was not hing but
a Bh:rngl. Did it ever matter to us?
11ATI11i.·KA: Perhaps not to you, but it l!Cems to maue r to many othe rs.
ooPAI~ Ca!ite differences will go away, but not the way the politicia11s
acl today. This SC/ST Act should be done away wi1h. Actually,
BJP wanu to do that, though they say they only w11n1 to check its
mi.susc.Buttheycannotsaysobe<:ausethcyareafraidoflosing
their vote bank. Rcsel'\11tion should be done aw11y with 100. Let
the H arija11s come up by themselves. Let them climb. If you kt.-cp
giving them privileges the way il is being done now, you crtrlle
Harijans in!itead of eradicating the concept!
llATill:-O'KA; Butshouldtheupliftofthe IW'akerscctions not be a political
responsibility at all?
GOl'AI~ If they really want to climb, they have to uplifi the msel\'eS. If
not, they will remain Harijans fore\'er. Caste differences may go
away, but not through such Ac1s or reservation policy.
The final con\·e rsation I will presem occurred in August 1997,

during Mayawati's fifth month as chief minister. In contrast
to the other conversations, this one occurred in H ari Mandi,
where I had lived some years earlie r. Th e neighbour family I
got to know best, the Sri\'asta\'as, had brought me along to
1•isit a relative, an Indian Army employee named Hansraj
Srivasta\'a. As it turned out, he had st rong opinions about the
Mayawati government and its way of handling caste-based res-
ervation:
HA."51ll\J: The issue of caste in politics is hopeleu. Today it is the high

castes th11t ha1'C become dmomuodden, all because of reservation
politics. As much as 85 per cent of the government jobs are oow
rescn'Cd l
unn...:KA: That much? I thought 1he limit was 50 per cent?
llA...:SKAJ: No, 85. Reservation is for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled
Tribes, Backward Classes, Muslims, women, and the physically
handicapped.
KA'1 '1t11'KA: For women? I thought this issue was debated these days in
the Lok Sabha?
11A...:s11,AJ: No, no. That discussion on ly refers to whether they should
rcscroe seats for women within politics. Within gm·ernment jobs
there is reservation for \'o'Omen already. So it is the upper castes
that arc downtrodden now, having to compete for only 15 per ce nt
of the jobs.
llA'lllll'.:tu\: Really?
Ori~ollrom
"""'"'" Google UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

240 • Blmded .Boundaries
11Ar-:SR.-,J:In the medical college in Kanpur, an SC candidate with only

2 per cent marks was admitted, whereas a high-caste fellow, very
qualified, with some 60-70 per cent marks did not manage to get
admission. What kind of doctors will we get now? In professional
sciences such as engineering, medicine etc. there should not be
any reservation.
KATlllNKA: Has the reservation policy had any effect on you or anybody
you know?
I IA."SRAJ: So far I have not been affected, but that is because I work
in the Indian.Army. There is no reservation in the Army. But now
that I am approaching 45 and am soon to be retired from the
Army, I have to look for a new job to meet my expenses. I have
thought about taking a bank exam and opting for a career in a
bank. Or welding, I also know welding from the Army. Let's see
what opportunities I get.
These excerpts exemplify the ways in which preferential treat-

ment and other forms of caste-based politics were discussed
and resented by upper-caste Hindus in Mohanganj. One thing
that strikes me about these conversations is the weaknesses of
caste-based reservation that they reveal. Of course, to illuminate
the adverse effects discussed in the news media and academic
publications-such as whether the benefits were cornered by the
so-called creamy layer of the eligible castes, whether reserva-
tion could be a mixed blessing for the beneficiaries, and whether
reserved category students and employees were substandard
and, if so, in what ways-would require entirely different meth-
ods than conversations with upper castes. Even so, Dinesh's
claims that reservation reinforced rather than eradicated caste
were relevant by virtue of being mentioned, and the claims that
reservation was a threat to professionalism revealed strong
distrust in the qualifications of SC, ST, and OBC doctors, pro-
fessionals, and bureaucrats, a distrust that was a serious prob-
lem in itself.
Something that puzzled me already when the conversations
took place was that my acquaintances' emphasis on merit and
excellence evidently did not apply to themselves, as they fre-
quently used personal contacts for securing college admission
through the back door, even to the .medical college. Evidently,
they did not consider this practice a contradiction to their own
principles, not even when I-admittedly somewhat clumsily-

Essentializ.ing nnd Foregrounding Dalits • 241
tried to press the point. A third issue that strikes me was the
way my upper-caste acquaintances pooh-poohed the SC/ST Act.
Besides showing indifference or unawareness of the insult inher-
ent in addressing somebody as Chamar or Bhangi, they also
discussed the SC/ST Act as if verbal insults were the only kind
of discrimination that Dalits had to face, regardless of the fact
that this was disproved by the newspapers vinually every day.
A fourth feature that caught my attention was the way my ac-
quaintances promoted economic reservation as a more just
alternative to caste-based reservation. None of them, however,
paused to ponder what the economic criteria of eligibility might
look like, and whether such criteria would hold less potential for
manipulation than caste criteria. Moreover, the problems they
asc1ibed to caste-based reservation, such as poor qualification,
inefficiency, and lack of dedication, were apparently thought
to vanish overnight once reservation became contingent upon
economic criteria instead. In this sense, economic reservation
emerged as a 'discursive full stop': Everyone would agree, the
matter was closed, and the conversation shifted to a different
topic.
Each of these issues deserves a more thorough examination
than I have given space for here. In the context of this book,
however, I will primarily direct my attention to how the fore-
grounding and essentialization ofDalits in 1997 compared to the.
foregrounding and essentialization of Muslims in 1992. At one
level, the processes were similar, as both were triggered by
political events and debates that unfolded beyond Mohanganj,
and that mainly reached this neighbourhood through the news
media. Another similarity is that my upper-caste acquaintances
maintained sufficient difference both to low castes and to Muslims
to be receptive to political activation. Both boundaries were
foregroundable, as it were. All the same, there were several
differences between the ways in which Muslims and Dalits were
foregrounded, and in the following section I will explore some
of the differences and similarities.
GENDER, INTELLIGENCE, AND INACCURACIES

That the conversation excerpts only involved a single woman a pan
from myself was no coincidence. True, my female acquaintances

242 • Blmded Boundarns
were, on an average, less politically articulate than their male

relatives, but even so, the women had had more to say about
Muslim-related politics than about caste-based politics. If the
local foregrounding of caste predominately was a male preoccu-
pation, it was primarily because men were more directly af-
fected by reservation than women. A family's standard of living
was considered a male responsibility even if the women contrib-
uted to the fa1nily income. Since it was men who were expected
to make careers, it was their future prospects that were threat-
ened by the reservation policy. This was panicularly strongly felt
by young men like Dinesh Mehrotra, who were in the process of
career-building and who had no family business to fall back on.
An additional reason for the gender imbalance in the local
engage1nent with caste politics was that it was men who built and
nunured the contacts required to 'rescue' the1n from problem-
atic encounters with the state and assist with irregular college
admissions and other favours (cf. Chapter 5) . Consequently, it
was men 1vho had to find ways to transcend their upper-caste-
clustered personal networks to befriend the growing number of
SCs and OBCs in key administrative positions, while attempting
to neutralize their assumed hostility towards upper castes at the
same time. That caste politics primarily was a topic of discus-
sion among men was also evident in that the local caste dis-
course was better anchored in the issues reported in the
newspapers-panicularly reservation and the SC/ST Act- than
the local conversations about Hindu-Muslim issues had been.
To participate in verbal exchanges on caste politics, one would
not merely have to follow the news; one had to read the newspa-
pers, as this was the mass media that disseminated the most
detailed infonnation about state-level politics at the time. As I
noted in the prelude to Chapter 7, newspaper reading was pri-
marily a male habit.
The upper-caste discourses about Dalits and Muslims in
Mohanganj both involved essentialization. Nevertheless, the caste-
related essentialization was less pronounced, took different forms,
and drew on different models than the essentialization of Mus-
lims. As a vantage point for considering the essentialization
triggered by caste politics, let us consider the upper-caste use of
the Scheduled Caste term. While sharply defined in administra-
tive contexts in the sense that any given caste would either be

Essmtializ.ing and Foregrounding Dalits • 243
included or excluded in this category, but nothing in-between, my

acquaintances tended to use this term as a common denomina-
tion for all the castes that had become entitled to preferential
u·eatment--even including STs and OBCs, something Natraj
(1999) also obsen-ed in Karnataka. 17 No wonder, perhaps, since
the lists of eligible castes, which counted over 100 caste names
only in Uttar Pradesh, hardly made everyday reading, and since
one caste might hold different resen-ation status in different
states. What my acquaintances knew for sure, however, was that
Bhangis and Chamars, whom they considered most untouchable
of all, were SCs. Consequently, they came to see these two castes
as the prototypical beneficiaries of resen-ation, something that
led them to direct their anger at the extension of the resen-ation
policy to OBCs against SCs in general and these two castes in
particular , rather than against OBCs.
So far this resembles the essentialization of Muslims in the
sense that the prototypical Muslim was a 'small' Muslim whereas
the prototypical beneficiary of resen-ation was the most untouch-
able of the SCs. But while the 'smallness' and gandagi (dirtiness,
Qadness, impurity) of the prototypical Muslim were projected
back on the Muslim Other as a whole, I never heard my acquain-
tances stress the 'smallness' or gandagi of the beneficia1·ies of
the resen-ation policy as a whole. To my surprise, they hardly
even stressed the 'smallness' organdagi of the communities they
treated as 1nost 'untouchable'. The only 'small' quality that my
acquaintances brought up when discussing caste politics was
rude talk. However, this quality was ascribed to the politicians
they associated with this policy, such as Mayawati and Mulayam
Singh Yadav, not to its beneficiaries. That no 'smallness' or
gandagi was ascribed to the beneficiaries was presumably be-
cause it was implicitly agreed upon to such an extent that there
was no need to make it explicit. If so, this was in stark contrast
to the constant ascription of smallness to Muslims, which might
have been 1110Te necessary because it was /,ess taken for granted.
Rather than essentializing Dalits in terms of class, my ac-
quaintances essentialized them in terms of other characteris-
tics. Many held Dalits to be more corrupt than others, as when
17
As Natraj phrased it, 'It is not uncommon ... to hear upper castes
expressing anger against the SCs and be seemingly unaware that the ir
competitors are generally from the other backward classes' (1999: 2385).

Gopal Arora, in Chapter 5, linked an SC sales tax officer's steep

demand for rice bags to his SC background. Most common,
however, was the view that Dalits were lazy and mentally s low.
These characteristics were normally ascribed to their eligibility
for admission and employment on relaxed criteria, but some of
my acquaintances also indicated that these traits were rooted
in biological differences. The clearest exponent of this view was
Pramod Sharma. When stating that 'these people just do not
have the stuff in them', it was as if he considered it a given that
could not be altered by the most stimulating upbringing and
education. On another occasion, however, he remarked that
'Scheduled Caste persons are not necessarily dullards' . Yet
even this seemed to confirm rather than negate the association
he made between caste and intelligence. My impression was
reaffirmed by the way Pramod went on to substantiate his asser-
tion: 'I know this man, he is an SC but very smart. If you see him
or talk to him, you would never think him to be from the SC
co1nmunity.Just possible he is mixed breed, having some Pai:tQit
blood.' This was said in a humorous tone and must be given the
benefit of doubt, but it nevertheless reveals a disbelief in whether
a 'pure-blooded' SC-to stick with Pramod's metaphorical
imagery- really could be as bright as his college friend . Some
months later the notion of breed surfaced once again. This time
Pramod told me about an old SC college connection of his who
now held an influential position in the state administration (pos-
sibly the same person). The last time Pramod had met him, 18
he had asked him why SCs were so 'afraid of Pai:tQits' even
though SCs far outnumbered Pai:tQits. He reported his SC visitor
as having replied that 'Pai:tQits are a very intelligent breed. They
can easily confuse us and s plit us.' Pramod grinned when he told
me this, obviously proud that even an SC considered Brahmins
intelligent by genetic heritage.
While many upper castes in Mohanganj held SCs and Dalits
to be lazier and duller than others, Pramod was among the few
who explicitly held these qualities to be inborn. Nevertheless, he
was not exceptional, as the association of caste with intelligence
was also drawn in other parts of India. In New Delhi, for example,
'" Pramod had invited him over in the hope that he could serve as a
s tepping stone to the district magistrate, a post that also was manned by
an SC at the time.

E.ssentiaiizing and Fortgrov.nding Dalits • 245
my colleague, Anne Waldrop, observed an affluent Punjabi man

who had failed to persuade a poor-looking passer-by to dig a
ditch in his garden rebuke the stranger by asking him if he knew
why he was poor while he himself was a sahib with a nice house
and a Mercedes. When the stranger kept mum, the Punjabi told
him that the cause of his poverty was that his brain was as small
as an ant (Waldrop 2000: 138). As I noted in Chapter 3, the
associations between caste and inborn mental capacities were
also essential in the gui:i model of Brahminic Hinduism de-
scribed by Davis (1976). According to this model, untouchables
and Shudras contain considerable proportions oftamogui:i. which
engenders stupidity and laziness along with other negative quali-
ties. When examining the contemporary relevance of the gui:i
model in the context of master-servant relationships, I argued
that it surfaced in the bodily practices that regulated interaction
with low-caste servants, but was not articulated beyond general
references to gandagi. When my upper-caste acquaintances
discussed caste-based politics, however, they suddenly men-
tioned stupidity and laziness explicitly. This was probably not
just because they believed that preferential treatment made the
beneficiaries less inclined to strive for perfection, but also be-
cause whatever remnants of the gui:i model they were influenced
by, were made subject to articulation by the political accentua-
tion of caste. This, at least, is what I gather from the frequency
with which the laziness and stupidity of SCs were emphasized,
from the tendency to target the most untouchable castes with
such arguments, and from the readiness with which upper-caste
people excepted themselves from the principle of 1n eriL If my
acquaintances' arguments about laziness and dullness were
reinforced by the gui:i model, it is yet an example of how their
political viewpoints can be understood not merely as a reflection
of the way political events and debates were referred by the news
media, but also must be seen in terms of the cultural models that
influenced their everyday notions, values, and practices.
While newspapers constituted the main channel of informa-
tion about new developments in caste-based politics, my upper-
caste friends and informants in Mohanganj did not have to
consult the media to learn about its effects. Several claimed to
have been 'victims' of reservation themselves, and stories about
people who had suffered similar fates circulated rapidly in their

social networks. The most frequent examples pertained to ad-

mission in the medical college in Kanpur-partly because dubi-
ous qualifications were considered particularly grave in the
medical field, but also because several of those I associated with
had been educated there or had connections there. Moreover,
they held the medical college to be one of the educational prides
of the city, as it was second only to IIT in attracting students from
other parts of the country. As the conversation excerpts show,
however, my acquaintances quoted widely different marks when
lamenting that poorly qualified SC applicants had been admitted
at the expense of well-qualified upper caste applicants after the
state government quashed or reduced the minimum qualifying
marks for reserved category applicants: 60-70 per cent versus
2 per cent in the account ofHansraj, 70 per cent versus 5 per cent
in the accou.nt ofTilak, and no less than 90 per cent versus - 10
per cent in "Pramod's version. 19 Withou~ having examined the
enrolment lists, I cannot exclude the possibility that the three
examples referred to three different incidents. Nor can I exclude
the possibility that all figures were correct, provided that the
incidents referred to the period between August 1995 and Feb-
ruary 1997, when SC, ST, and OBC applicants were excepted
from minimum qualifying marks, and that the competition had
been high for the non-reserved seats and low for the reserved
ones. Nevertheless, I think it more likely that these figures were
invented in the act of telling. Through newspapers and chains of
personal accounts, my acquaintances had come to know that
upper-caste applicants with high marks had been rejected and
low-caste applicants with low marks admitted. When passing this
on, they illustrated it with percentages to make their point more
convincing. TI1eir figures, I suggest, were not so much intended
to reflect actual incidents as to illustrate 'how grave the situation
actually had become'. In this respect, the local narratives about
reservation resembled the rumour- and urban legend-like infor-
mation about Muslims that had circulated in the same upper-
caste circles in 1992. Then, too, a certain amount of exaggeration
had helped ensure a wide and rapid face-to-face dissemination.
19
Dinesh's figures were from 1991, before Mayawati came to power and
issued the orders and Acts that quashed or reduced the minimum quali-
fying marks for SC, ST, and OBC applicants.

Essentializing and Furtgrounding DaJits • 247
Another feature that strikes me about the way reservation in

the medical college was referred to in the conversations above
is that none of those I talked to had registered that the Supreme
Court had overruled the Mayawati government order from 1995
that excepted reserved category candidates from minimum
qualifying marks. This happened in February 1997, six months
before most of these conversations took place. Throughout my
stay in Kanpur, I only met a single person who was aware that
a minimum qualification level had been reintroduced for all
candidates, though reduced from 35 per cent to 20 per cent for
SC, ST, and OBC applicants. This person was a female student
at the medical college and a distant relative of the Sharmas-
but way too junior to panicipate in the conversations among
the adult men, let alone to challenge their views. The men
continued to discuss reservation in the medical college as if the
policy remained at its most radical, suggesting that Mayawati's
return to power in March 1997 reinforced their feelings of being
unfairly treated and made them recirculate and dramatize old
stories and figures.
My acquaintances' accounts of the drawbacks of caste-based
reservation were also inaccurate for other reasons. 'Take, for
example, Tilak's theory of why there were so few SCs with
medical practice in Kanpur. According to him, it was because
they knew they were too poorly qualified to be trusted, something
that made them opt for work in pharmacies instead. However,
since no medical college in Uttar Pradesh had admitted a single
SC student until 1980-which was why Mayawati had lowered
the threshold for reserved category applicants in the first
place-the few practising SC doctors in Kanpur at the time of
my fieldwork would either be young (below 35) or educated in
medical colleges in other pans of India. Prior to 1995, no
SC, ST, or OBC student would have been admitted in Kanpur
with less than 35 per cent marks in the admission test, whereas
reserved category students admitted on relaxed criteria after
1995 were yet to graduate at the time of my fieldwork in 1997.
Hence, the minimum qualifications of the SC, ST, and OBC
doctors educated until this year must have been higher than
Tilak feared. Tilak's theory of why there were so few SC medical
doctors around, then, exemplifies how the flow of controversial
information and political events restructured the interpretive

frames through which past observations were remembered. This

process was even 1nore evident in Gopal' s experience from p•••.
Gopal 1night well have felt unfairly implicated when summoned
to the police station for what he claimed had been intended as
a joke. When misuse of the SC/ST Act became the topic of
public debate some years later, Gopal suddenly got the oppor-
tunity to interpret his experience in the light of misuse-an
interpretation which must have been quite attractive since it
u·ansferred the vic;timhood from the factory sweeper to Gopal
himself. Indeed, misuse remained his salient frame of interpre-
tation despite his frank account of how the matter had been
'solved'-a solution that had clearly violated the SC/ST Act a
second time.
Also, my acquaintances' accounts of the reservation policy as
a whole were characterized by inaccuracies, but for different
reasons-not the least its sheer complexity. As I noted above,
they had vague ideas about which castes were included in which
category beyond the 'obvious' cases of lower castes. The great-
est source of confusion, however, pertained to the percentage of
reserved seats and posts. Virtually all the upper-caste Hindus
I met in Mohanganj and elsewhere believed the percentage of
reservations to be way above 50 per cent. Admittedly, the 50
per cent ceiling imposed and guarded by the Supreme Court
only applied to Union government institutions, but the UP Bill
on OBC reservations from 1994 ensured that the percentage of
reservations did not cross 50 per cent in state institutions either.
In Mohanganj, however, these 50 per cent ceilings seemed un-
known. The percentage of reserved government jobs amounted
to 70 according to Dinesh and 85 according to Hansraj. Billu
Sharma once stated that 65 per cent of the admissions within
the education system were reserved. Again, such figures might
be caused by eagerness to show 'how bad things had become',
but a more likely explanation is that my acquaintances confused
the total percentage of people eligi,b le for reservation with the
total percentage of reserved posts. Even the newspapers could
come dangerously close to conflating these figures, as in this
commentary:
The most backward sections of our society, the scheduled castes and
the scheduled tribes, constitute 22.5 per cent of the population and the
OBCs another 52 per cent. Besides this, 10 per cent reservation is being

&smtializing and Fcmgrounmng Dalits • 249
mooted for the economically weaker section of our people and the
Muslims also deseive a l 0 per cent share out of the state kitty of posts,
being decidedly more backward than many of the castes included
in the OBCs. AJI this adds up to 94.5% (K.B. Karkra: 'The clash between
merit and reservation', the Hindustan Times, Lucknow, 21 October
1997) .
In one and the same passage, the author referred to percentages
of people and percentages of posts. By adding the1n up, he con-
fused the categories. Such conflation was common among my
acquaintances. Feeling that their future prospects narrowed day
by day, they interpreted all new inclusions in the existing reser-
vation schemes as yet an increase in the percentage of the
reserved posts. This was also how they interpreted the subquota
syste1n, in which a small percentage of the seats reserved for
SCs, STs, and OBCs were allotted to the physically disabled,
dependants of freedom fighters, and ex-servicemen, as Hansraj
did when explaining why as much as 85 per cent of the govern-
ment jobs were reserved. Following Dan Sperber and Deirdre
Wilson's perspective on communication ( 1986), the prior im-
pressions and knowledge that my acquaintances had acquired
about the reservation policy had formed interpretive frames so
rigid that new information and news items were interpreted as
confirming them no matter how straightforwardly or often they
were presented.
Due to this process, the 'truth' about reservations came to
acquire a similar transcendence as the 'nature' of Muslims had
done in 1992. As I argued in the previous chapter, the transcen-
dent image of the stereotypical Muslim grew so rigid that any
personal Muslim acquaintances and experiences that contra-
dicted it were brushed off as imperfect reflections, irrelevant,
and less true. Initially, it might seem strange that, in the context
of caste-based politics, the transcendence that emerged per-
tained to reservation rather than to the nature of Dalits. For
upper-caste Hindus, however, it was reservation and the SC/ST
Act, and not Dalits per se, that had impact on their future pros-
pects. Not even Muslims, with their alleged violent nature
and disloyalty to India, had imposed a threat so tangible and with
so experience-near consequences. The 'nature' of Dalits, more-
over, seemed to be knowledge too conventional, too immanent
in the everyday practices of master-servant relations, to have the

novelty and exaggeration potential required for circulation as

rumours and urban legends, and for elevation to transcendence.
This difference, however, should not overshadow the many simi-
larities between the upper-caste foregrounding of Muslims and
their subsequent foregrounding of Dalits.
EFFECTS ON INTERACTION WITH DALITS

It has often been maintained that Mayawati's periods in power
in Uttar Pradesh and the countrywide extension of reservation
to OBCs that preceded it vinually divided the Indian population
in two solid blocks-'forwards' and 'backwards'-in terms of
political identification. A political activist put it this way:
The entire forward caste Hindu community has suddenly become a

solid rock. Fundamentalist and secular, Marxist and Gandhian, urban
and n1ral, have all become united as nothing else have united them
(Balagopal 1990: 2232, cited in z. Hasan 1998a: 151).
What I heard in Mohanganj in 1997 tallies with this view, though

it remains to be seen whether the 'forwardization' will endure
or subside once the upper castes get accustomed to the policies
and quotas implemented in the 1990s and adjust to them. What
has rarely been examined, however, is the extent to which the
foregrounding of caste issues affected face-to-face relationships
between upper castes and Dalits, and if so, in what ways. Another
anthropologist who conducted fieldwork during a heated politi-
cal controversy about caste, F. G. Bailey, observed that in the
highland Orissa village where he worked, the social and eco-
nomical interdependence of the caste segments was so strong
that it prevented inter-caste relations from turning violent or
being terminated (Bailey 1996).20 A similar interdependence
existed in Mohanganj, and the ties between my upper-caste
Bailey conducted his fieldwork in the 1950s, when the reservation for
°.!''
SCs and STs had recently been implemented on a countrywide basis, and
when it was 1nade illegal to bar untouchables entry to temples. The author's
recent reflection on why these controversies about 'Harijan rights' (as it
was called at the time) did not tum violent, is an aftenhought provoked
by the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

Essentia/Uing and Foregrounding Daats • 25 l
acquaintances and Dalits did not snap or turn violent here eithei-.
But this does not necessarily entail that everything remained
unchanged and, to identify potential changes, I will briefly re-
examine the categories of relationships that connected my upper-
caste acquaintances with Dalits, once again starting with the
Chakrabartian 'inside' of the upper-caste home and working my
way outwards.
My acquaintances' behaviour towards their domestic ser-
vants remained as before. All the servants who entered Chapter
3-whether SC servants such as Sarita, Dev Chand, and Shanti,
or OBC servants such as Saraswati and Ravindra-went about
their daily chores during Mayawati's reign in 1997 as they had
in the years I had known their employers before that. Sometimes
my upper-caste hosts and friends would even criticize the res-
ervation policy and ridicule Dalits at the sa1ne time as their
servants cleaned the floor around their feet, cooked their food,
or washed their dishes in the kitchen. The only change I noticed
was that, when a servant remained absent for days in a row
without giving prior notice, the absence was increasingly ex-
plained in terms of the empowerment of their caste seg1nent. As
I noted in Chapter 3, this was how Bhabhi Arora interpreted the
unexpected absence of the jamadarin who used to come to clean
her bathroom. But, beyond hinting that the current political
power constellation was about to make servants 'forget their
place', master-servant relationships were entirely unaffected by
the politicization of caste.
Not so, it would seem, with my acquaintances' relations to
Dalits employed for non-domestic work, judging from Bablu's
resolution to start boycotting SCs. This was the only explicit
boycott announcement I heard in Mohanganj, but si1nilar state-
ments were occasionally reported in the local newspapers. In a
village near Bahraich, for example, a group oflbakurs complain-
ing that Dalits were being 'spoiled' by politicians, were reported
to have said, 'We know how to tame them, for the economic power
is in our hands-we can stop employing the SCs, refuse them
loans'. 21 That such resolutions were solely directed at SCs and
not at other beneficiaries of reservation was only partly due to the
~1Ajaz Ashraf and Sardar Jagat Jit Singh: "How a Village Decides to
Vote . . :, the Pioneer, Agenda Supplement, 15 February 1988.

elastic local use of the SC term. It was also because the political
controversy over the SC/ST Act had made several upper castes
worry that SC employees might 'falsely' charge them for violating
the Act for petty reasons such as 'innocent' verbal remarks, as
suggested by Gopal Arora. The logical consequence would be to
minimize the interaction with those who were protected by this
Act, namely SCs and STs (but not OBCs), also in the context of
employment. All the same, not even Bablu's boycott intentions
were absolute, as he added that he would continue to employ SCs
as untouchables, which in this context would mean as sweepers.
Recruiting non-SCs for such a task would probably be a challenge
anyway, and besides, Bablu might have thought to himself, such
jobs would not let SCs forget their place.
To what extent upper-caste intentions to boycott SCs from
employment were actually carried out, was a different matter.
To see why, all we need to do is to look at how Bablu and his
Sharma elders recruited their non~omestic workers. The main
decision-maker in this regard was Bablu's uncle, Pramod, who
repeatedly pointed out that he had never paid any heed to the
caste background of his outdoor employees. Nor did he intend
to start doing so. What mattered, he said, were the qualifica-
tions of the prospective workers, whether they appeared when
he had work and salary to offer, and whether they had a respect-
ful and submissive demeanour. A brief look at the outdoor
employees in 1997 confirms that Pramod's self-professed non-
relevance of caste had prevailed for a while. In the construction
of apartment buildings, the skilled workers included a Behera
pillar and casting worker from Orissa who probably was an SC,22
in addition to a Thakur plumber and, as noted in Chapter 6, a
2'2According to F.G. Bailey, Beherii (or Behrii) is a washerman caste

(1994: 73), and several Beheriis classify themselves as Pi\nas or Panos,
which hold SC status in Orissa. The pillar and casting worker himself,
however, maintained that Beherii is a middle-caste weaving community in
which the men 'are allowed to wear janeii (holy thread) when ·they get
married'. I have not been able to ascertain whether the divergence was
caused by a different .
. ranking of Beherlis in different parts of Orissa, by
the existence of two communities bearing the same name, or by an attempt
to take advantage of working far away from Orissa to claim a higher status
for his caste, though the worker's use of Beherii as a surname indicates
that he did not try to dissociate himself from his caste-fellows.

Essentializing and Foregr<JUnding Dalits • 253
Muslim electrician and a Muslim painter. These had all been

recruited through a friend of a relative of the Sharmas in
Calcutta, who was a professional contractor. Each of the skilled
workers recruited their own assistants, subordinates, and
labourers, a recruitment process the Sharmas did not interfere
with. The labourers, who were hired on a day-to-day basis,
looked as if they hailed from the poorest segment of the urban
proletariat, and the proportion of SCs among them was probably
high. 23 The final workers involved in the construction were three
(sometimes four) brothers who 1 worked as carpenters. They
were from a Barhai (carpenter, OBC) family from the eastern
part of the state, and had been recruited after completing a
widely admired double bed for a 'good' family who had moved
into one of the new apartments. The remaining outdoor employ-
ees included three chaukidfils who watched the gates, main-
tained security and ran errands. One was an independently
recruited Lodhi (OBC), the second was the son of the mehri
who cleaned the utensils, and the third was an illiterate Kori
(SC) electrician who came begging for a job when the spinning
mill he had worked in closed down. The man who pressed the
b~ttons in the tiny elevator was a brother of the casting and pillar
worker, also a Behera. The driver, a Boriya (SC), was only
employed on temporary basis, as the Sharmas had agreed to
'borrow' him .from a friend who had left Kanpur for some
months. Finally, the young sweeper who kept the courtyard clean
was a Valmiki (or Blilmiki, SC), as many Bhangis call them-
selves in this region. Most of the employees, then, had been
recruited through some personal network or the other, and
whether they were SCs or not had been of little importance as
long as they worked outdoors.
To boycott SCs from private enterprises, three require-
ments ·would have to be met. First, the availability of cheap
labour beyond the SC/ST segment would have to be sufficient,
2
Regrettably I did not think of conducting any survey among the
'
labourers, and am therefore unable to give a closer specification of
their background. My assumption that most of them were SCs is partly
based on the high number of unemployed SCs in the city, and partly
on Mendelsohn and Vicziany's summary of studies that illuminate
how unskilled manual workers are recn1ited for construction work ( 1998,
Chapter 7).

254 • Blended &undams
a scenario that was not unlikely given the closure of the mills
in Kanpur and the general unemployment level in the city. Second,
employers would have to start asking prospective workers about
their caste background, something they found inappropriate at
the time of my fieldwork, no matter how frustrated they we re
with Mayawati's way of attempting to empower Dalits. Third,
and most important, my upper-caste acquaintances would have
to reshuffie the hierarchy of traits that they looked for in their
workers. That they recruited most of their workers (and ser-
vants) through personal networks was because they thought it
crucial that so1neone they knew-whether a friend, a relative,
or another subordinate-could vouch for the prospective
employee's tn1stworthiness, demeanour, and ability to work hard.
To prioritize caste would entail that these traits would h ave to
be downplayed, something that would be too high a cost. Despite
occasional boycott intentions! then, my acquaintances' relations
\Vith Dalits remained largely unchanged in the contexts of non-
domestic employment.
The most significant change in my upper-caste acquaintan-
ces' relationships with Dalits occurred in their contact with
government officials. As I described in Chapter 5, upper castes
in Mohanganj considered it crucial to their economic survival to
maintain and develop such contacts. Normally they did so by
strengthening ties with people they already knew, or by the
Chinese Checkers method of going through chains of common
relations. However, when they needed to solve a particular prob-
lem-to 'get their work done' as they phrased it-it was not
sufficient to have many influential contacts. They also need ed to
establish a tie with the particular person who manned the particu-
lar post that .handled the particular problem they needed to
solye. While the bureaucracy in Uttar Pradesh had been heavily
dominated by upper castes until the late 1980s, the proportion of
non-upper-caste civil servants had increased to one-third by 1993
(Z. Hasan l 998a: 161). Most of them were SCs and Muslims, but
the percentage ofOBCs started to pick up as soon as reservation
for OBCs was implemented. During the SP- BSP ministry in
1995, the SC quota was filled for the first time (ibid.). Conse-
quently, whenever my upper-caste acquaintances needed assis-
tance with a particular 'problem', it was increasingly likely that
they had to build contact with, and ask for favours from, an SC

Essentiaiizing and Furegrounding Dalits • 255
or OBC government representative. I have already described

how Gopal and Pramod approached SC government officials to
make them reduce their respective income taxes-Gopal by
greasing palms with rice bags, and Pramod by using an old SC
acquaintance as a stepping stone to the district magistrate, who
also was an SC. To better his chances, Pramod had not only
resumed contact with his old SC college friend, but also devel-
oped a co-eating strategy that he hoped would reduce potential
inhibitions against his Brahmin background. Despite the upper-
caste anger over caste-based reservation, then, they saw no
options but to strive to include Dalit and OBC bureaucrats in their
personal networks, and to strengthen their (weak) ties with low-
caste acquaintances who could serve as stepping stones. Such
relationships entailed too deep cleavages of caste to be intimate,
but it is worth noting that they increased the contact between upper
castes and Dalits.
In sum, then, we get a completely different picture of the
foregrounding of Dalits when approaching it through personal
relationships than when merely examining it through what people
said. Even though the upper castes in Mohanganj increasingly
distanced themselves from Dalits and voiced distrust in their
qualifications, they maintained just as many Dalit servants and
outdoor workers as before, and their contact with the Dalit elite
in the bureaucracy even grew. Does this entail that the 'forward-
ization' process largely was an empty discourse in the sense that
it was only acted upon during political elections? Not so. If we
approach the foregrounding of Dalits through yet a vantage
point, we discover the contours of an effect that perhaps was the
most wide-reaching of them all, namely an increased loyalty and
solidarity between upper castes of different kinds. With the
extension of the reservation system and Mayawati's ascent to
power, Brahmins and Baniylis, shopkeepers, and industrialists
all came to see each other as victims of the same policy. Con-
sequently, horizontal loyalties (between forwards of different
castes) grew while venical loyalties (between forwards and
backwards) were eroded. At the same time, the competition for
the remaining non-reserved educational seats and jobs sharp-
ened, something that made the upper castes step up their use
of contacts in an attempt to secure their careers and material
well-being.

256 • Blent:kd &undmUs
Let me illustrate how the reservation policy influenced the use

of contacts by describing how Puneet Tripathi went about solving
his economic problems. Puneet was a Brahmin who worked
as a clerk in the city government, drawing a salary of Rs 3000
to Rs 4000 a month. As he had to save to marry off his three
daughters with appropriate dowries, Puneet was unable to keep
up with his relatives and friends as far as living standard and
daily expenditure was concerned. According to Puneet, the prob-
lem was not only his daughters, but that his career had stagnated
because he had been regularly bypassed for promotion due to the
reservation policy. Now, Puneet knew that his old friend Pramod
was on good terms with a senior official in Puneet's department.
As an old friend, Pramod agreed to persuade this official to help
Puneet. Dressed in a spotlessly white and starched kurta-pajama
and sporting the gold-framed glasses he always used when trying
to impress notables, Pramod brought Puneet along twice to visit
the senior official in his office. Eventually, the official agreed to
transfer Puneet to a department that was in charge of supplies.
Puneet would not get a salary raise, but the new post gave ample
opportunity for additional profit since suppliers competing for
contracts would be eager to grease his palms. Though Puneet
was too loyal to his work-place to take advantage of this oppor-.
tunity ('Such a fool! ' his friends remarked), the incident exem-
plifies how a friend helped a friend, how a Brahmin helped
another Brahmin and, above all, that the need for assistance and
the compulsion for extending it were explained in terms of caste-
based reservation.
Quite a few of the contact relations I heard about in 1997 that
blurred the boundary between the state and the society (cf.
Gupta 1995), were explained and justified as counter-strategies
against caste-based reservation. Reservation had emerged as a
new way of legitimizing the practice of 'fixing' things by help of
personal contacts. Resorting to contacts had not only become
more tempting due to the increased competition for non-re-
served employment and admission; the moral threshold for
doing so had also been lowered. Yet the extent to which the use
of contacts actually was stepped up was difficult to ascertain.
True, I came to know about far more such incidents in 1997 than
earlier, but that was just as much because my acquaintances
confided more in me the longer we had known each other. What

Essentializing and Foregrounding Dalit.s • 257
is beyond doubt, however, is that there were a number of factors

that encouraged the use of contacts. 24 If this practice really was
on the increase, which I believe it was, the aggregate outcome
would be a more marked exclusion of people with less social
capital, typically people below the segment of 'good', upper-
caste people. This is the kind of exclusion that sociologists have
analysed as the adverse effect of social capital (Portes 1998)
or the 'other side' of embeddedness (Waldinger 1995). The next
section gives a glimps~ of what it was like at the other side.
BALIK-AT THE OTHER SIDE OF EMBEDDEDNESS

To illustrate how difficult it could be for people with limited
social and cultural capital to secure employment and admission,
I end this chapter with the story of Balik, one of the carpenters
who worked in the construction of apartment buildings for the
Sharma family. Balik's struggle to escape his caste profession,
his realization that caste-based reservation was his only option,
and the way this affected-or perhaps did not affect-the rela-
tion with his employer, may also serve to summarize and reunite
many of the issues I have brought up in the course of this book.
Among the first things I did when I returned to Mohanganj to
do fieldwork in 1997 was to look for changes that had occurred
in the Sharma compound since my visit the previous year. One
change was the carpenters, whom I could not remember having
seen there earlier. One of them even used to work right outside
the entrance to the bungalow, a short, slender, and dark-com-
plexioned man dressed in a baniyiin (vest) and a checked lungi.
When I asked Pramod about him, Pramod lit up. 'Would you
believe that this guy has an MA degree?' he asked. Pramod had
not even known about his carpenter's educational achievements
i•A third !actor was the increased public attention to com1p1io11. Daily
the newspapers reported about officials or ministers who had been charged
for corruption, about the peculiar ballot system that the Uuar Pradesh
chapter of the Indian Administrative Seivices had implemented in an
attempt to curb co1n1ption, or about the establishment of a Central Vigi-
lance Commission. This discourse gave n1y acquaintances the impression
that corruption was everywhere, something that made them reason that
'when not even our mtiis (political leaders) have clean hands anymore, why
should we?'

258 • BlenMd Boundaries
until the day the carpenter had asked for a day's leave to appear
for the MA final in English literature. 'Can you believe it?' Pramod
exclaimed. 'And all the time he has been working here, from
seven in the morning to eight in the evening! Yet he will not even
sit if I offer him a chair!' Evidently, Pramod was impressed by
his carpenter's determination and achievements-though he
quickly added that, as an SC, Balik was probably a quota student
with not too impressive results. At the same time, Pramod was
pleased that the carpenter still showed him the same respect as
before.
In the months that followed I had several conversations
with Balik. He was eager to talk, but despite his degree in
English literature, his spoken English was so faltering that
we normally had to resort to Hindi. His name was Balik
Vishwakarma, and he hailed from a poor Barhai family near
Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where they lived side by
side with 60-odd other Barhai families who all supported them-
selves by a combination of carpentery and agriculture. Balik had
one elder brother and two younger ones, but it was only Balik who
had been sent to school. The other three had learned carpentery
from their father and were illiterate. Balik enjoyed his studies,
aod, having finished a BA in Sanskrit, Geography, Hindi, and
English with 42 per cent in his final exam, his family got him
married. Balik was proud to have a wife who was educated up
to Class X, and by now they had three children, who were ten,
six, and uvo years old in 1997.25 However, Balik wanted to pursue
his education fi.1rther. His choice fell on Kanpur, where he was
admitted to an MA course in a degree college. His two younger
brothers joined him, and made doors, window frames, and beds
to finance Balik's education and support their family at home.
Unfortunately, however, Balik failed his MA finals in 1990. As
Balik explained it, the clerk at the college had refused to pass
him unless Balik provided him with some fi.1rniture, something
Balik had not been willing to do.
Balik was on the verge of losing hope. Feeling bad for his
younger brothers who had supported his studies in vain, he
decided to learn carpentery from them. From then onwards, the
2
It was Batik's children who entered Chapter 4 for being so light-
''
complexioned compared to the others in the bari1al village.

Essmtializing and Foregrounding Dalits • 259
four brothers worked as a team, spending six months in Kanpur

and the remaining six in the village, where they also looked after
their families, their sugar-cane fields, and the labourers who
worked in them. In 1995 Balik took ad1nission once again. This
time he passed his MA finals with 48 per cent marks. Proudly,
he showed me his credentials and an eight-page paper he had
written on Alfred Tennyson, the British poet. I tried to read it, but
found Balik's Victorian English and flowery phrases difficult to
understand. Balik's eagerness to get to know me was related to
his passion for English poetry. Unfortunately I knew far less than
him about this topic, and the best I could do was to provide
background information on the cultural background of the poems
he read. As it turned out, one of his biggest puzzles pertained to
Christianity. 'Sister,' he once asked, 'in Hinduism, a flag is
always used, but in Christianity I have seen something like a plus.
What is the meaning of this symbol?' His question took me aback,
but I told him about Jesus Christ, his deeds, and the Cruxifixion
as pedagogically as I could. When I was through, Balik remarked
that the life ofJesus was a true miracle, just like the life of Ram.
This brought him to the Ramayai:ia epic, which he had also
spent considerable time pondering over. Night after night, he
had read from the Ramayal)a to his illiterate brothers, but the
story had made them disillusioned, and they had come to the
conclusion that Ram was 'corrupted' and 'not good'. This made
me curious, and I started to expect a low-caste critique of Ram,
the Kshatriya king from Ayodhya, who was often portrayed as an
ideal Hindu. What the brothers had reacted to, however, was that
Ram had once touched Ahalya's head with his feet. And since
Ahalya was 1narried to 'one of the Brahmins',2r. they considered
Ram to have done something very wrong and disrespectful. Ram
was certainly a royal heir, but he was only a Kshatriya and
therefore lower than a Brahmin, Batik maintained. Batik and
his brothers, then, evidently acknowledged the vari:ia hierarchy,
just like Deliege (1993) shows many untouchables to do. Unlike
Deliege's untouchables, however, Balik did not claim his caste
w In lhe Rlimayal}a, Ahalya is the wife of a sage named Gautama, and
a very beautiful woman. Different versions of the Ramliyal}a carry different
stories about Ahalya. In Valmiki's version, which I a ss111ne was the one
Balik had been reading, Ahalya was seduced by Indra, but purified by Ram
and his brother Lakshman.

260 • BlnuUd &undams
to 'originally' have been more favourably ranked, but he certainly

resented his hereditary profession and the discrimination he
had to face . If he happened to bump into an upper-caste-looking
person in the streets or markets of Kanpur, he was often scolded.
Once he had even been hit. 'Many people think I am an SC,' he
sighed. His brothers had had similar experiences, but they had
resolved to avoid trouble by never answering or hitting back.
However, Balik was quick to add that there were kind upper-
caste people in Kanpur, too. As an example, he referred to his
former landlord, a Brahmin army retiree, whom Balik said had
shown respect to everyone irrespective of caste. The landlord
had showed deep concern if Balik came home later than usual,
or had to cross the city during riots between Hindus and Mus-
lims. Batik was silent about the Sharmas, who as far as I could
see treated him kindly and politely, but nevertheless as an
untouchable. As noted in Chapter 3, Ritu used discarded cups
when serving him tea, and both she and Pramod referred to him
as 'an SC', evidently unaware that Barhais were classified as
OBCs, not as SCs.
Balik's greatest concern, however, was his career. Most of all
he wanted to top his education with an MA in Hindi literature
followed by a PhD in English literature. Only then, he felt, would
he be fully able to compare Hindi and English poetry. Realizing
that teaching was a more realistic option, he had applied for
teaching jobs in several government schools. In his experience,
the only way that a person like him could get such a job was
through the OBC quota. 'The clerks favour their own, and it is
impossible to get beyond this barrier without reservations,' he
said. He had even been asked for 'donations' for reserved posts:
his last application had been met with a demand for Rs 20,000,
a sum way outside Balik's means. Consequently, Balik was on the
verge of losing hope. How could he be so unfortunate even though
he had worked so hard and made such an effort at becoming a
'better Hindu', to the extent that he had even forsaken meat? he
asked himself. By now he had almost lost faith in the gods. Even
so, he knew that his only option was to keep trying. As a teacher,
. he expected to earn Rs 3500 a month-'for such a simple job
as teaching!' he exclaimed. When making doors, windows, and
chairs for the Shannas, he only earned Rs 90 a day (his younger
brothers earned Rs 65 and Rs 55 respectively). This secured him

Essentializ.ing and Fmtgtuunding Dalils • 261
an income of Rs 2700 a month, but only if he worked seven days

a week, and only when there was work that needed to be done.
a
One day in September, Pramod told me in low voice that
Balik had started to behave funnily. Pramod still appreciated
Balik's work and demeanour, but he knew that his carpenter had
started to applyforteachingjobs. 'Lecturer,' he snorted, 'can you
imagine? Poor students!' A few days later Pramod told me that
he had fired Balik, as Balik had 'tried to be smart'. Work that
usually took two days had suddenly started to take five or six
days-'and he bills it all on me', Pramod said. When I asked
Balik about his current employment status, however, he main-
tained that he had simply taken leave to apply for a teaching post.
Balik came and went in the months that followed, and when I
wrapped up my fieldwork in December, he was still to be seen.
However, when I returned for a short visit 15 months later, Balik
and his brothers were gone. I was unable to find out where they
had gone, and whether he had finally got the teaching job that he
strived so hard to get. When I asked his fellow workers, the
servants, .and the Sharmas where they had gone, nobody knew
and nobody seemed to have tried to find out. The only answer I
got was, 'They have probably gone to the village'.
The case of Balik confirms how little the political accentua-
tion of caste affected ties between upper-caste employers and
low-caste workers that had already been established. Though
Balik was not only eligible for, but also tried to make use of the
quota system, his employer did not change his behaviour to-
wards him until he started to suspect Balik ofjob-hunting during
work-hours. The downside of this stability was that Balik had to
maintain a difficult balance between being sufficiently self-as-
sertive to keep applying for jobs on the outside, and remaining
submissive and respectful to his employer inside the compound.
No MA could save him from having to take his chappals off,
looking down, and bowing his head when entering his employer's
house. Most important, Balik's experiences illustrate the diffi-
culties that low-caste people with no personal contacts to speak
of had in making careers. As such, it exemplifies the adverse
side of social capital, a side it would be increasingly difficult to
be on if 'good' upper-caste people on the 'right' side increasingly
resorted to contacts for securing admissions, jobs, and personal
benefits.

CONCLUSIONS
The overall argument in this chapter has been that, during

Mayawati's period as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1997,
the political attention of upper-caste people in Mohanganj was
highly dominated by Dalits and their empowerment. This was
what they talked about when discussing politics, this was what
they got agitated over, and this was the main content of the
stories they passed on to each other that year. A comparison
of their verbal exchanges about Dalits and caste politics with
the way they had talked about Muslims five years earlier led me
to disCO\ler both similarities and differences. Upper-caste
people's conversations about Muslims had more female partici-
pants than their conversations about caste-related issues, and
though both discourses involved essentialization, Musli1ns were
essentialized in terms of class and 'smallness' whereas Dalits
were essentialized in terms of their allegedly limited industri-
ousness and mental capacity. These qualities were mainly un-
derstood as side-effects of reservation, but were occasionally
also seen as in-born qualities, which brings us back to the
Brahminic theory of the three gw:ias (qualities). Finally, both
discourses involved the elevation of cenain features to a tran-
scendent 'truth. that repudiated factual counter-information,
but it was only in exchanges about Muslims that it was the
'nature' of the other that attained transcendence. In the dis-
course about Dalits, in contrast, it was the reservation policy
that acquired transcendence, a policy that my acquaintances
exaggerated and partly misunderstood.
Examining the effect of this discourse on my acquaintances'
personal relations with Dalits brought fonh some interesting
similarities and differences as well. Like their foregrounding of
Muslims, their foregrounding of Dalits was predominately a
verbal preoccupation in the sense that it had no significant
bearings on personal relations that were already established.
But this was so for different reasons. In the case of Muslims, it
was because the relations were either brief and market-like, or
1narked by a commonalty of class that overwrote negative ste-
reotypes. The case of Dalits, in contrast, is best understood in
terms of social and economic interdependence. This is not to
say that my acquaintances' heightened attention to issues of

Essentiaiizing and Foregrounding Dalits • 263
caste left their ties to Dalits entirely unchanged. True, their

behaviour towards servants and outdoor etnployees, and their
criteria for recruiting them, remained as before, but they in-
creasingly interpreted unannounced absence in terms of Dalit
empowerment. Their interaction with the Dalit elite even in-
creased, as they found it indispensable to seek favours from the
growing number of OBCs in influential government positions to
secure their material well-being. Even so, they seemed less
inclined to return favours to non-upper castes, as the politicization
of caste also enhanced the horizontal solidarity between the
various upper castes at the expense of the vertical loyalties that
integrated the1n with backward castes.
I opened this chapter by maintaining that the heightened
upper-caste attention to Dalits and caste-based politics brack-
eted their attention to Muslims, or backgrounded it, as it were.
Having spent the whole chapter on the intricacies of caste-based
politics and its local consequences, the time has finally come to
comment on the backgrounding process. In short, my acquain-
tances never really changed their opinion about Muslims. They
never completely stopped referring to them either. Kish ore Chawla,
for example, once recited the following ser (poem) amidst much
laughter:·
Samajh me kuch 1U1hl iitii I don't understand a thing
parhe jiio llJ kyci h<LSil If you carry on reciting, what is gained?
nanliiz ka kttch 111atlab If the prayer has any nleaning
to parde~i zaban kyii ho then why is it in a foreign language?
Kishore's point was not to ridicule Muslims for reciting prayers

in Arabic rather than in Hindustani or Urdu. After all, most
(upper-caste) Hindu rituals were conducted in Sanskrit. Kishore's
point was the fate of the poet. According to Kishore, the poet,
Yagana Changezi, lived during the navabi rule in Lucknow and
was promptly accused of blaspheiny. 27 With his hair shaven off
27 According to the Urdu scholars at the University of Oslo-Ruth Laila
Schmidt, Finn Thiesen, and Jamshed Mashroor-the poem probably origi-
nated in the twentieth century and not during the navabi rule. First, Yagana
Changezi-ifthe poem really was composed by him-must have lived after
1900. as he is known for having tried to discredit the poet Chalib
(1779-1869). who must have achieved his fame by then. Second, the lack
of rhyme suggests a twentieth-century origin. In the days of the navabs,

264 • Blmded Boundams
and his face painted black he was paraded about in the streets
of Lucknow. The effect of this story seems clear: it confirmed
and sustained the local view that Islam was intolerant towards
critical questions, a view that persisted among many upper-caste
Hindus long after their intense preoccupation with the 'nature'
of Muslims had subsided.
That they no longer were engaged in distancing themselves
from Muslims became more and more evident each time I
visited Mohanganj. In 1997 I found Gopal, Pramod, Billu, and
Bablu wearing pat.ban suits, the prototypical clothing for Muslim
men. For a couple of months, this was what they wore when
attending weddings and performing rituals such as havan (fire
offering) outside their house, something they wouldn't even have
considered doing only a few years earlier. In 2001 Ritu was
actively looking for an opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the
dargah (gr:we monument) of the Muslim sufi Khwaja Moinuddin
Chishti in Ajmer. The reason why she wanted to go there was to
show her gratitude for the recovery of her son after a serious
illness. Pramod himself had even approached the head of a
madrasa (Muslim school) for countering the tantric spells he held
responsible for his persisting economic problems. Despite these
tokens of backgrounding, the process can easily be reversed. So
can the backgrounding of caste that slowly has occurred since my
fieldwork in 1997. Given a sufficiently one-sided and intense
public debate, situations similar to those of 1992 and 1997 will
surely arise again.
moreover, the torm 'parhe jao' would have read 'parhe jave', and the third
line would probably have read namazo ka hai kuch matlab-though these
changes could well be an efl'ect of oral transmission.

9
•
Conclusion: Blended Boundaries
and Shifting Politicization
The preceding chapters have followed a loosely connected

network of upper-caste Hindus in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, for
over a decade, concentrating on 1992 and 1997. Throughout
the period virtually all of them supported the BJP and the Hindu
nationalist ideology in which it was rooted. Nevertheless, their
notions of Otherness became subject to a significant change.
From being intensely preoccupied with Muslims and the nega-
tive characteristics ascribed to this minority in 1992, their
obsession with the Muslim Other was replaced by preoccupation
with the empowerment of Dalits shortly after, and particularly
in 1997. This change of salience can also be seen as a transition
between two different faces, or aspects, of Hindu nationalism:
the first questioning the position of Muslims in India; the second
an upper-caste conservatism that came close to a tacit defence
of caste. My main concern in this book has been to understand
how such transitions may come about.
On the face of it, the transition in question was a result of
political changes. In. 1992 the BJP and its sister organizations
in the Sangh Parivar spearheaded an intense campaign to
(re)claim the Bahar mosque in Ayodhya to make space for a
Ram temple. This controversy, along with the parallel debates
on Kashmir and the Muslim Personal Law, rendered the relation
between Hindus and Muslims a virtually inescapable topic in the
news media. But, following the demolition of the Bahar mosque

in December 1992 and the catharsis-like riots that followed, the

public interest in religious boundaries faded rapidly. The BJP
lost political power in Uttar Pradesh, and the governments that
eventually succeeded it had an entirely different agenda, namely,
the uplift of 'backwards' and Dalits. For the inhabitants of Uttar
Pradesh, this issue grew almost as inescapable as Muslim-
related issues had been some years before. On this background,
it might seem self-evident that the political attention of the
upper-caste Hindus I lived among in Kanpur shifted from Mus-
lims to Dalits. This book, however, has aimed to show that the
matter is not quite that simple. To understand such political
shifts, it has argued, it is not sufficient to direct the attention to
state- or nation-level politics and analyse the actions, rhetoric,
a,nd ideology of politicians, organizational leaders, or activists.
Local perceptions and interpretations of politics are never di-
rect replicas of political rhetoric and events, but are filtered and
flavoured by the knowledge, values, and practices that predomi-
nate in the local society. In this book, therefore, the upper-caste
foregrounding of Muslims and Dalits-and the shift between
them-have been analysed as a product of the interface between
local everyday lives on the one hand, and changes in political
context on the other.
Rather than taking the empirical starting point in political
ideologies and events, this book opened the empirical scrutiny
by examining how upper-caste Hindus in Kanpur maintained
boundaries towards people they considered inferior with respect
to caste and class, as well as towards Muslims. Limiting the
search to their comments on contemporary political events
would have resulted in a circular argument, as the practices,
values, and knowledge that enable resonance must be sought
outside the resonance itself. Consequently, this book has de-
voted considerable space to examining how upper-caste Hindus
maintained caste and religious bounda1ies while going about
with their everyday chores. Such an examination could have been
carried out in a number of ways. In this book I began by search-
ing for arenas and contexts that were essential for reproducing
upper-caste notions of caste, continued by investigating how
these notions spilled over to their constn1ctions of class and
ended by exploring the extent and nature of interreligious ties.
Integral to 1ny argument is that the boundaries of caste, class,

Condusion • 267
and religion were more influenced by each other than the schol-
arship of each boundary tends to suggest, something that also
had ramifications in the way in which political discourses about
the Dalit and Muslim Other were locally appropriated.
This chapter will summarize the main conclusions and argu-
ments of this book, and suggest some of their implications. The
first two sections will distil the empirical observations, first
concerning the everyday significance and entanglement of mul-
tiple social boundaries; thereafter concerning the influence of
everyday boundaries on the 'localization' and transformation of
public discourses. The third section will offer some reflections
about which shifts in upper-caste notions of Otherness that
might have occurred after I left Mohanganj in 1997, while the
fourth summarizes the analytical perspectives employed in
this study and argues for the fruitfulness of theoretical eclecti-
cism for studying multiple social boundaries. The fifth section
will consider some of the differences between Hindu-Muslim
violence and upper-caste violence against Dalits, and the final
section returns to Mohanganj for a quick glimpse of some of
the changes that have occurred there during the first five years
since 1997.
EVERYDAY CASTE, ClASS, RELIGIOUS

BOUNDARIES, AND BLENDEDNESS
My search for everyday contexts and arenas that contributed to
reproduce upper-caste notions of caste and superiority involun-
tarily drew me towards the walls, gates, and gate-keepers that
protected their home compounds from the street and other
public places outside. Chakrabarty's argument that the 'inside'
represents the known and protected while the 'outside' stands
for the unknown, ambiguous, and potentially inauspicious ( 1991)
held equally true in Mohanganj as in Chakrabarty's Calcutta,
and Chapters 3 and 4 took his argument further by suggesting
that the inside and the outside were dominated by different
principles of stratification. Inside the walls and gates, I argued,
my upper-caste acquaintances hardly interacted with anyone
whose caste, profession, regional belonging, and social standing
they did not know. Outside, however-particularly in public places
without access restrictions-they were surrounded by strangers

whose social background they could only guess at by assessing

their looks, movements, and speech.
Taking the cue from Grey & Mearns (1989) and working my
way from the inside and out, I suggested that home compounds
were more significant than any other urban arenas and domains
in reproducing upper-caste notions of caste superiority. At home
my upper-caste informants were not only able to position virtually
everyone they interacted with according to caste; much of their
interaction with non-family members-particularly domestic
servants-was even structured according to caste. Chapter 3,
then, examined the role of master-servant relations in reproduc-
ing upper-caste notions of caste. I argued that the employment
of servants for virtually all household tasks apan from cooking
reflected and maintained the notion thai certain menial tasks
are undignified or defiling for people of upper-caste status. I
further argued that the tendency to employ separate servants for
different household tasks rather than one or two all-round ser-
vants preserved the notion that a servant's caste background
made him or her particularly suited for some tasks but unsuited
for others. This was most strongly expressed in relation to
untouchable servants. Though politely treated, they were nor-
mally kept away fro1n the kitchen and the utensils used there,
and their touch and proximity were avoided. Consequently,
master-servant relations also reproduced notions of untouch-
ability, not the least by socializing upper-caste children into
a world-view according to which certain people were seen as
inherently gande (dirty, bad). But master-servant relations
could also entail emotional closeness and patronage. Several
non-untouchable servants employed as full-time cooks, kitchen
assistants, or maids had developed such close ties with their
upper-caste employer family that the master-servant relation
passed on to the next generation. Hereditary master-servant
relations were still an ideal for most of my upper-caste infor-
mants. For all these reasons, and because master-servant re-
lationships were grounded in exchange of services and goods,
I suggested that their role in reproducing caste may be likened
to that of rural jajmani exchange.
My upper-caste informants' sense of caste superiority was not
confined to their home compounds. It also influenced their
behaviour outside. In Chapter 4 I followed them around in the

Conclusion • 269
streets and markets of Mohanganj to examine how they esti-

mated the social background of the strangers they encountered
and how they attempted to communicate their own superiority
in 'caste-blind' public places. In such places, I argued, upper-
caste superiority and respectability were most effectively com-
municated by fair complexion, neatly maintained clothes, 'sweet'
speech, slow and dignified movements, and a body stature that
should not be short or thin. Strangers who displayed a majority
of these traits were referred to as acche log (good people), while
those who lacked them were held to be choie log (small people)
or gande log (dirty people). These terms, I further argued,
served as local idioms of class and spanned a continuum ac-
cording to which my upper-caste informants positioned strang-
ers as well as themselves. Though most of the good' features
could be cultivated by anyone with sufficient means, my acquain-
tances invariably assumed 'good people' to be upper-caste and
'small people' to be low-caste or untouchable. In this sense, the
upper-caste construction of class in Mohanganj virtually served
as a caste hierarchy by proxy. Yet there also existed a third class
idiom-bare log (big people)-which was associated with wealth
and political influence rather than with caste. The final part of
Chapter 4 argued that these constructions of class also influ-
enced my upper-caste acquaintances' use of urban spaces. While
minimizing their presence in downtown markets, buses, and
other places where close proximity to 'small' people was un-
avoidable, they enjoyed visiting access-restricted spaces such
as closed shopping exhibitions and clubs where they only mingled
with people of a similar social background as themselves.
The upper-caste tendency to constantly classify people as
either above, on a par with, or inferior to themselves was also
reflected in the interaction patterns I examined in Chapter 5.
In order to approach my upper-caste acquaintances' social worlds
through their networks, I examined the four types of relation-
ships that they most commonly engaged in, and argued that
friendship and utilitarian 'contact' relations were tlie only ones
that had potential to bridge wide gaps of caste and class. A slight
change of informants might have rendered relations with
neighbours and colleagues equally significant, but those I asso-
ciated with hardly maintained such relations. As it turned out,
however, neither friendship nor contact relations prevented their

social worlds from being overwhelmingly homogeneous with

respect to upper-casteness and acchaness. This, I argued, was
not because low castes or 'small' people were deliberately ex-
cluded. In the case of friendship it was because friendship
tended to be formed in educational institutions which, due to the
unequal education possibilities in the past and the preference
for private schools in the present, were dominated by 'good'
upper-caste people. In the case of contact relations, the homo-
geneity of class and caste arose because contact relations were
mainly extended to 'big' people with influence and wealth, a
majority of whom were both upper-caste and 'good' with respect
to class. The implication of Chapter 5, then, is that my upper-
caste acquaintances hardly interacted with low castes and 'small'
people at all except when requiring their services or purchasing
their goods.
Chapter 6 began to include Muslims in the study. Although
most of my upper-caste informants' social interaction was with
other Hindus-whether through symmetrical or hierarchical
relations- it involved some Muslims as well, and Chapter 6
argued that Muslims too were incorporated according to the
'goodcand-small' logic. Actual tics with Muslims, then, told a
completely different story than verbal remarks, which lumped
Muslims into an undifferentiated category. 'Good' Muslims mainly
entered my acquaintances' networks through friendship and
'love marriage'. Indeed, I found more Muslims than low castes
and 'small' people in such relations, something that indicated
that religious differences were more easily bridged than cleav-
ages of caste and class. 'Small' Muslims, on the other hand,
entered my acquaintances' networks through the exchange of
goods and services. Though upper-caste interaction with Mus-
lims was mainly governed by the same class principles that
regulated interaction with others, Chapter 6 also argued that
there were certain everyday features that set Muslims apart
from this logic. These included their lack of principles against
eating beef, which often created friction when intcrrcligious
socializing involved eating. Also, since many upper castes be-
lieved Muslims- particularly 'small' Muslims-to be descen-
dants of low-caste and untouchable converts to Islam, they often
treated Muslims with similar precautions as they treated un-
touchables.

Conclwion • 271
In sum, the exploration of the everyday social boundaries in

Chapters 3 through 6 documented two features that were crucial
to the main argument in this book. The most basic one was that
my upper-caste acquaintances were attentive to caste and reli-
gious differences in their everyday lives. In other words, these
boundaries mattered to them in several other ways than by being
subject to political controversies about caste-based reservation,
mosque contention and the like. It was the everyday significance
of these boundaries that created receptivity and resonance for
distant political decisions, events, ·and discourses concerning
these boundaries, and that contributed to 'localize' them. Sec-
ond, these chapters documented that the Hindu-Muslim bound-
ary was more blended with caste than what one might infer from
political and academic discourses about Hindu-Muslim rela-
tions. Notions of caste flavoured local constructions of class,
which again structured face-to-face interaction with Muslims-
which also was directly influenced by notions of caste by the
chain of associations from Muslims to beef, tamoguQ, and un-
touchability. Though the spillover effects from caste through
class to religious boundaries made these social boundaries
more blended than usually acknowledged; their entanglement
was counterworked by public discourses which tended to ponray
them as clear<ut.
POLITICIZATION AND SHIFTING NOTIONS OF OTHERNESS

Chapters 3 through 6 examined everyday social boundaries as
if they were unaffected by political events and rhetoric. This, of
course, was never the case. In many ways information and com-
ments about political events and debates that unfolded beyond
Mohanganj was just as much a pan of everyday life as anything
else. When I separated the political from the everyday it was
primarily for two reasons. One was that my acquaintances con-
ceived of politics as something that happened elsewhere, be-
yond their reach and influence. Another was that their notions
of politics constituted a different kind of knowledge than their
everyday practices. While their everyday practices were e1nbod-
ied in mute practices, their knowledge about politics was based.
on words, texts, and visual images. And while their everyday
practices were manifest in routine activities in slow motion, the

272 • Bknded &undaries
information they received about political issues was driven forth

by extraordinary events, rupture, and change.
Chapters 7 and 8, then, examined hQ.W my upper-caste ac-
quaintances filtered, interpreted, and appropriated political
debates and events that occurred far beyond Mohanganj, and
how these processes were affected by their everyday enactment
of caste, class, and religious boundaries. Whereas Chapter 7
revolved around debates that predominated in 1992, Chapter 8
was devoted to debates that prevailed in 1997. As such the
chapters were comparative with respect to temporality, some-
thing I drew on by utilizi~g the same analytical framework in
both chapters. Both opened with a brief overview of the public
debates that predominated at the time and proceeded by exem-
plifying the local conversations that these debates gave rise to.
Subsequently both compared the conversations to the public
debates as well as to each other and examined how they were
flavoured by everyday boundary maintenance. And finally, both
ended by investigating to what extent, and how, intensified iden-
tity politics influenced face-to-face interaction across the bound-
aries in ques tion.
Despite the shift of attention from everyday life to politics and
politicization, Chapter 7 was a continuation of Chapter 6 as it
sustained the examination of upper-caste relations with Mus-
lims, but now by scrutinizing their notions of the Muslim Other.
In 1992 Indian news media were filled with references to the
Bahri Masjid, ·Kashmir, and the Muslim Personal Law, issues
that all concerned the relation between the Hindu majority and
the Muslim minority. My upper-caste acquaintances in Mohanganj
took keen interest in these issues, but when talking among
themselves, their main preoccupation was to ascribe inherent
personality traits to ·Muslims. By narrating one example after
the other, they portrayed Muslims as violent, disloyal, fi.mdamen-
talist, and child-breeding. Such claims were also abundant in
Hindu nationalist rhetoric, but in addition, my acquaintances
caricatured Muslims in a way I did not encounter in Hindu
nationalist propaganda, namely as poor, illiterate and gande.
This led me to argue that their imagination of the Muslim Other
was mediated by local constructions of class, something I ex-
plained as an inversion of their self-image as 'good' upper-caste
Hindus. The final part of Chapter 7 looked into the effects of

Conclusion • 273
politicization and the post-demolition riots of December 1992

on actual interreligious ties. In contrast to the nexus of politi-
cians, criminals, and RSS activists who planned and executed
the riots, I argued that my upper-caste acquaintances reacted
in a way that might seem contradictory. On the one hand the riots
evoked their compassion for Muslims, who were those who bore
the brunt of the riots, and several upper-caste people Jent a
helping hand to Muslim riot victims and families trapped in
curfew without provisions, whether they were prior acquaintan-
ces or complete strangers. But, on the other hand, the intense
denigration of Muslims coupled with the prevalent opinion that
Muslims had themselves to blame for the riots, eroded many
upper-caste Hindus' trust in their Muslim connections. This,
however, affected weak ties more than strong ties, and in the
cases I observed, the trust recovered gradually once the public
politicization of Hindu-Muslim relations subsided.
Chapter 8 was set in 1997, a year in which there was little talk
about Hindu- Muslim issues. In Uttar Pradesh the attention was
now directed at Dalits aad caste politics as the Mayawati-led
Bahujan Samaj Party, which had got to power, attempted to fill the
Dalit quotas in education and state employment and to protect
Dalits more effectively from caste-related discrimination and
atrocities. As expected, my upper-caste acquaintances were op-
posed to these moves, and their network buzzed with stories about
incompetent Dalit students, corrupt Dalit bureaucrats, and Dalits .
who falsely accused innocent upper-caste people of insulting re-
marks. The form that their resentment against Mayawati's poli-
cies took, I argued, brought to the surface notions of caste as inborn
qualities. My acquaintances maintained that untouchables and
low castes were less hard-working and intelligent, which some
implied was a biological given. Interestingly, however, the local
remarks about Dalits and Mayawati's policies were not dressed
in idioms of class, something I attempted to explain by suggesting
that Dalits, in contrast to Muslims, were already considered so
inferior that it was unnecessary to construe them as such. The
final part of Chapter 8 looked into the effects of caste-based poli-
tics and the debates they triggered on my acquaintances' interac-
tion with Dalits. Their master-servant relations remained largely
unchanged, and though some resolved to boycott Dalits for em-
ployment other than as untouchables, local recruitment practices

prevented such resolutions from being implemented. Indeed, my

acquaintances stepped up their interaction with Dalits since the
increased proportion ofDalits in the state administration induced
them to include more Dalits in their contact-building. Neverthe-
less, the reservation policy strengthened my upper-caste acquain-
tances' justification for securing admissions and employment
through the back door rather than through formal procedures, the
aggregate effect of which would be that reservation, though secur-
ing inclusion in some fields, reinforced exclusion from others.
Most important, however, Chapter 8 shows how my acquaintan-
ces' resentment of caste-based politics and their heightened at-
tention to the boundary between upper and backward castes
overwrote and backgrounded the Hindu-Muslim boundary they
had been so preoccupied with only a few years earlier.
In addition to comparing local discourses with public ones and
Muslim-related discourses with Dalit-related ones, Chapters 7
and 8 also examined the interface between everyday boundary
maintenance and politicization. Not only were boundaries more
likely to be locally foregrounded and politicized if they already
had some everyday significance; these chapters also showed how
local appropriation of public debates and boundary politicization
were coloured by everyday boundary maintenance. This was
particularly evident in the use of caste models and class idioms
in the local imagination of the Muslim Other, something that also
shows that the spillover effect from domain to domain was not
limited to everyday boundaries, but also affected politicized
notions of Otherness. Above all, however, Chapters 7 and 8
suggested that only one social boundary can be locally politicized
at a time. This may be explained by what Sperber & Wilson
(1986) termed the 'multiplication effect'. When somebody re-
ceives new information (here: other news) linked to knowledge
that he or she already possesses (here: everyday values and
practices) but still a little different, it tends to evoke a thirst for
new information that, if satisfied, results in a self-perpetuating
inference that brackets other issues ·(here: other social bound-
aries). Or, to explain it in terms of Gestalt theory and optical
illusions (cf. Chapter 9, nl) , as long as one concentrates on one
figure , the other figure will remain invisible. If Polonius in
Shakespeare's Ham/,et had concentrated on the camel in the
cloud more strongly than he evidently did, he would not have been

Condusion • 275
able to follow Hamlet in r~imagining the cloud as a weasel, and

thereafter as a whale. To return to Mohanganj, the more caste-
related news my upper-caste acquaintances were exposed to, the
less Hindu-Muslim-related questions mattered to them-and
presumably vice versa. ·
LATER SHIITS
Had my fieldwork extended beyond 1997, I could probably have
added several chapters to this book. From 1998 until 2000 or
so, a heated topic in the Indian media concerned the status of
Christianity and its followers in India. The debate was triggered
by Sonia Gandhi's agreement to become the prime ministerial
candidate of the Congress party and by the BJP's successful
effort to depict her as unsuitable, given her foreign origin and
Christian background. The political and public debate contin-
ued with discussions about neo-colonialism and religious conver-
sion, focusing on missionary activity among tribals and Dalits
as well as on Hindu nationalist efforts to bring them (back) into
the 'Hindu fold'. This was followed by a series of attacks on
priests, missionaries, and Christian tribals and Dalits in Orissa
and Gujarat, which also got ample news coverage. In this period,
then, it was the boundary between Hindus and Christians that
was emphasized in the public sphere. During the summer of
1999, however, this emphasis was interrupted by the Kargil war.
Mujahideen soldiers and rebels were discovered on the Indian
side of the Line of Control, whereupon the media attention
abruptly shifted to the intelligence failure that had enabled their
entry and the battle that Indian soldiers fought to eliminate them
or push them back to Pakistan. As in all international conflicts,
the media coverage was partisan. Indian media described how
Pakistani troops had captured and mutilated Indian soldiers
without checking their sources (Abdi 1999) , celebrated fallen
Indian soldiers as martyrs, and helped mobilize the population
to contribute funds for arms and equipment. During the summer
of 1999, then, it was the relation between India and Pakistan that
was emphasized in the public sphere. Some years later, in
February 2002, a train with Hindu nationalist activists returning
to Ahmedabad from Ayodhya was gutted by local Muslims in
Godhra. Fifty-eight passengers, mostly activists, were burnt alive.

This event triggered new Hindu-Muslim riots. The riots were

confined to Gujarat, but were exceptionally long-drawn and in-
volved rural areas to a larger extent than ever before. I have not
looked into how the Gujarati. news media covered the riots, but
in the national English-language press the attention soon turned
to the protection and suppon that Chief Minister Narendra Modi
allegedly lent to the rioters and the· difficulties the riot victims
met when seeking justice. Throughout 2002 and well into 2003,
then, the public sphere revolved around Hindu-Muslim issues
once again, but in a very different way than in 1992.
I was not in Mohanganj at the height of any of these political
developments. Though I stayed in touch with my upper-caste
acquaintances there, I found it inappropriate to try to elicit their
political viewpoints in letters and phone calls. Hence I have
limited knowledge about how they were affected by the news
coverage of the increased hostility towards Christians, the Kargil
war, and the riots in Gujarat. If I were to make an educated
guess, it would be that the debate about Christianity had mod-
erate impact on them due to the invisibility of Christian Dalits
and tribals in Kanpur; that the debate over Kargil evoked strong
passions among them given their long-standing local hostility
towards Pakistan and the associations they made between
Pakistan and the Muslim Other; and that their interest in the
Gujarat riots was intense at first but subsided quickly once the
media sympathy turned from the killed activists to the predomi-
nantly Muslim riot victims. Whether my guesses are correct or
not, I believe that the analytical framework developed in this
book could fruitfully have been extended to the local interest and
interpretation of these political developments as well.
The impact of news coverage on local politicization may also
be examined in r~verse, so to speak. In 2003-4 India and Pa-
kistan held their first high-level talks since the Kargil war,
reopened the bus route, trains, and flights connecting the two
countries, and aired the possibility of peace negotiations. An
imponant step in the track two diplomacy that paved the way for
these moves had been to convince leading newspapers in both
countries to reduce their coverage of the Indo-Pak conflict,
cover Indo-Pak relations in a less panisan manner and give
more space to features that unite the countries. The changed
news coverage this resulted in appears to have been crucial for

Conclusion • 277
securing the respective governments sufficient popular accep-

tance to warm their bilateral relations again without risking loss
of electoral suppon. Those who planned the track two diplomacy
seem to have been right in assuming more positive coverage of
the relation between India and Pakistan to improve the attitude
to the neighbour country in the population at large. Much could
probably be gained if the media took similar precautions when
covering internal conflicts and controversies as well.
ANALYflCAL REFLECTIONS
Until I returned from my second fieldwork in 1997 and staned
to systematize my empirical observations, I had no clear notions
about which analytical perspective(s) would be most helpful for
interpreting them. All I knew was that I no longer felt comfon-
able with the anthropological perspectives on ethnicity that had
inspired me before I left. To a large extent the analytical per-
spectives that came to underpin this study grew out of the
material itself. A more apt description of the analytical process
is probably that it was caused by a multiplication effect similar
to those my informants went through. While looking for patterns
in my observations, I searched for theoretical frameworks that
could.help me to interpret and discuss them. Suddenly, I found
a framework that made me feel as if the jigsaw puzzle came
together. Consequently I looked for more theoretical reflections
of the same kind, and eventually I came to think of them as
inevitable. I do not mention this only to illustrate the analytical
process, but also to underscore that the empirical material on
which this book is based could have been analysed in several
ways, possibly also in ways that contradict the arguments made
in the preceding chapters. It is panly to enable alternative
interpretations that this book devotes so much space to actual
incidents, comments, and conversations, and I hope the ethno-
graphic surplus they generated is sufficient to allow the argu-
ments in this study to be challenged from within their own
observational universe.
The analytical perspective that made my jigsaw puzzle come
together was the recipient perspective of communication stud-
ies. Till date I have not encountered a framework that better
enhances the understanding of how the salience of my upper-

278 • B~ Boundaries
caste acquaintances' notions of Otherness so easily could shift

from Muslims to Dalits-and probably have shifted again sev-
eral times since. This perspective implies that such changes
would not have come about unless, first, both boundaries had
everyday significance and, second, the political context and
news coverage shifted from tilting heavily towards one boundary
to tilting heavily towards the other, each tilt being reinforced by
the multiplication effect. Above all, the recipient perspective
implies that any local political response can only be partly
understood if we solely direct our attention to political leaders,
their ideology, and actions. To understand why ordinary people
are affected, attracted, indifferent, or hostile to a particular
ideology, policy, or rhetoric-and how their political interests
and views change over time-we also need to study the everyday
values, knowledge, and practices that form the basis for their
interest in and interpretation of the political context. In other
words, the recipient perspective favours a grounded study of
politics. Reflecting on why many people were surprisingly unaf-
fected by Hindutva rhetoric and riots, Nandy once commented
that ordinary Indians were wiser than their politicians (Nandy,
et al 1997 (1995]). This book suggests that the basis of this
wisdom-if that is the appropriate word-is the pattern of ev-
eryday social relationships and their resistance to deterioration,
a suggestion that only a grounded study can make.
An implication of the recipient perspective that I have not
been able to devote explicit attention to is that it may pose an
alternative to our common-sense understanding of scale. Virtu-
ally all the studies I have consulted on Indian politics portray
national-level politics as clearly distinguished from state-level
politics, which again is clearly distinguished from district- or
city-level politics. Such a structural and hierarchical model of
state administration is crucial for a number of reasons. Yet it
is worth noting that, when we approach politics and news through
the eyes of a local society, as I have in this book, we may just
as well encounter notions that blur, conflate, or entirely collapse
these levels. For example, it did not seem to matter much to my
informants that the Hindu-Muslim controversies of 1992 were
debated on a national level while most of the caste policies of
1997 were confined to Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, they had
little awareness of which caste policies had been implemented

ConclusUin • 279
on a national level and which were local to Uttar Pradesh. Why

would they? The policies would affect them equally strongly
either way. If the recipient perspective were to be applied to
other political research questions than that which formed the
basis for this book, it could contribute to a phenomenological
perspective on scale, news, and politics that holds just as strong
potential to enhance our understanding of local political behaviour
as the proposition to approach politics through emic concepts.
The use of other analytical perspectives than the recipient
approach has been eclectic in this book. Depending on the sub-
topic that was examined and the domain it was examined within,
the preceding chapters applied analytical perspectives as dis-
parate as the theory of practice, cognitive science, network
analysis, and conversational/discourse analysis. That none of
them were discussed in a way intended to contribute to further
theoretical refinement follows from the case study genre of this
book. But that two of these perspectives-network analysis and
conversational/discourse analysis--were applied in such a loose
manner that their pakJtij proponents might twitch, requires a
brief explanation. In the case of conversational/discourse analy-
sis, the looseness followed partly from my decision not to use
a tape recorder, and partly from my wish to analyse local con-
versations in a way that neither conformed fully to discourse
analysis nor to conversational analysis. In the case of network
analysis the looseness is a result of my realization of its useful-
ness after completing my fieldwork. Though I could probably
have extended one of my post-fieldwork visits to Mohanganj
in order to produce systematic information about everyone my
acquaintances interacted with, for how long and for what pur-
poses, s uch an endeavour would have been too complicated to
make it worthwhile, and I decided to devote these visits to
observing change and continuity instead.
Some 1nay hold the theoretical eclecticism of this book as a
shortcoming because it precludes it from making a significant
contribution to the perspectives it applied. Though this may be
true, it should be kept in mind that the purpose of this book
was not to fine-tune any perspective, but to enhance the under-
standing of a particular empirical phenomenon. For such a
purpose I believe theoretical eclecticism to be just as useful as
theoretical consistency as it allows us to investigate the selected

280 • Blnukd &undariu
phenomenon from several angles. When integrating an exami-

nation of caste and Hindu-Muslim relations in a single study I
will even argue that theoretical eclecticism is a necessity. As I
maintained in Chapter 3, studying upper-caste notions of caste
requires that we pay just as much attention to what our infor-
mants do as to what they say, if not more, given the wide-spread
reluctance to talk about own caste inhibitions, let alone legiti-
mate them. The study of caste, then, favours an analytical per-
spective based on examination of actions and practices. In
contrast, the study of upper-caste relations to Muslims favours
perspectives that pay more heed to what people say. When
interreligious interaction is limited, as in Mohanganj, the
fieldworker has little option but to trust what the informants
choose to tell her about their ties to Muslims. Besides, there has
long been a lively political and historical discourse about the
relation between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority,
something that makes those who have been exposed to it through
their education and news consumption highly verbal about
Hindu-Muslim relations. It was partly to create an analytical
space between the endless flow of talk about Muslims and the
few interreligious relations I was able to observe that I came to
employ network analysis. All in all, then, I believe that a study
that spans across social boundaries as different as Hindu-
Muslim relations, caste and class has no option but to be theo-
retically promiscuous.
These reflections also hold relevance for the contribution that
this book may make to the study of Hindu nationalism, Hindu-
Muslim relations, caste, and caste politics-as well as ethnicity
in general. In the introduction I indicated how this book could
contribute to each topic by specifying how it diverged from
former studies, but maintained that its largest asset probably
was to bring the topics together in a single case study to examine
their interrelation. I have already summarized the boundary
blendedness and shifting politicization that this integration en-
ables us to explore. But this integration also enhances our aware-
ness of how differently caste, class, and the Hindu-Muslim
boundary are constituted. I do not refer to the fact that caste is
constituted by hereditary occupations and notions of purity, class
by economic differences, and the Hindu-Muslim boundary by a
discrepancy of faith and ritual. Nor do I refer to their different

Conclusion • 281
origins- caste presumably in religiously sanctioned feudalism,

class in economic ditferentialization, and the Hindu-Muslim
boundary in migration, conversion, and more than a century of
religious polarization. What I mean to suggest is that the contem-
porary everyday maintenance of these social boundaries occurs
in very different ways. Caste is mainly maintained by tacit every-
day practices, class by public display of economic status, and the
Hindu-Muslim boundary by dietary avoidances and several sedi-
ments of polarizing rhetoric. To a large extent, it was my futile
search within the anthropology of ethnicity for concepts and
models that could help me to grasp such differences that made
me disenchanted with the ethnicity paradigm. I hope, however,
that my decision to leave the ethnicity concept out of this book
has enabled me to draw attention to a form of complexity that
anthropological studies of ethnicity seem to have overlooked.
AFTERTHOUGHTS ON VIOLENCE
In Chapter 7 I maintained that none of my upper-<:aste acquain-
tances in Mohanganj were involved in violence against Muslims
or their property during the post-demolii.ion riots in 1992. How-
ever, I met several upper-<:aste people who volunteered that they
had committed violence against Dalits. One man told me that,
during a strike in the 1950s, he assisted the son of a mill owner
in killing a 'troublesome' union leader by throwing him in the
boiler (cf. Chitra Joshi 1999: 198). Another man laughingly told
me how much fun he and his friends once had when drunk-driving
over the narrow bridge crossing the Ganga: when a poor Dalit-
looking villager on a bicycle in front of them failed to react to
their honking, they deliberately sped into him just to hear the
funny kha~-lcha~-khal sound when he got under their car. As such
incidents suggest, violence against Dalits was not necessarily
caused by ideological grudges or violations of caste purity, but
just as much by the lower value of life that many 'good' upper-
caste people ascribed to people they considered inferior and
who thereby were outside their moral universe.
Such incidents were probably more common in Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar than in the rest of India. Nevertheless, they provoke
some reflections concerning the differences between upper-
caste violence against Dalits on the one hand, and Hindu-

Muslim violence on the other. Whereas Hindu- Muslim violence

largely was organized, upper-caste violence against Dalits was
not. Tn1e, in rural Bihar there were several cases of large-scale
violence organized by the Ranbir Sena and other upper-caste
'armies' as retaliation for Naxalite and Communist uprising
against upper-caste domination. Nevertheless, judging from the
newspapers I read during and after fieldwork, Dalits most com-
1nonly suffered upper-caste violence' for refusing to vacate the
land allotted them in land redistribution schemes, for eloping
with the daughter of an upper-caste family, for drawing water
from an upper-caste well, and for reporting caste atrocities or
discrimination to the police. It was not only the 'offenders' who
were targeted; their families, neighbourhoods, and even villages
were often punished as well. Such violence was not engineered
by formal organizations, but committed by individual people of
upper- or 1niddle-caste background who wanted to settle some
score or the other, often assisted by relatives, friends, or con-
tacts. Because such relations often blurred the boundary be-
tween civil society and the state, the police often turned a blind
eye or occasionally even took pan in the violent acts.
To compare the number of casualties of upper-caste violence
against Dalits with the number of casualties of Hindu-Muslim
violence is literally impossible. As Brass ( 1997) points out,
violence involving people from different religious communities
is not necessarily motivated by religious differences. Likewise,
not all violence committed by upper-caste people against Dalits
is rooted in differences of caste. Another problem is that the
number of reported violent incidents-be it between Hindus and
Muslims or upper-caste people and Dalits-does not necessarily
reflect the actual number of incidents or casualties. In the case
of caste violence, an increase or decrease in reported cases may
just as well reflect a changed political context as a hike or
reduction in atrocities (cf. Ghosh 1997). While caste violence
remains underreported-though apparently less so when a Dalit-
friendly party is in power-Hindu-Muslim violence may even be
overreported, at least if Brass (ibid.) is correct in maintaining
that violent incidents involving people from both religious com-
munities are routinely recorded as Hindu-Muslim violence re-
gardless of their cause, because they are incorporated into the
master narrative of Hindu-Muslim animosity. Judging from the

Condu.sion • 283
newspapers I have read since I began the work with this book,
however, the casualties of caste-related violence seemed to
outnumber those of Hindu-Muslim violence-at least until 2002,
when the riots in Gujarat began.
Whereas violence against Muslims-again, before the Gujarat
riots- normally happened in spurts, the newspapers carried
reports about upper-caste atrocities against Dalits virtually every
day. This follows from the fact that caste-related violence was
less organized and rarely triggered by large-scale political con-
troversies. This might contribute to explain why there exists a
number of academic studies of Hindu-Muslim violence but
hardly any of caste violence. For discussions about caste vio-
lence one has to turn to reports and publications written by
human rights groups and Dalit activists. Part of the reason for
the limited attention to caste violence, I suspect, is methodologi-
cal. Being less organized and motivated by political controver-
sies, caste violence is more difficult to access for scholars
accustomed to seeking explanations in political organizations
and ideological texts. Whatever the reason, there seems to be
need for more research on caste violence as well as for research
that compares caste violence with Hindu-Muslim violence-
possibly along the lines indicated above. A study that integrates
an examination of caste violence with an investigation of Hindu-
Muslim violence would not only be interesting in its own right,
it could also contribute to the research on ethnic violence in
general, just as I hope this book may contribute to the scholar-
ship on ethnicity and multiple ethnic identities.
EPILOGUE
Mohanganj, February 2003. It is one and a half years since my
last visit, and as usual I am eager to find out what has changed.
Most of the servants I know from my previous visits are still there.
Seema, the lower-caste woman who cleans the floors for the
Sharmas, still crawls around with her tucked-up sari and steel
bucket to enable her four daughters to go to school. Dev Chand,
the sweeper, still cleans the bathrooms and sweeps the court-
yard-the latter while making all sorts of funny faces and sounds
to make the new Shanna baby giggle. Ravindra, who has recov-
ered fully from his arm injury, has married and brought his wife

284 • Blemkd Boundaries
to the Arora household. She is young, thin, and timid, helps

Ravindra to cook and assists in looking after Amma Arora, who
has gro\\-11 so old and frail that she hardly gets out of bed
anymore. Her son Gopal considered teaching Ravindra how to
drive, but eventually decided against it, fearing that a new skill
would give him airs and make him quit cooking. Saraswati and
her daughter Sapna are no longer in Mohanganj. One day the
police caught Sapna romancing in a park with another man than
the one she married in 1997. The next day Sapna and Saraswati
disappeared without prior notice and without collecting their
salary. Nobody knows where they went. The Sharmas lament
their departure and maintain that the likes of Saraswati do not
exist. Yet they acknowledge that she probably had no choice but
to leave. And in the Agarwal family's home, I ·Still see new
servants every time I visit.
None of my male upper-<:aste acquaintances wear pa~han
suits anymore. Evidently, it was a brief fad. Nor has Pramod
made any new visits to the head of the madrasa. He no longer
needs to, as he has found a new way of making money. A friend
who recently got an influential post in the state bureaucracy
info1ms him which companies the state is about to assign con-
tracts to three days before the companies the1nselves are in-
formed. This allows Pramod to approach these companies and
offer to 'talk his friend around' for a negotiable sum of money.
Curious to learn whether Ritu has visited the dargah in Ajmer
yet, I visit Ritu and Tilak upstairs. Ritu replies that she unfor-
tunately has not been able to go, as nobody has volunteered to
accompany her and she considers it unsafe to make such a long
journey on her own. Besides, I suspect, the memory of her son's
illness is fading now that he is settled in a nice job in Delhi. Tilak
wants to know whether I have metjalal yet. I tell him that I plan
to call him soon. Spontaneously, Tilak rings him up and hands
me the receiver.Jalal and I agree to meet for lunch the next day.
When I reach his house, I am suddenly reminded of how fortified
it looks with its tall compound wall and uninviting steel gate
guarded by a ferociously barking Doberman. 'Just for safety,'
Jalal explains while holding the dog to let me pass. Inside, he
and his wife update me about their son, relatives, and work.
When I ask Jalal about his current relations with the Sharma
brothers, he replies that Pramod is very generous. 'If I happen

Conclusiim • 285
to mention that something is wrong with my fan, he always gets

hold of someone who can fix it for me.' But Jalal adds that
Pramod is so unpredictable that he still finds it safest to watch
his words. While we talk, a little boy comes in with glasses,
plates and food. He can hardly be more than nine or ten, butjalal
insists that he is 'about fourteen'. When I ask what happene.d to
their earlier boy servant, Jalal says that they had 'let him go'.
'If you keep servants for more than three or four years,' he
explains, 'they become a great risk.' Since two of their former
long-term servants had been caught stealing, Jalal concluded
that it is safest not to keep servants for long, even if they are
children.
With Mayawati in power for the third time in Uttar Pradesh,
the newspapers still publish reports about caste-based politics,
but not with the same density and fervour as in 1997. The press
seems more attentive to the respite the state has finally got from
the worst cold wave in several years and with the continued
spurts of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat. A discussion that
erupts during a late-night gathering of my core male informants
suggests that Muslims have returned as a topic of local conver-
sations. But this time around it seems to be triggered just as
much by the terrorist attacks in New York and Bali and the
second Intifada in Palestine as by Gujarat and Kargil. This,
at least, is what I gather from the question Pramod suddenly
asks to break the silence: 'Can anybody tell me why it is that in
almost all cases of terrorism in the world, it is Muslims who are
behind it?' His question prompts a number of loud attempts
at explanation-most of them from his brother Tilak and their
·mutual friend Naresh Shukla, who has lived in Dubai and
speaks with great confidence on everything that involves Mus-
lims. Gopal tries to defuse the sudden political turn the conver-
sation has taken with humorous remarks, but nobody listens. A
Sikh visitor, who I later learn is a member of the Congress party,
is the only man present who contradicts their arguments. He
holds that if most terrorist activities these days are conducted
by Muslims, it is because Muslims are being suppressed in so
many places. While he has the attention, he continues that
India's real problem is neither Muslims nor terrorism, but caste
oppression and Brahmin rule, something he exemplifies with an
incident that once happened to the father of one of his low-caste

acquaintances. When they still lived in their village, he once

spotted a local Brahmin urinating against the wall of his house.
He went out to stop him, saying that this was not a nice thing
to do, and what if his wife and children were to see it? The
Brahmin, however, continued to urinate, remarking, 'For you
people this is Ganga jal (water from the holy Ganges)'. When
the other men hear this story, they fall silent and look down.
Naresh Shukla is the first to speak. 'Brahmin rule? What do you
mean by Brahmin rule? Was Aurangzeb a Brahmin? Were the
Britishers Brahmins?' Before anyone gets time to answer, how-
ever, the gathering starts to break up. It is already past midnight
and their wives must be waiting for the1n to come home.

...
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BLENDED BOUNDARIES

Caste, Class, and Shifting Faces of

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Typeset in Pratap in I 0.5/ I 2

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Hamlet: Do you see y<mder cloud, that's almost in shape

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2. The setting, the people, and the fieldwork 33

3. AL home: Master-servant relations and

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Live-in servants: Three cases 80

4. Outside: 'Good' people and 'small' people 94

5. Social ties: A web of 'good' and upper-caste people 129

6. Ties with Muslims 159

7. 1992: Essentializing and foregrounding Muslims 193

8. 1997: Essentializing and foregrounding Dalits 226

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Gender, intelligence, and inaccuracies 241

9. Conclusion: Blended boundaries and

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This book follows a slightly simplified version of the standard

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This book explores the interconnections between caste, class,

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At the stages of analysis and writing, I have benefited greatly

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accha, acchi, acche good .(m, f, pl)

baba respectful term of address used for

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Balmiki see Bhangi

chacha father's younger brother

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chaukidar gate-keeper, guard

dahi fresh curd

gali narrow lane

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gora, gori, gore fair complexioned (m, f, pl)

harijan God's people, Gandhi's term for un-

idli steamed rice cake, a South Indian spe-

jajmani pertaining to the agricultural system of

kala black, dark-complexioned

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karorpati one who owns ten million nipees, rich

lac;lc;lu sweetmeat made of chickpea flour or

madras a Islamic school

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mandir temple, place of worship

namaz Muslim prayer, ideally offered five

OBC Other Backward Classes, an adminis-

pa gal mad, insane, foolish

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papa father (in familial contexts)

rajasik dominated by rajoguQ

sabzi vegetable, vegetable dish

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savla brown, of dark complexion

tamasik dominated by tamogur:i