2003 Jaffrelot, Christophe. India's Silent Revolution PDF
2003 Jaffrelot, Christophe. India's Silent Revolution PDF
2003 Jaffrelot, Christophe. India's Silent Revolution PDF
India’s Silent
Revolution
The Rise of the Low Castes in
North Indian Politics
and
D istributed by
O R IE N T BLACKSW A N PRIVATE LIM ITED
Bangalore Bhopal Bhubaneshw ar Chandigarh Chennai
Ernakulam Guw ahati H aderabad Jaip ur K olkata
Lucknow M um bai N ew Delhi Patna
www.orientblacksw an.com
ISBN 81-7824-080-7
It was in the early 1990s, when the ‘Mandai affair was at its peak,
that I began working on the revolution that North India is experi
encing. It seemed to me that the kind o f social change which was
unfolding was a proper revolution because there was a transfer of
power in the making from the upper castes to the lower castes in the
bureaucracy and the political sphere in North India. One may argue
that this revolution was not silent at all, given the vigorous anti-
Mandal mobilisation and the lower castes’ counter-mobilisation of
1990. But the phase o f violent confrontation was short and circum
scribed. The upper castes quickly adjusted themselves to the new
balance o f power and looked for other avenues o f social mobility, out
o f the state, while the lower castes relied on the constitutional
process - the reservations and the democratic modus operandum, in
which their massive numbers were bound to benefit them. Since
then, while the overall process remains largely unaccomplished, they
are gradually, and more or less surreptitiously, taking over in North
India. In that respect, North India is going the way South India —
and, to a lesser extent, West India - have already gone.
This book took longer to write than I thought, for two reasons.
First, it is largely based on data concerning the caste background of
North Indian political personnel, the collection and verification of
which have been time-consuming. It has been especially hard to
identify the caste o f the Members o f Parliament or Legislative As
semblies who were elected in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s, some of
whom are no longer with us. But I needed this data to establish long
term trends and I made a point o f cross-checking the information
I was given. In Madhya Pradesh I had a head start, given the work
involved in preparing my first book on the Hindu nationalist move
ment in Central India. For the other states I started from scratch. I
spent hours with old-timers from every political party, in dusty
offices in Bhopal, Jaipur, Agra, Lucknow . . . painstakingly combing
through lists o f hundreds o f names. My thanks go first to these
political veterans who often became as excited as I was by the
VI Acknowledgements
delineation o f their party’s social profile —they were often surprised
by the results!
In dia’s Silent Revolution has also taken longer than the ‘five-year
plan’ I had in mind originally, because I decided to write it directly
in English. For French scholars working on India (or other coun
tries), the choice o f the most relevant language for scientific commu
nication has become difficult. Their books, especially when they are
based on hard and/or detailed fieldwork data, are mainly for their
colleagues and advanced students. Now, this public could read them
in English, and to write such books in English enables other col
leagues and students abroad to have access to their content - some
thing no book in French can really achieve, given the decline o f our
language in the international scientific community and the small
number o f books ‘English-speaking’ publishers translate. However,
I would not have embarked on such an enterprise had not Michael
Dwyer assured me that C. Hurst & Co. would take care o f the edit
ing. M y text, like The Hindu N ationalist Movement published by the
same firm in 1996, has immensely benefited from the painstaking
rewriting orchestrated by Michael Dwyer.
I am also grateful to the many colleagues and students who, over
the years have commented upon the views expressed in this book,
most o f the time in a very encouraging and constructive manner.
Among them, I would like to thank those who have either invited
me to present these views or discussed them in one respect or another:
Arjun Appadurai, Amrita Basu, Rajeev Bhargava, Kanchan Chandra,
Gyan and Jayati Chaturvedi, Ian Duncan, Barbara Harris, Mushir
and Zoya Hasan, Rob Jenkins, Anand Kumar, David Ludden, Owen
Lynch, Gurpreet Mahajan, James Manor, Sujata Patel, V.B. Singh,
Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee, Yogendra Yidav, Ashutosh Varshney,
Steven Wilkinson, Andrew Wyatt, Eleanor Zelliot, Jasmine Zerinini-
Brotel, and, o f course, Bruce Graham, who read an early version of
the manuscript with his inimitable care. Yet, this book owes more
to Tara, through whom I discovered the happiness o f being two for
fieldwork.
In spite o f all this support, the book has shortcomings, and they
are entirely mine.
Acknowledgements page \
Introduction 1
The North-South opposition 5
The two ages o f democracy in India 6
Part I. C O N G R E S S IN PO W ER O R IN D IA
AS A C O N SE R V A T IV E D E M O C R A C Y 11
1. The Gandhian sources o f Congress conservatism 13
Reformism and social organicism in Gandhi’s thought 14
The conflict between Gandhi and A mbedkar 19
7 he conservative influence o f Gandhi on the Congress
in North India 25
Congress and social transformation: an empty discourse? 31
The thwarting o f land reform: the case o f Uttar Pradesh 32
The problem o f planning and the agricultural cooperatives 45
2. The Congress: party o f the intelligentsia, or party of
the notables? 48
The Congress intelligentsia —unevenly progressive 52
Congress‘Vote Banks’politics 64
3. The Congress Party and the Scheduled Castes:
reservations and co-option 89
The reservation policy: the smokescreen o f the egalitarian
discourse 91
What party fo r the Scheduled Castes? 102
4. Indira Gandhi, the populist repertoire and the aborted
reform o f Congress 115
Towards a new Congress? 116
How to transform Congress into a cadre-based party? 131
vii
V lll Contents
Part II. T H E U N E V E N E M A N C IP A T IO N O F
T H E LO W ER C A ST E S: N O N -B R A H M IN S
IN T H E S O U T H , O B C s IN T H E N O R T H
Part III. Q U O T A P O L IT IC S A N D
KISA N P O L IT IC S: C O M P L E M E N T A R IT Y
A N D C O M P E T IT IO N
8. The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes,
Jat politicians as advocates o f the peasants
The Socialists and the Low Castes
Contents IX
TABLES
1.1. Distribution of operational holdings in India by size group,
1953-72 44
2.1. Caste and religion o f delegates to the Annual Sessions of the
Congress, 1919-23 49
2.2. Profession o f Delegates to the Annual Sessions o f Congress,
1919-23 50
2.3. Caste and community o f non-Muslim members of the assembly
o f Bombay Presidency, 1920-37 51
2.4. Caste and community o f Uttar Pradesh Congress MLAs, 1952-62 67
2.5. Caste and community o f Congress Cadres in Uttar Pradesh,
1964-8 68
2.6. Caste and community o f members of the Uttar Pradesh
Government, 1937-67 70-1
2.7. Caste and community o f Congress MLAs in Bihar, 1957-62 72
2.8. Caste and community of members o f the Pradesh Congress
Committee of Bihar, 1947-60 73
2.9. Caste of Congress candidates to the Rajasthan Assembly, 1952-67 75
2.10. Caste and community o f Congress MLAs and in parentheses of
all MLAs in the Rajasthan Assembly, 1952-67 76
2.11. Caste and community in the Congress Government o f Rajasthan,
1952-67 77
2.12. Caste and community of Congress Ml A s and (in parentheses) of
all MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, 1957-67 81
2.13. Caste and community o f members o f the Congress Government
in Madhya Pradesh, 1953-67 82
2.14. Caste and community o f Congress MPs and (in parentheses) o f
all MPs elected in the Hindi Belt, 1952-67 83
Part III
QUOTA POLITICS AND
KISAN POLITICS
CO M PLEM EN TA R ITY A N D C O M PET ITIO N
8
THE SOCIALISTS AS DEFENDERS
OF THE LOWER CASTES, JAT
POLITICIANS AS ADVOCATES
OF THE PEASANTS
The North Indian politicians who promoted the cause o f the low
castes were few in number till the late 1960s. The Congress party was
dominated at the centre by progressive leaders who did not regard
caste as a relevant category for state-sponsored social change and
relied on conservative notables at the local level. The communists
were in no position to give much hope to the low castes o f the Hindi
belt either; their influence remained confined to Kerala and West
Bengal, where they certainly introduced substantial land reforms and
education programmes.1 In the North, their support peaked at 4.5%
o f the valid votes in UP in 1967 and 10.7% in Bihar in 1971. But
the growing marginalisation o f the two communist parties in North
India was largely determined anyway by the scant attention they paid
to the lower castes qua castes. True to their analysis o f social struggle
in terms o f class conflict, they concentrated on organising the work
ing class and economic change, namely the nationalisation o f the
means o f production. Caste was ignored on the grounds that it was
bound to be submerged by class. Dealing with 'this resistance to
1 O n West Bengal, see A. Kohli, The State and Poverty in India: The politics
o f reform, Cam bridge University Press, 1987, chap. 3.
254
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 255
dealing with caste', Omvedt underlines that ‘the communists univer
sally adopted the Gandhian term “harijan” without much concern
for whether it would appeal to the people concerned.’2
For Menon, Kerala Brahmins such as E.M .S Namboodiripad
found in Marxism an ideology that allowed them to rehabilitate the
Brahmins against the Dravidian anti-Brahmin ideology. Indeed,
Namboodiripad referred to the caste system, monitored by the Brah
mins, as a scientific division of labour and a necessary stage in the
transition towards a modern mode of production.3
West Bengal, the other communist stronghold, where the Com
munist Party of India (Marxist) first came to power in 1967 and
which they have been governed since 1977 was one o f the few states
which had neither established lists o f Other Backward Classes nor
introduced quotas for them in the administration till the 1990s. The
West Bengal government appointed a committee to investigate the
matter in 1980 but its report recommended that ‘Poverty and low
levels o f living standards rather than caste should [. . .] be the most
important criteria for identifying backwardness’ and therefore that
programmes should be designed ‘for the economic development and
educational advancement o f the groups who are below the poverty
line. . .’.4 Jyoti Basu, the then West Bengal Chief Minister, while
appearing before the Mandal Commission, pointed out that ‘caste
was a legacy' o f the feudal system and viewing the social scene from
the casteist angle was no longer relevant for West Bengal’.5
The implementation o f the Mandal Commission Report in 1990
was received sceptically by CPI(M ) top leaders, Bhogendra Jha and
Somnath Chatterjee. But these two Brahmins were criticised by the
party’s eleven O BC MPs.6As far as the CPI was concerned, it became
2 Omvedt, Dalit Visions, op. cit., pp. 40-1. The CPI included its opposition
to discrimination based on caste in its 'Programme o f the Democratic Revo
lution’ only in 1948.
3 D .M . Menon, "Being a Brahmin the Marxist Way: E.M .S. Namboodiripad
and the Past o f Kerala’ in Daud Ali (ed,), Invoking the Past: The Uses o f History
in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 55-87.
4 Report o f the [Second] Backward Classes Commission, op. cit., p. 11.
5 Ibid., p. 46.
6 K .C . Yadav, India’s Unequal Citizens, op. cit., p. 92. Yadav suggests that
this stand was due to the over-representation o f the upper castes among the com
munist office bearers. He substantiates his claim by showing that in Bihar a large
number o f the CPI and C PI(M ) leaders were Bhumihars (ibid., pp. 120—1).
256 India s Silent Revolution
aware o f the necessity to take caste seriously in to account in 1992,
in the post-Mandal context partly under the impetus o f Inderjit
Gupta. This belated realisation may well have come too late to help
the communists to recover in North India. The Socialists, in fact,
were the first to consider the lower castes as a pertinent social and
political entity.
the masses’.12 This was the objective he assigned to the C SP .13 For
its leaders, the masses in question were primarily to be found in the
village. They played an active part in the establishment o f the All
India Kisan Sabha, founded in 1936 in Lucknow. Narendra Deva
was its president in 1939 and in his presidential address he justified
its establishment as he had done with that of the CSP: as many
Congress local committees ‘are controlled by Zamindar elements
[ ...] , it is exactly in such places that the existence o f the Kisan Sabhas
will be mostly needed to carry on their day-to-day struggle':14 ‘The
Kisan organisation is therefore necessary to exert revolutionary' pres
sure on the Congress to adopt more and more the demands o f the
peasants’.15
The use of the word ‘peasant’ in Narendra Deva’s speeches and
writings is rather ambiguous for he was aware that the ‘peasantry is
not a homogenous class’.16 In 1939 he said that ‘the interests of
the village poor can best be served in the present stage by mobilising
the peasantry as a whole and not by splitting it into its various
sections . . ,’.17 But this was a tactical device stemming from the
weakness o f the rural masses vis-a-vis urban society: to divide the
peasants would have still made things worse. Narendra Deva did not
want to indulge in what he called ‘peasantism’, a synonym for what
I term ‘kisan politics’ (see below). This ‘ism’ looks at all questions
from the narrow and sectional viewpoint of the peasant class [. . .].
It believes in rural democracy, which means a democracy o f peas
ant proprietors [.. .]. It has the outlook of the middle peasant
who has been influenced by modern ideas and is based on petty
12 Ibid., p. 12.
13 Narendra Deva was very lucid about the social profile o f the Congress. In
1939, he wrote: ‘In certain places the Congress organisation is controlled by
professional men, merchants and moneylenders o f the city and as their interest
collide with those o f the rural population, they cannot be expected to safeguard
the interests o f the peasantry. The result is that there are acute antagonisms
between the town and the country and the Congress has very little hold on
rural areas.’ (‘Presidential address at All India Kisan Conference’, in ibid.,
pp. 168-9)
14 Ibid., p. 162.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., p. 165.
1 Ibid., p. 165.
258 In d ias Silent Revolution
bourgeois economy. In its crude form it would mean a kind of
narrow agrarianism and an insatiable desire to boost the peasants in
all possible places’. 18
Narendra Deva’s programme was very different since it drew on
Marxist theories and the Soviet experiment: ‘Our objective will be
to re-educate the main mass o f the peasantry in the spirit of socialism
and to bring the bulk o f the peasantry into line with socialist recons
truction through the medium o f co-operative societies (. . .]. And this
co-operative commonwealth must have a democratic base, in the
shape o f free peasants’.19
This programme - very similar to the measures Nehru would try
to implement twenty' years later through the Nagpur resolution -
also implied land distribution and the abolition o f all middlemen,
such as the zamindars, between the tiller and the state. While Naren
dra Deva, true to his Marxist leanings, thought in terms o f class inte
rests,20 he did not totally ignore caste. In his Presidential Address at
the All India Kisan Conference o f 1939 he emphasised that the ‘agri
cultural labourer suffers from double bondage. The peculiar caste
system o f India has degraded him in the social scale. The social re
form movement, which seeks to abolish untouchability, is therefore
to be welcomed. It will raise his social status and will serve to make
him conscious o f human dignity. But unless the material and moral
condition o f his life is immediately improved social reform move
ment, however beneficent it may be, will not go a long way to make
him a valuable self-respecting member of society’.21
This reference to caste - the only one, almost, in Deva’s selected
works covering the years till 1948 - suggests first, that untouchability
is the only issue at stake - there’s no mention o f the need to abolish
caste as such; secondly, it assumes that social reform should dispense
of this curse; and thirdly, that the pre-condition for the annihila
tion o f Untouchability is material and moral progress - the Marxist,
18 Ibid., p. 169.
19 Ibid., pp. 178-9.
:o For Surendra Mohan, a veteran socialist who joined the C SP in 1946 in
U ttar Pradesh, ‘They were guided totally by the concept o f class. They were
marxist and even those who were not did not take caste questions into consi
deration’ (interview with S. M ohan, New Delhi, 4 Nov. 1995).
21 A. Narendra Deva, Presidential Address at All India Kisan Conference’,
op. cit., p. 167.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 259
materialist analysis continues to prevail, at least to a certain extent.22
The first official indictment o f caste by the CSP came in 1947 in its
policy statement at the annual party conference:
In India, apart from economic inequalities, there are social inequalities, par
ticularly am ong one o f the com m unities, namely the H indus. T h e system o f
castes is anti-social, undemocratic and tyrannous, inasmuch as it divides men
into high and low, touchable and untouchable, curtails human liberties and
interfere with econom ic activities.23
25 Ibid.
26 The expression is from Nehru, whose relations with Lohia soured quickly
after independence (G. M ishra and B.K. Pandey, Rammanohar Lohia - The
M an and His Ism, New Delhi: Eastern Books, 1992, p. 12).
2 K.R. Jadhav, ‘Dr. Lohia on reservation policy’ in 8.A.V. Sharma and K.M.
Reddy (eds), Reservation policy in India, New Delhi: Life and Life Publishers,
1982, pp. 38-9. H e was not the only socialist leader to pay great attention to
caste issues, o f course. S.M . Joshi, for instance, considered that ‘In this country,
social inequality born out o f the Varnashram and the caste system with its
ghastly appendage o f untouchability was a greater challenge than economic
inequality and exploitations.’ (S.M . Joshi, ‘The Way to Socialist Alternative’
in M ohan, Sharma, Singh and Sunilam (eds), Evolution o f Socialist Policy in
India, op. cit., p. 265)
-8 P.R. Brass, ‘Leadership Conflict and the Disintegration o f the Indian
Socialist Movement: Personal Ambition, Power and Policy’ in P.R. Brass, Caste,
Faction and Party in Indian Politics, vol. I, New Delhi: Chanakya, 1984,
pp. 155-88.
29 L.P. Fickett, ‘The Praja Socialist Party o f India - 1952-1972 : A final
assessm ent’, Asian Survey, Sept. 1973, 13(9), p. 831.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 26 i
tion to Lohia’s proposal o f reserving 60% o f administrative jobs for
the low castes.30
In contrast, Lohia, who first championed the peasant’s cause, gra
dually emphasised the abolition o f caste. In his early career, he focus
sed, like Narendra Deva, on the economic issues o f rural India. He
was elected President o f the Hind Kisan Panchayat in 1950 and
prepared a 13-point programme which included ‘parity between
agricultural and industrial prices, a ceiling on personal income to be
fixed at Rs 1,000 and no agriculturist household to have iess than
12.5 acres and more than 30 acres o f cultivable land’.31 He took part
in several demonstrations against the shortcomings o f the land
reform - including the high compensation given to former zamin-
d ars- and the eviction o f tenants. Yet he began taking an interest in
caste issues in 1952 in a series o f lectures to a socialist study circle.32
For Lohia the caste system was responsible for the recurrent
invasions India endured in its long history because it ‘renders nine-
tenths o f the population into onlookers, in fact listless and nearly
completely disinterested spectators o f grim national tragedies’.33
Fighting caste was therefore not only necessary for the emancipation
of the subaltern groups but also and foremost because it weakened
India in such a way as the ‘dvija [twice born] have also suffered griev
ously from this atrophy o f the people’.34 However, social justice was
his primary motivations: to those who favoured an analysis in terms
of class he objected that ‘caste is the most overwhelming factor in
Indian life’.35
Many socialists honestly but wrongly think that it is sufficient to strive for
economic equality and caste inequality will vanish o f itself as a consequence.
1 hey fail to com prehend econom ic inequality and caste inequality as twin
demons, which have both to be killed.36
For Lohia such policies touched upon the core issue of India,
whereas the Marxists’ views about revolution or Nehru’s policy of
nationalisation amounted to ‘vested interest socialism’ because none
o f these things would change India:
Workers with the brain are a fixed caste in Indian society; together with the
soldier caste, they are the high-caste. Even after the com pleted econom ic and
political revolution, they would continue to supply the managers o f the state
and industry. T h e mass o f the people w ould be kept in a state o f perpetual
physical and mental lowliness, at least comparatively. But the position o f the
high-caste would then be justified on grounds o f ability and in econom ic
terms as it is now on grounds o f birth or talent. That is why the intelligentsia
of India which is overwhelmingly the high-caste, abhors all talk o f a mental
and social revolution o f a radical change in respect o f language or caste or the
bases o f thought. It talks generally and in principle against caste. In fact, it
can be m ost vociferous in its theoretical condem nation o f caste, so long as it
can be allowed to be equally vociferous in raising the banner o f merit and
equal opportunity. W hat it loses in respect o f caste by birth, it gains in respect
of caste by merit. Its merit concerning speech, gram m ar, manners, capacity
42 'I think that the dvijas, in special conditions, should not get government
services.’ (Letter from Lohia to R.L. Chandapuri, dated 4 Sept. 1957, in ibid.,
P- 43)
43 R. Lohia, ‘Towards the Destruction o f Castes and Classes’ (1958) in ibid.,
p. 96.
264 India s Silent Revolution
to adjust, routine efficiency is undisputed. Five thousands years have gone
into the building o f this undisputed merit.44
Lohia did not entertain any romantic idea o f the Indian lower
orders - 'the Shudra too has his shortcomings. He has an even nar
rower sectarian outlook’45 —but he thought they definitely deserved
special treatment and should be ‘pushed to positions of power and
leadership’.46 He was against affirmative action in the education
system47 but emphasised the need for administrative and electoral
quotas. Once again he was following Ambedkar’s strategy o f empow
erment that the non-Brahmin movement had already implemented
in the South. In 1959, the third national conference o f the Socialist
Party expressed the wish that at least 60% o f administrative posts be
reserved for Other Backward Classes.48 This recommendation was
reiterated at the fifth annual session o f the party, in April 1961, a few
months before the third general elections.49 Subsequently, the pro
grammes or election manifestos o f Lohia’s successive parties pro
moted the notion o f ‘preferential opportunities’, as in the pro
gramme adopted by the first Conference o f the SSP held in April
1966:
It should be rem em bered that equality and equal opportunity are not syno
nym ous. In a society characterised by a hierarchical structure based on birth,
the principle o f equal opportunity cannot produce an equal society. The esta
blished, conventional notions about merit and ability must result in denial
o f opportunities in actual practice for backward castes, harijans, adibasis
[tribals] etc. T h e principle o f preferential opportunities alone will ensure
that the backward sections will catch up with the advanced ones in a reason
able period o f tim e.50
,! Ibid., p. 260.
2S.N . Chaudhary, Power-Dependence Relations: Struggle for Hegemony in
Rural Bihar, Delhi: Har-Anand, 1999, p. 218
266 India's Silent Revolution
Source: D. Butler, A. Lahiri and P. Roy, India decides. New Delhi: Living Media, 1989, pp.
84-85.
Table 8.2. CASTES A ND C O M M U N ITIES OF TH E MLAs
OF T H E TH R EE MAIN PARTIES OF BIHAR, 1967
(absolute values and %)
Source: R. Mitra, Caste Polarisation and Politics, Patna: Syndicate Publications, 1992,
p. 120.
41.35% to 33% o f the valid votes, partly due to the fact that it could
no longer retain the O B C support, prevented it from winning a
majority o f seats in Bihar,’ 4 whereas the SSP jumped from 6% to
18% o f the valid votes and from 7 to 68 seats. The opposition parties,
the communists, the Jana Sangh and the socialists formed a coalition
called Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD - the united parliamentary
group), o f which the SSP was the largest component. A former high
caste (Kayasth) congressman, Mahamaya Prasad Sinha,55 became
Chief Minister, but the deputy Chief Minister was no other than
Karpoori Thakur. In five months the SVD government, took some
significant measures such as abolishing land revenue and prohibiting
the use of Hindi in public.56 The Socialist strategy o f promoting and
mobilising o f the low castes largely explains the success of the SSP
and the election o f a large number o f low castes MLAs in the late
1960s (see Table 8.3).
While the rise o f the O BC s at the expense o f the upper castes is
not that dramatic, it is not insignificant either, especially if one looks
at the declining share of Brahmins (from 17% to 12% o f the MLAs
returned in non-reserved constituencies) and the growing proportion
of Yadavs, whose rise put them just behind the Rajputs (18.05% as
against 23.15% in 1969).57 Backward caste leaders could now exert
much more leverage in obtaining new concessions, as evident from
the growing share o f ministerial portfolios they obtained in the late
1960s and early 1970s (see table 4.7).
Chandapuri, the President o f the All India Backward Classes
Federation, was approached by the Congress and agreed to back the
party provided one o f the backward castes was named at the head of
the government,58 and it was B.P. Mandal who agreed to take up the
post.
54 The mid-term elections o f 1969 produced very similar results to those of
1967, including in terms o f the M LAs’ caste-wise distribution (among the SSP
MLAs, the share o f the intermediary and low castes members remained un
changed but that o f the higher castes rose to 33.9%).
55 Sinha had defected from the Congress in December 1966 to form the Jan
Kranti Dal because he was sure that the Congress would be defeated.
56 Among the Socialists, Lohia had been especially hostile to the use o f Eng
lish because it gave the elite groups a monopoly o f the language o f politics and
administration and added one more hurdle for low caste upward mobility.
5'B lair, ‘Rising kulaks and backward classes in Bihar’, op. cit., p. 68.
58 Frankel, ‘Caste, land and dominance in Bihar’, op. cit., p. 90.
268 India s Silent Revolution
Source'. Blair, Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar’, op. cit., p. 67.
Changes inJa t identity in the nineteenth century. The Jats are especially
numerous in the Punjab plain where they ‘commonly are several times
as numerous as the second most popular castes’ .61 But they are also the
dominant caste in West Uttar Pradesh and in some parts of Rajasthan.
This is probably one o f the reasons why they have always found the
Brahmins’ superiority difficult to accept, which partly explains why
many o f them followed the reformist movement o f the Sadhs.'1' This
creed, which showed no respect for the Brahmins (and even did
without them for all ritual matters), was the sectarian remedy for caste
oppression open to the Jats.63
In the late nineteenth century, the Arya Samaj’s success among the
Jats was probably accounted for by its affinities with the Sadh’s credo.
They especially appreciated Dayananda’s hostility to Brahmins. The
first Jats to join the Arya Samaj were those o f Hissar district where
Lala Lajpat Rai practised law and also those o f Rohtak in the 1880s
and 1890s. One of the first-Jat ‘converts’ to the Arya Samaj was a
medical practitioner, Ramji Lai H ooda who was attracted to the
movement in 1883 by Lajpat Rai’s father, Radha Krishan, who was
61J. Schwartzberg, T h e Distribution o f selected castes’, Geographical Review,
15 (1965), p. 488.
62 N . Datta, Forming an Identity: A Social History o f the Jats, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999, p. 7.
63 Ibid., pp. 38-9.
272 India's Silent Revolution
his Persian teacher.64 Lajpat Rai describes him as the first spokesman
o f the Arya Samaj among the Jats: ‘ Ramji Lai’s house was a centre
for the Jats o f the entire division [. . .] By his ability and his skill as
a physician and surgeon and his hospitality, Dr. Ramji Lai spread his
religion amongst thousands o f Ja t s .. ,’65 Indeed, Hooda played a
major role in organising Jat Sabhas (and the Jat Mahasabha) and in
spreading, via this channel, the Arya Samajist ideology among his
caste fellows. In 1921 he became President o f the Arya Samaj in
Hissar and then contributed to the development o f Shuddhi Sabhas.
These associations were intended - to use his own terms - to ‘bring
back those persons who were converted long ago, to the Vedic fold’.66
In 1923 he became President of the Shuddhi Sabha covering the
districts o f Hissar and Rohtak which reconverted a Jat who had
embraced Islam. But, in fact, these Shuddhi Sabhas ‘purified’ many
Jats —and lower castes - even when they were Hindus in order to
transform them into ‘twice borns’.67
Even though the Arya Samaj claimed that Shuddhi promoted
equality, this ritual drew its inspiration and its procedure from the
Brahminical tradition and adhered to the logic o f Sanskritisation.68
The ‘Jats were told not to consume alcohol or meat, minimise their
64 In his diary he says ‘I owe every good things in my life since 1881 to him’
(M .M . Juneja and K. Singh M or (eds), The Diaries o f D r Ramji Lai Hooda,
Hissar: Modern Book C o., 1989, p. 47).
65 Cited in M .M . Juneja and K. Singh Mor, Introduction’ , in ibid., p. 14.
66 Ibid., p. 244.
6 These activities had developed by the turn o f the century under the aegis
o f Ram Bhaj Datt, the president o f the Shuddhi Sabha who described the ritual
o f shuddhi in the following terms: ‘The ceremony is everywhere the same. In
all cases the person to be reclaimed has to keep Brat (fast) before the ceremony
[which culminates with the passing o f the sacred thread in the case o f low caste
converts] [. . .] The very act o f their being raised in social status makes them
feel a curious sense o f responsibility. They feel that they should live and behave
better and that they should act as Dvijas [twice borns]. It has thus, in the maj
ority o f cases, a very wholesome effect on their moral, social, religious and
spiritual being. As to treatment, the Arya Sam aj treat the elevated on terms of
equality.’ (Cited in Punjab Census Report, 1911, p. 150)
,J* For more details, see C . Jaffrelot, ‘Militant Hinduism and the Conversion
Issue (1885—1990): From Shuddhi to Dharm Parivartan. T h e Politicization o f
an “ Invention o f Tradition” ’ in J. Assayag (ed.), The Resources o f History. Tradi
tion and Narration in South Asia, Paris: Ecole Franchise d ’Extreme Orient,
1999, pp. 127-52.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 273
expenditure on wedding and ceremonial displays, and refrain from
singing cheap songs and watching lewd pictures during the fairs’.69
The Arya Samaj exerted over the jats such a strong Sanskritisation
effect that men like Hooja opted for a vegetarian diet.70 Its preachers
argued during long ritual debates that they were twice born Kshatriyas
opposing them to orthodox Hindus (shastarth).n The All India Jat
Mahasabha, ‘an offshoot o f the Arya Samaj, formed in Muzaffarnagar
in 1905’, 3 developed the same discourse under the auspices o f Jat
princes. Like the ruling family o f Rewari, the Maharajahs o f Bharatpur
and Dholpur - both o f them Jats - stressed the Kshatriya identity
of their caste. 4 The Maharajah of Dholpur, while he was president
of the Jat Mahasabha in 1917-18, supported the development o f the
Arya Samaj in his state. 1The brother o f the Maharajah o f Bharatpur,
Ragunath Singh, who relaunched the Jat Mahasabha in 1925, was
known as a ‘protestant reformer’ because o f his strong arya samajist
leanings.76
Besides its opposition to the Brahmins and its sense o f Sanskri
tisation, the Arya Samaj had affinities with the most specific character
istic o f the Jats, their sense o f industry. From its early days the Arya
Samaj, with its strong emphasis on the notion o f self help, displayed
a spirit o f enterprise - partly because many Arya Samajists came from
the merchant castes, partly because o f their nationalist concern for
self sufficiency. They were the first, in the 1880s, to set up indigenous
enterprises, the precursors o f the Swadeshi movement. Exasperated
by the imposition in 1893 o f an 'excise tax’ on Indian cotton, Mul
Raj, the founder-president o f the Lahore Arya Samaj, set up associa
tions selling only deshi (made in India) clothes.'7 The following year
' ' Datta, Forming an Identity, op. cit., p. 71.
0Juneja and Singh Mor (eds), The Diaries o f Dr Ramji L ai Hooda, op. cit.,
p. 159.
1Datta, Forming an identity, op. cit., p. 74.
72 Ibid., p. 79.
■Ibid., p. 76. See also N. Datta, Arya Samaj and the Making o f Jat Identity ,
Studies in History, 13(1), 1997, p. 107.
'‘ Datta, Forming an Identity, op. cit., p. 161 and p. 165.
5 Juneja and Singh M or (eds), The Diaries o f Dr Ramji L ai Hooda, op. cit.,
p. 198.
6 Interview with his grandson, Raghuraj Singh, Bharatpur, 16 August 2000.
Lajpat Rai, Autobiographical Writings, Joshi (ed.), Delhi: Juliundur U ni
versity, 1965, p. 96.
274 India s Silent Revolution
he initiated the first bank with purely Indian capital, the Punjab
National Bank 8 and then the Bharat Insurance Company.
This sense o f enterprise was well in tune with the industrious ethos
o f the Jats. In his Tribes and Castes o f the North West Provinces and
Oudh, Crooke writes:
T h e Jat takes a high rank am on gst the cultivating races o f the provinces. He
is sim ply a slave to his farm [. . .]. H e never dream s o f taking any service ex
cept in the army, he is thrifty to the verge o f m eanness and industrious
beyond com parison.71’
Chhotu Ram, the Architect o f Kisan Politics. Chhotu Ram was born
in 1881, the son of an illiterate small Jat peasant proprietor in a vil
lage in Rohtak district, where he was to enter public life under the
patronage o f Ramji Lai Hooda. Remarkably intelligent, he studied
Charan Singh and Kisan Politics. Charan Singh’s discourse was re
plete with references to his lowly origins102 and spelled out an egali
tarian agenda: ‘For creating an egalitarian society’ the reins of power
of the country should lie in the hands o f the 80% o f the population,
uneducated and poor, which lives in the villages’.103 Yet he repre
sented more than anything else the class o f peasant proprietors which
he had begun to shape with the land reform he had initiated in Uttar
Pradesh after Independence.
Our assessment o f Charan Singh’s land reform in chapter 2 sug
gested that he identified himself with the interests of peasants-
proprietors from an early date. As far back as 1939 he successively
introduced in the Legislative Assembly o f the United Provinces a
Debt Redemption Bill, which brought great relief to indebted cul
tivators, an Agriculture Produce Market Bill that was intended to
protect cultivators against the rapacity o f traders and a Land Utili
sation Bill which should have transferred the proprietary’ interest in
agricultural holdings to the tenants who deposited ten times the an
nual rent to the government as compensation to the landlord.104 Like
Chhotu Ram, Charan Singh was eager to protect the peasants from
merchants, moneylenders and the urban population as a whole. In
IMIbid„ p. 106.
101 Cited in ibid.
102 Sometimes with autobiographical references such as ‘My own childhood
has been spent amongst the peasants who bare bodied toiled and laboured in
the fields.’ (Cited in G. Ravat (ed.), Chaudhary Charan Singh: Sukti aur Vichar,
New Delhi, Kisan Trust, 1985, chap. 6 [n.p.])
103 Ibid.
104Goyal (ed.), Profile o f Chaudhary Charan Singh, op. cit., pp. 6—7.
280 India s Silent Revolution
1939 he manifested a sharp awareness o f the latent conflicts between
rural and urban India:
In our country the classes whose scions dom inate the public services are
either those which have been raised to unexam pled prominence and impor
tance by the Britisher, e.g. the money-lender, the big zam indarox taluqdar,
the arhatia or rhe trader, or those which have been, so to say, actually called
into being him - the i'rf£r'/[advocate], the doctor, the contractor. These clas
ses have, in subordinate cooperation with the foreigner, exploited the masses
in all kinds o f manner during these last two hundred years. T h e views and
interests o f these classes, on the whole, are, therefore, manifestly opposed to
those o f the masses. T h e social philosophy o f a m ember of the non-agri-
cultural, urban classes is entirely different from that o f a person belonging to
the agricultural rural classes.105
108 D. Thorner, The Agrarian Prospect in India, Delhi University Press, 1956.
109 Charan Singh wrote this book while he was out o f office. He had resigned
in April 1959 because o f several disagreements with Sampurnanand, the C hief
Minister, and was replaced as Revenue Minister by Hukum Singh. (M. Johnson,
Relation Between Land Settlement and Party Politics in Uttar Pradesh’, Ph.D.
thesis, University o f Sussex, 1975, p. 145)
282 India i Silent Revolution
In some ways Jointfarm ingx-rayed is the first manifesto o f kisan poli
tics in post-independence India. Questioning the need for a rapid,
state-sponsored industrialisation as advocated by Nehru, Charan
Singh proposed to give priority to agriculture and to promote it by
developing small farmer holdings, the only way according to him to
generate the surpluses that were needed for industrial investment.110
For him, agricultural co-operatives would have annihilated the pro
ductivity gains resulting from the elimination o f the zam indar - like
intermediaries because this would have jeopardised the independ
ence o f the farmers:
T h e thought that land has becom e his [the peasant’s] and his children’s in
perpetuity, lightens and cheer his labours and expands his horizon. T h e feel
ing that he is his own master, subject to no outside control, and has free,
exclusive and untram m elled use o f his land drives him to greater and greater
effort, f. . .] Likewise any system o f large-scale farm ing in which his holdings
are pooled m ust affect the farm er, but in the reverse direction. N o longer will
he be his own master; he will becom e one o f the many; his interest will be sub
ordinated to the group interest.111
110 Charan Singh spells out this argument rather late in the book but it is his
starting p o in t: Industrialisation cannot precede but will follow agricultural
prosperity. Surpluses o f food production above farmers’ consumption must be
available before non-agricukural resources can be developed.’ (Charan Singh,
Joint Farm ing X-rayed — The problem and its solution, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1959, p. 251)
111 Ibid., pp. v-vi.
I “ Ibid., p. 107. He subsequently emphasised that ‘Collective farming is
against human character . (Cited in Ravat (ed.), Chaudhury Charan Singh: sukti
aur vichar, op. cit., n.p.
II ’ Singh, Joint FarmingX-rayed, op. cit., p. 104.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 283
as the m an in c o m m u n io n w ith N a tu r e (a w o rd th at he w rites w ith
a cap ital n) a n d the o n ly o n e ab le to su sta in its h arm o n y .
Naturally, ‘a small farmer can best help complete’ the cycle in na
ture.115 First because being a kisan implies the use o f draught animals
which will produce the manure earth needs. Charan Singh argues,
rather dramatically, that ‘with tractors taking the place o f bullocks
[ ...] , India will soon end up with a desert’ because the peasants ‘will
have to apply chemical fertilisers instead o f dung or compost, which
is the best form o f organic matter for fertilising the soil and best
means o f soil conservation’.116 In addition to his living in harmony
with nature, the kisan displays virtues which Charan Singh does not
hesitate to present grandiloquently:
Charan Singh defends the way oflife and the interests of the peas-
ant-proprietors but not those o f other social groups, especially the
landless peasants. He regards the Jat household as his model and
considers, therefore, that ‘The existence o f landless agricultural
labour [. . .] is not essential to peasant farming’.118 Referring, en
passant, to the labourers’ condition, he notes that ‘If wages have at
all to be paid, in view o f the fact that a large supply o f idle labour
is almost always available, the wages paid need only be subsistence
wages’.119 Charan Singh was against any land reform that applied too
low a ceiling and gave land to everybody because it would multiply
holdings that would be ‘uneconomic’ and hence weaken the peasant-
proprietor pattern. For him ‘[tjhere should be a provision in law that
the allocated land is not further subdivided but the allocated position
will be given to a single heir’.1-0 He thought that the average ceiling
should be fixed at about 30 acres because, in his view, this is the opti
mum area o f land that one man can manage.121 By setting the level
at which a holding was deemed to be non-viable at 30 acres Charan
Singh betrayed his preference for one group o f peasants over another.
This was tantamount to shelter from land redistribution a whole
turns man into a fatalist. Only those people who have followed the teaching
o f reform movements such as the Arya Samaj have developed their enterprising
spirit. He is one o f them and claims to follow the founder o f this movement.
(C. Singh, In dia’s Poverty and its Solution, New York: Asia Publishing House,
1964, p. 319, n.7)
11 Ravat (ed.), Chaudhury Charan Singh: sukti aur vichar, op. cit., chap. 8
[n.pj.
118 Singh , Join t Farming X-rayed, op. cit., p. 88.
1,9 Ibid., p. 168.
1*° Ravat (ed.), Chaudhury Charan Singh: sukti aur vichar, op, cit., chap. 8.
121 Singh, Join t Farm ingX-rayed op. cit., p. 90. In 1955, Charan Singh had
sent a long letter to the chief editor o f The National Herald explaining that there
were no more than 35,000 farms whose holding represented more than 30 acres
and that the surpluses which could be obtained from this source would not
exceed 750,000 acres, a very small proportion o f the 40 million cultivable acres
in the state. (Singh, Land Reforms, op. cit., p. 162)
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 285
class o f middle class farmers who had sometimes grown rich. Not
only that, but according to Charan Singh any surplus land obtain
ed by putting a ceiling on large holdings should be redistributed ‘to
sub-basic holders rather than landless people’. For Charan Singh, the
latter have to be drawn to industries, trade, transport and other non-
agricultural avocations’.122 In fact ‘ [i]f the landless labourers do not
go to other industries then the country will not progress. . .’.123
Twenty years after the publication o f Join t Farming X-rayed, Charan
Singh was asked what was his programme for the landless peasants,
he admitted that he did not regard them as peasants and that there
was no land left for them.124 Concerned about the implications o f
Charan Singh’s politics, Partha Chatterjee warned that if his ‘appeal
succeeds in finding a stable home in peasant consciousness, it will
be impossible at any future time to politically unite owner-peasants,
large or small, with the landless’. 125
In spite o f this selective defence o f the rural masses, Charan Singh
systematically attempted to project himself as the spokesman for
village India, against the city-based, parasitic elite, presenting the
village community as a harmonious whole. He claimed that a village
was always a stronger moral unit than a factory. The sense o f the
community was a vital thing among the peasantry, providing a natu
ral foundation for collaboration or co-operative action’.126 Like
Gandhi - from whom he explicitly drew inspiration127 - he com
pletely ignored the deep social contradictions and class antagonisms
between landowners, tenants, sharecroppers and labourers and dwelt
instead on consensual processes o f conflict resolution. He thus claim
ed that ‘Differences or disputes amongst the villagers were settled
T h e method o f com bin in g functional skill with new castes was an ingenious
way o f establishing social harm ony by giving the newcomer an assured eco
nom ic position within H in d u ism , and this continued to hold the field as long
as the econom ic basis o f the H in d u social order rem ained stable. T h e system
served as a social insurance for the weak and the unsuccessful. Instead of
being thrown in a m aelstrom , every m em ber o f the society knew his place and
has a source o f living, which was secure from encroachm ents or grasping pro
clivities o f his n eighbour.132
ist groups o f the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly in 1962: 31% for the SSP
as against 23% for the PSP (against 14% for the Jana Sangh and 8% for the
Congress). (A. Burger, Opposition in a Dominant Party System, Berkeley, Uni
versity o f California Press, 1969, p. 55)
138 An Observer, Who is a Casteist?, op. cit., p. 59.
139 Singh, India’s Poverty and its Solution, op. cit., p. 212.
140 H e did not hide his antipathy for Brahmins and the parasitic, anti-work
culture they embody but nor did he try to cash in on anti-Brahmin feelings or
caste cleavages.(Byres, ‘Charan Singh’ , op. cit., pp. 143—4).
141 For Kalelkar, the A JG A R coalition included the Rajputs, the final R
standing for them, but it was no longer true with Charan Singh’s kisan politics
(Report o f the [first] backward classes commission, op. cit., p. XXII).
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 289
the (often landless) Untouchable castes in this grouping, it included
a wide range o f castes, from the O BCs to intermediate and upper
castes. Mulayam Singh Yadav was among the Yadav followers whom
Charan Singh attracted in the 1960s - he was first elected as an MLA
in 1967. Interestingly, he was introduced to the Chaudhuri by an
other O BC , Jairam Verma,142who was not even a Yadav but a Kurmi,
a sign that Charan’s Singh appeal to the cultivating castes extended
beyond the AJGAR coalition.143 Kisan politics had gradually found
(and shaped) its constituency. But the Congress party ignored this
emerging group and its principal spokesman.
142 Lai and Nair, Caste vs Caste - Turbulence in Indian Politics, Delhi, Ajanta,
1998, p. 32.
143 Jai Ram Verma was one o f the first O B C leaders o f the Congress. H e was
a member o f the Uttar Pradesh Government in 1957-60, and in 1962-7. Then
he followed Charan Singh out o f Congress and became one o f his ministers in
his 1970 government. He was the first Kurmi to be given such responsibilities
within Congress. In fact, he drew the dividends from his early involvement in
the freedom movement - which was then an avenue for upward socio-political
mobility: he took part in anti-British activities in 1936 when he was 30, and
then in the individual satyagraha (1941) and the Q uit India Movement (1942).
He was jailed repeatedly till 1945 for his m ilitancy-and rewarded by a Congress
ticket in 1946 (when he was elected to the UP Assembly) and by a seat at the
AICC in 1950. ( Who’s Who in Legislative Assembly 1962—67, Lucknow: U.P.
Legislative Secretariat, 1963, p. 82)
290 India's Silent Revolution
hampered by the scattered nature of their holdings.144 The party’s
leaders in the state eventually acceded to Thakur Hukam Singh’s
wishes and replaced him as Revenue Minister in 1959 and held the
post until 1967.
Another bone of contention between Charan Singh and the other
Congress leaders concerned relations between the farmers and the
urban merchants who bought their produce. As early as 1938, Cha
ran Singh had proposed a bill to protect farmers from illegal trading
practices. However, the Act was passed only in 1964 because of the
stubborn resistance o f several congressmen, including C.B. Gupta,
a Banya close to the merchants’ lobby who was C hief M inister of UP
in 1960-3.
Another conflict that set Charan Singh against the UP Congress
leadership concerned the taxation of villagers. Farmers were taxed
very lightly. In addition the bhumidhars and sirdars had obtained
an assurance in 1947 that there would be no increase in their taxes
for forty years. In 1962 C.B. Gupta drafted a bill implying a 50%
tax increase, which the farmers had to pay. Charan Singh reacted with
a long note where he listed all the taxes which were already levied on
the farmers. He also underlined the differential between the price of
agricultural products and that of manufactured goods, which gene
rated an imbalance in the terms of exchange between urban and rural
dwellers.145 The bill was abandoned but this controversy reflected a
deep division.
In the 1964 edition of Jo in t Farming X-Rayed Charan Singh ex
pressed his bitterness in a sad ironical tone:
It cannot be seriously disputed that, had those in whose hands lies the power
to make policies in India, their roots laid in the soil of their own country and
their fingers on the pulse of their peasantry, we would have progressed much
faster, at least, in the sphere of agriculture. But views and sentiments of the
peasants are seldom shared by those at the top today. Political leadership of
the country vests almost entirely in the hands of those who come from the
town and. therefore, have an urban outlook. They may have an intellectual
sympathy for the rural folk, but have no personal knowledge and psychologi
cal appreciation of their needs, problems and handicaps. Not only this: our
leaders and the intelligentsia are nurtured on text-books written in condi
tions entirely different from our country or which are mostly inspired by the
u 'Johnson, ReLition between land settlement and party politics, op. cit., pp. 57
and 103.
145 Ibid., pp. 151-88.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 291
ideology o f M arx who had m ade no special study o f the rural problems. T hat
is m ainly w hy M ahatm a G andhi’s powerful advocacy in favour o f a tru ly
Indian approach to India’s problems notw ithstanding, we are under the spell
of economic, political and social ideas and doctrines that we m ay have re
ceived ready-m ade from foreign oracles - western oracles till yesterday and
eastern today.146
More importantly, Charan Singh had political ambitions, and he
resented the way upper caste Congressmen threatened his attempt to
become Chief Minister of UP. C.B. Gupta was preferred to him even
though he had twice lost an election to the Assembly during the cur
rent term, 1957-62, and was not even a M IA . Thereafter, in 1963,
the post was offered to Sucheta Kripalani, who was not even from
Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress displayed shortsightedness in marginalising Charan
Singh because in the 1960s the social basis of his kisan politics had
mushroomed. First, the land reform, even though it had been lim it
ed, had enabled some tenants to become peasant-proprietors. In
India at large, from 1953-4 to 1971-2, the share of landowners pos
sessing more than 10 acres decreased from 13.5% to 10.3% of rural
households and finally represented 53.2% of the cultivated area in
1972, as against 66.5% in 1953-4. At the same time the share of
those owning 2.5 to 10 acres increased in proportion to rural house
holds (85.5% in 1954-5 and 89.6% en 1970-2) and finally repre
sented 46.7% of the total cultivated area, as against 36.4% in 1954—
5 (for more details, see table 1.1, p. 44).
In Uttar Pradesh, the share of landowners owning more than ten
acres decreased from 7.6% to 5.3% of rural households between
1953-4 and 1971-2. This upper category owned ‘only’ 29% of the
cultivated areas in 1971—2, as against 38% in 1953—4. In the same
period, the smallest households increased in number since those
possessing less than 2.5 acres represented 15.6% of the total in 1971—
2, as against 12.1% in 1953—4- The intermediary group of those
operating between 2.5 and 10 acres met a different fate. Their share
of the total of rural households fell from 35.8% to 33.1% , but the
ground area they represented rose from 49.9% to 55.3% of the total.
This development would not have been significant had these middle
peasants not benefited from the second, most important event of the
1960s, the Green Revolution.
146 Singh, In dia’s Poverty and its Solution, op. cit., p. 411.
292 India s Silent Revolution
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The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 293
1 he Green Revolution enabled the small and middle peasants who
had some investment capacity to commercialise their surpluses. This
revolution stemmed from the introduction of high yielding seeds
in 1965—6, but also from the development of irrigation and the use
of chemical fertilisers, especially in Punjab and West Uttar Pradesh.
In Uttar Pradesh at large between 1960—1 and 1982—3, wheat pro
duction increased fourfold and progressed from 27% to 58% of
the food products. Using these figures Zoya Hasan points out that
the peasants who benefited most from this growth were those who
possessed at least ten acres and could, therefore invest in new seeds,
Fertilisers and irrigation. In the early 1970s, 27.65% of these farms
of more than 10 acres, were managed by middle caste farmers and
52.07% by upper castes. The former represented 31.33% of rural
households in the state and accounted for 23.58% of the cultivated
iand whereas the latter represented 15.63% of the rural households
but 40.7% of cultivated land.147 It is among the middle caste peasants
that one finds a large number of those whom the Rudolphs have
called the ‘bullock cart capitalists’.148
The Jats of western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana grew wealthy,
notably thanks to the increase in sugar cane production resulting
trom extensive irrigation programmes in the framework of the Green
Revolution.149 The assertion of these middle farmers, among whom
the Jats were over-represented largely explains the growing success of
Charan Singh’s kisan politics in the 1960s.
After the 1967 elections, which the Congress won by a small mar
gin, C.B. Gupta was again preferred to Charan Singh for C hief
Minister. The latter refused to join the government allegedly because
(jupta did not agree to sack two ministers who did not enjoy a good
Hasan, ‘Patterns o f resilience and change’, op. cit., p. 169. These figures
must be referred to with care because big landlords can appear in the m iddle
peasant category simply because they have divided their land among relatives,
■fiends or subordinates (benami).
18 Rudolph and Rudolph, In Pursuit o f Lakshmi, op. cit., p. 336.
D.N. Dhanagare, ‘The green revolution and social inequalities in rural
■ndia’, Bulletin fo r C oncerned Asian Scholars, 2 (20), April 1988, pp. 2—13. For
1 more monographic assessment of the social impact of rural m odernisation in
west Uttar Pradesh, see K. Siddiqui, ‘New Technology and Process of Differenti
ation: Two Sugarcane Cultivating Villages in Uttar Pradesh’, EPW, 25 Dec.
1999, pp. A 139-A 152.
294 India’s Silent Revolution
reputation.150 According to another interpretation it was because
Gupta refused to appoint thirteen of Charan Singh’s followers - that
is one third o f the government - as cabinet ministers and ministers
of state.151
Charan Singh left the Congress with sixteen of his mostly non up
per caste supporters: nine of these MLAs were Yadavs and Kurmis,
four were Brahmins and Rajputs and two were from the Scheduled
Castes. This muting enabled Charan Singh to topple C.B. Gupta’s
government and to replace him as C hief M inister with the help of
opposition parties, with which he formed a coalition called the Sam-
yukta Vidhayak Dal, as in Bihar. For the first time in Uttar Pradesh
it was not a 'twice born’ who occupied the highest post in the state.
In addition 43% of ministers and state secretaries came from the
intermediary, low’er and Untouchables castes. Its composition was in
stark contrast to C.B. Gupta’s government (Table 8.5).
The coalition supporting Charan Singh included communists,
socialists, RPI members and Jana Sanghis. W ithin this grouping the
bones of contention were m any.152 The most important dispute con
cerned Charan Singh’s opposition to the demand of the communists
and the socialists concerning the abolition of land revenue on farms
of less than 6 acres153 because, according to him, it was desirable that
the farmer pay it to feel fully committed to land ownership. This
argument was in tune with his entrepreneurial logic, which had been
used earlier in the land reform of Uttar Pradesh. The SSP and the
CPI then withdrew their support from the government, which finally
fell in February 1968.154
The failure of the SVD government showed that a major handicap
‘10 Goya! (ed.), Profile o f Chaudhury Charan Singh, op. cit., p. 41.
151 Johnson, Relation between land settlement and party politics, op. cit.,
p. 188.
152 For instance, Charan Singh was criticised by the Jana Sangh for catting
the margins of intermediaries and traders, who formed a major component ot
the right w ing H indu electorate. The Jana Sangh also protested against the re
quisitioning o f the 500,000 tonnes of grain - finally reduced to 200,000 - in
order to alleviate the victims of food shortage because it penalised the big land
lords (ibid., p. 198).
1,3 Anirudh Panda, Dhartiputra Cbaudhuri Charan Singh, Ghaziabad: Ritu
Prakashak, 1986, p. 104.
154 For more details, see Paul Brass, ‘C oalition politics in North India .
American P olitical Science Review, 57 (4), Dec. 1968, pp. 1174—91.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 295
T ab le 8 .5 . C A ST E A N D C O M M U N IT Y G O V E R N M E N T S
O F C .B . G U PT A AND C H A R A N SIN G H , 1967
Source: Sarvadhik Pichhra Varg Ayog Report {Report of M ost Backward Classes
Com m ission), (H in di), Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh ki Sarkar, 1977, p. 95.
From the BKD to the BLD: the em ergence o fa new political force. In
contrast to the many people who left the Congress and rejoined it
after it came back to power, Charan Singh did nothing of the sort
and even remained deaf to the calls o f Indira Gandhi.155 Two days
before becoming C hief M inister in April 1967, he created his own
party, the Jana Congress, which soon merged with the Bharatiya
Kranti Dal (BKD - The Indian party of revolution). The BKD,
founded on the initiative o f Congress dissidents like Humayun
Kabir, had initially been intended to be a national party.156 Its in
augural convention took place in Indore (M adhya Pradesh) in au
tumn 196/, but the largest delegations came from Bihar, Uttar
Pradesh and West Bengal. Some of the representatives coming from
the latter state - beginning with Kabir - left the party when they
failed to impose a conciliatory line towards the Congress, and the re
maining Bengalis were expelled in 1969 because they were seeking
alliance with the com munists.157 In April 1969, Charan Singh be
came president of the BKD, after which it appeared to develop as a
regional party. This trend was confirmed during the 1968—9 elec
tions when the BKD won 21.3% of votes in Uttar Pradesh as against
1.5% in Haryana, 2.1% in Bihar and 1.7% in Punjab. In Uttar
Pradesh, the party’s prim ary source of support were the Jats from
the West, that is, from the same caste and region as Charan Singh.
In the Aligarh district Duncan has established a clear correlation be
tween Jat domination and the BKD vote, which was positive in
almost all the constituencies.153 Elsewhere Charan Singh attracted
support from lower peasant castes. Satpal M alik, one of his support
ers, points out:
Charan Singh was popular amongst the farmers because he fought against
Nehru, against cooperative farming and again, within Congress, he fought
against vested interests [ . . .] . Anywhere, the Congress committees were
164 Johnson, Relation between land settlement and party politics , op. cit.,
p. 299.
The Socialists as defenders o f the Lower Castes 299
met difficulties at the Centre over the issue of the abolition of the
princes’ privy purses. Charan Singh opposed this measure on the pre
text that it was a breach of a promise given by Sardar Patel to the
Princes.165 Though short-lived, this second experiment with power
helped the BKD to establish its image as a kisan party. In 1974 it won
more seats than in 1969 —106 as against 98. The party was attracting
more farmers, including well-off ones, notables who offered their
vote banks to the BKD. Rashid Masood is a case in point. He joined
the party in the mid-1970s to become General Secretary of the
district branch of Saharanpur. He was the son of a zamindar who
farmed 300 acres and who had been elected an MLA as an independ
ent in Nakur (Saharanpur district) in 1967 and 1969. After contest
ing in 1974 as an independent, Masood joined the BKD because this
party represented the farmers:
Basically, I am a khaksha, a kisan and our interests lied with C h aud h ary
Charan S in gh . W h y should I have gone to Congress - a party o f monopolists?
Not banyas, who were w ith Jan a Sangh, but industrialists (. . .]. W hen you
pronounce the nam e o f C h audh ury C h aran Singh, im m ediately everyone
would know it pertains to som ething rural. T h at was our basic ideology. In
India, the kisanwas the most neglected creature. He produced for others and
was never properly paid. T hat movem ent started with the U nionist party
in Punjab, w ith C hhotu Ram . He started the fight for b ig zam indars but
basically they fought for zamindars. A nd for the first tim e in Indian hist
ory, someone raised his voice for the people who were supposed to be with
land [ . . . ] . A kisan is who is tillin g the land, but under the definition o f the
Lok Dal [C haran Singh’s party after 197 4 ], all those who either till the land
or owe their livelihood to land or tiller, that is the artisans who are m aking
tools for tillers and those who are living, even landless labour, from c u lti
vation.’166
In the late 1960s, the electoral success of the Socialists in Bihar and
Charan Singh in Uttar Pradesh reflected the growing mobilisation
of the middle peasantry from the intermediate and low castes, emerg
ing groups that the Congress ignored at its own peril. The Socialists
and Charan Singh represented two different political traditions. The
former’s strategy' for social emancipation, which was first articulated
by Lohia, put a strong emphasis on caste. Like Ambedkar, Lohia re
garded caste as the basic unit of Indian society and amended his
Marxist views accordingly. His aim was to encourage the coalescence
of the lower castes in order to destroy the upper castes’ domination.
Paradoxically, he tried to promote equality by manipulating caste
categories. Charan Singh, on the other hand, focused on kisan
identity. He tried to promote a new rural solidarity in order to sub
sume caste and class divisions. This modus operandi reflected his own
quest for power since the crystallisation of a cleavage between urban
and rural India would enable him to mobilise a majority of Indian
society behind him.
These two strategies gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s
in North India but they were not novel. In fact, Socialist quota
politics used the reservation policy categories implemented by the
state. Lohia was in the footsteps of the Justice Party, except that he
did not imbue the lower castes with any ethnic identity and nor did
he use the notion of Non-Brahmins that the British had introduced
but rather that o f ‘Backward Classes’ that had been institutionalised
by the 1950 Constitution and popularised by the Kalelkar Commis
sion. In fact, the Socialist success of the late 1960s in North India
occurred in the wake of the mobilisation that the AIBCF had
orchestrated to implement the Kalelkar Commission Report. Charan
W e have seen an effort for some time, both directly and indirectly, to confuse
the movement of agricultural labourers with the caste movement of the
socially most depressed members of the society [. . .] The one unfortunate
consequence of this development has been that the basic problems of the
agricultural labourers have been ignored and in their place only some broad
questions have been raised. This had lim ited to a few particular castes what
is a large and complex range o f issues involving all khet mazdoors. (Ibid.,
P- 73)
Far from being mutually exclusive, quota politics and kisan politics
have many ideological affinities and areas of overlap. They try to pro
mote the interests of roughly the same groups, yet they regard them
from two different viewpoints: as castes or as peasants. The adverb
‘roughly’ needs to be emphasised because quota politics is more
concerned with the OBCs and —to a lesser extent - the Scheduled
Castes, who are generally small peasants or labourers, whereas kisan
politics focuses on intermediate castes (like the Jats) and OBCs who
own land, as small or middle peasants but, sometimes, as well-off
farmers too. The small and middle peasants from the OBCs represent
the social intersection of these two constituencies. They formed an
important and growing group in the 1970s and Charan Singh and
the Socialists soon realised that it might well be the pivot of a larger
coalition which could vote them to power.
The quest for power, here, refers to the personal ambition of
leaders such as Charan Singh but also to the empowerment agenda
of the lower castes. It was the root-cause of the merger of a section
of the Socialists and the BKD and, to a lesser extent, of the formation
of the Janata Party. By appointing the M andal Commission, the
Janata government showed that the proponents of kisan politics were
also prepared to rally around quota politics.
305
306 India's Silent Revolution
inspired by Lohia while he was a student and later at Meerut College
because ‘Lohia was the centre for anti-establishment thinking in
North India’ and ‘a bridge between Gandhi and M arx’.2 M alik was
president of the student union of Meerut College in 1965—9 and took
part in many agitations, some of which landed him to jail. In 1969
he was offered a ticket for the Assembly elections by the district presi
dent o f the BKD; he declined the offer because ‘Charan Singh was
not our ideal, as socialists. The socialists wanted land revenue to be
abolished. Charan Singh opposed it.’ In 1973 Charan Singh app
roached M alik directly because he thought they had much in common
including an Arya Samajist background M alik, who was to become
a minister in V.P. Singh’s government, turned out to be more res
ponsive this time and joined the BKD.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the socialists were in disarray.
Lohia died in 1967 and his lieutenants fought each other. The faction
of M adhu Limaye and George Fernandes - which was especially
strong in Maharashtra - wanted to drop Lohia’s policy of non-
Congressism and merge with the PSP (which had already negotiated
seat adjustments with Congress) whereas the faction led by Raj
Narain was w illing to pursue the ‘non-congressism’ line and opposed
merger with the PSP. This faction was especially strong in Uttar
Pradesh, Raj Narain’s home state.3 Raj Narain, a Bhumihar by caste,
played a leading role in the rapprochement with Charan Singh. Asso
ciated with the CSP since its inception in 1934, he had left Congress
in 1958 to join the PSP and became chairman of the Socialist Party
in 1961. Having followed Lohia, he became general secretary of the
SSP. The Indian Who’s Who mentions that he was ‘imprisoned 58
times for a period totalling about 15 years in connection with stu
dent’s and socialist movements’4 and that he ‘invariably found him
self at the centre of controversy and agitations’.5 Raj Narain, indeed,
a freedom fighter from M eerut district. His anti-British activities were such that
he was disowned by his fam ily and had to leave his village
2 Ibid.
* Brass, Leadership conflict and the disintegration of the Indian socialist
movement’, op. cit., p. 162.
4 Sixth Lok Sabha Who’s Who —1977, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat,
1977, p. 479.
5G. Singh (ed.), In dia’s Who’s Who Year Book 1977-78, New Delhi: Alfa
Publications, (n.d.), p. 27.
The quest fo r pow er and the first Janata Government 307
epitomises the propensity of Indian socialists to agitate and debate -
including among themselves, and not necessarily on substantial
issues, (The proliferation of factions in socialist politics is largely the
result of this tendency.)
Raj Narain had few if any ideological affinities with Charan
Singh - except that the Bhumihars of East UP (he was from Varanasi
district) were almost in the same position as the Jats of West UP. But
he regarded the BKD as a good ally against Congress in order to win
power. Charan Singh did not appreciate the socialists mentality.
According to M alik, ‘he was afraid that he had to follow their ways.
He was not for demonstrations ever)' day and this and that’.6 But
Charan Singh knew that the social base of the Socialists and of his
own party overlapped and in any case he needed allies against the
Congress party.
Under Raj Narain’s and Charan Singh’s influence, in 1974 the
SSP and BKD merged to form the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD - Indian
People, Party) with Charan Singh as President. Soon after, the Swa-
tantra Party also merged with the BLD, even though this liberal party
did not share any social or peasant-oriented concerns since it had
emerged in the late 1950s as the mouthpiece of business and landlord
interests against Nehru’s economic policy.7 Obviously, Charan Singh
was eager to make his party grow by any means, to build a political
torce which could dislodge Congress and serve his personal ambitions.8
Even before the formation of the BLD, the BKD had adopted
some aspects of quota politics. For instance, it had proposed that
20 % of unskilled jobs in all factories both in the public and private
sector should be reserved for Scheduled Castes.9 It had also ‘agreed
to reservations of jobs for Backward Castes in 1971 much against
Charan Singh’s own inner urge’.10 In 1974 the party’s manifesto for
the Uttar Pradesh elections contained a revealing paragraph on this
question:
* hile the socially and educationally backward classes, other than Scheduled
1 ribes and castes, both Hindu and Muslim, constituted more than half of
6 Interview with Satpal M alik.
H.L. Erdman, The Swatantra Party and India Conservatism , Cambridge
University Press, 1967.
Charan Singh, for power, could do anything’, according to Satpal M alik.
An observer, Who is a casteist?, op. cit., p. 54,
15 Ibid., p. 62.
308 India s Silent Revolution
our people, they have little o r no place in the political and adm inistrative map
o f the country. (. . .] W h ile, therefore, BKD regards any kind o f reservation as
a viciou s p rin cip le , it has, at lo n g last, come to the conclusion that there is no
w ay out but that a share in G overnm ent jobs, say 25 percent, be reserved for
y o u n g men co m in g from these classes, as recom m ended by the Backward
C lasses C om m ission . . . "
and dignity to rural India seen as viable communities of functional rural clust
ers. . (ibid., p, 155)
11 Charan Singh, T h e Emergence of Janata Party - A Watershed in Post-
Independence Politics in S. M ohan et al. (eds), Evolution o f Socialist Policy, of.
cit., p. 325 and p. 327.
“° A. Varshney, Democracy, Development, and the Countryside - Urban, Rural
Struggles in India, Cam bridge University Press, 1995, p. 104. Most of this
paragraph draws from this book.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., p. 105.
P. Brass, Congress, the Lok Dal, and the M iddle-Peasant Castes’, op. cit.,
pp. 14-15.
The quest fo r pow er and the first Janata Government 311
they were taken up by farmers’ movements in most states,24 among
which the Bharatiya Kisan Union ofT ikait (a Jat who had been close
to Charan Singh - the moving spirit behind the BKU) and the
Shetkari Sangathana of Sharad Joshi in Maharashtra were noteworthy.
While Charan Singh tried to promote the kisans interests, he was
less active in so far as the reservation policy was concerned. As Deputy
Prime Minister he suggested to the government that 25% ofadminis-
trative posts should be reserved for OBCs25 but he did not push the
issue further, perhaps because it aroused too many objections within
the Janata. Regarding reservations for the Scheduled Castes, he
considered that they should be withdrawn so far as promotions were
concerned because they had led ‘to heart-burning and great inefficiency
in services .26 And he added ‘Nor should there be any reservation in
education, particularly of Medicine and Engineering’.
However, 1977 was a milestone in the quest for power of the lower
castes and the kisan, as evident from the social profile of MPs who
had been returned in the Hindi belt, all of whom - except three —
were from the Janata Party, stark evidence indeed that the Congress
party had been routed.
The comparison between the 1977 figures and those of the pre
vious elections - including 1971, when the Congress had been so
successful - suggests interesting conclusions. Even though the change
is not dramatic, one can observe obvious contrasts: for the first time,
upper caste MPs represent fewer than 50% of Hindi belt MPs. Cor
respondingly, he share of intermediate castes and OBCs increased
from 14.2% to 20% ; however the Janata Party remained much more
elitist than its parliamentary group, as evident from the caste back
ground of the members of its National Executive (seeTables 9.1 and
9.2).
The overwhelming dominance of the upper castes - and, among
them of the Brahmins - in the Janata Party National Executive was
mainly due to the social profile of the ex-Congress (O) and ex-Jana
Sangh. Besides the resilience of the upper castes in the party apparatus,
the rise o f the OBCs was unevenly distributed state-wise, as evident
from the social composition of the assemblies of M adhya Pradesh,
1For details see T. Brass (ed.), New Fanners’ Movements in India , London:
Frank Cass, 1995.
Brass, 'C haudhuri Charan Singh’, op. cit., p. 2089.
Cited in Hasan, ‘Patterns of Resilience’, op. cit., p. 191.
312 India s Silent Revolution
T ab le 9 .1 . C A S T E A N D C O M M U N IT Y OF
H IN D I BE LT M P s, 1971 AN D 1977
1971 1977
Upper castes 53.9 48.2
Brahm in 28.31 16.37
Rajput 13.7 13.27
Bhum ihar 2.28 3.1
Banya/Jain 5.48 8.4
Kayasth 2.28 3.1
O ther 1.83 3.98
Interm ediate castes 4.11 6.64
Ja i 4.11 5.75
M aratha 0.89
OBC 10.1 133
Yadav 6.39 6.19
Kurmi 2.28 3.98
Panwar 0 .4 6
O ther 0.92 3.09
S cheduled Castes 18.26 17.7
Scheduled Tribes 7.31 7.08
M uslim 4.57 5.75
Other m inorities 0.46 0.44
Sadhu 0.46
U nidentified 0.89
Total 100 100
N=219 N=226
Source: Fieldwork.
1978
Upper castes 72.09
Brahmin 39.53
Rajput 4.65
Banya/Jain ! 3.95
Kayasth 6.98
Sindhi 2.33
Other 4.65
Intermediate castes 4.66
Jat 2.33
Patidar 2.33
OBC 9.32
Ezhava 2.33
Kurmi 2,33
N air 2.33
Yadav 2.33
Scheduled Castes 4.65
Muslim 4.65
Unidentified 4.65
Total 100
N=43
Source: Fieldwork
Bihar Rajasthan MP
Upper castes 37.2 43.9 46.6
Brahmin 5.8 12.5 21.3
Rajput 16 6 13 10.6
Bhumihar 11.4 - »
Banya/Jain - 15.8 10
Kavasrh 34 1.1 3.1
Khattri - 0.5 1.3
Other - 1 0.3
Intermediate castes - 14.5 0.9
Maratha - - 0.9
Jat - 14.5 -
OBC 29.6 7 14.3
Banya 2.5 -
jat - - 0.3
Yadav 15.7 1.5 1.6
Kurmi 3.7 —
3 1
Koeri 4.9 _
Lodhi - _ 0.6
Teti - - 1.6
Panwar - _ 2.1
Gujar - 4 —
represented about 21 % of the MLAs, and the latter by the low castes,
who had been elected in large numbers since their share in the Vidhan
Sabha had jumped from 29.5 to 38.5% of the total between 1975
The quest fo r pow er and the first Janata Government 315
Bihar Rajasthan UP MP
Upper casus 29 62.6 68.8
Brahmin n.a. 31.3 37.5
Rajput n.a. 12.5 15.6
Banya/Jain n.a. 18.8 9.4
Kayasth n.a. 6.3
Intermediate castes n.a. 12.5
Jats n.a. 12,5
OBC 38 17.4 62
Yadav n a. 13.1 31
Tdi n.a. — 3.1
I odhi n.a. 4.3
Lower Backward 4
SC (and STfor Bihar) 17 18.8 8.7 9.4
Scheduled Tribes n a. 9.4
Muslim (and Bengali for Bihar) 13 6.3 4.3 6.25
Total 100 100 100 100
N*n.a. N*l6 N=23 N*32
Sources: As for Tabic 9.3. For UP, C.L. Satin, Pkhhre vargon ka arakshan, Lucknow:
Bahujan Kaiyan Publishers, 1982, p. 118.
and 1977. Among them, the Yadavs were the most successful with
20% of the MLAs (as against 11% in 1975)-'8 Even though he be
longed to the Most Backward Castes, Thakur was recognised as their
representative by the Yadavs and even though he was a former social
ist, Charan Singh chose him as his nominee. Thakur’s government,
for the first time in the state, had more OBC (42%) than upper caste
(29% )’ ’ ministers but among the latter the Lower Backwards were
very few compared to the Yadavs who got the lion's share. After
laborious debates within the Janata Party', where the upper castes
showed much reluctance towards any ambitious reservation scheme,
in November 1978 Thakur announced the following quotas, which
relied on the classification in OBCs and MBCs of the Mungeri Lai
Commission, in the state administration:
28 H. Blair, 'Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar’, op. cit., p. 69.
-’ Ibid
316 In dia’s Silent Revolution
%
Other backward classes 8
Most backward classes 12
Scheduled Castes 14
Scheduled Tribes 10
Women 3
Economically backward 3
In India, the Mandal report argued, the caste system was the root-
cause of structural inequality and therefore notions of merit could
not apply in the same way as they did in an individualistic society:
it ‘is an amalgam of native endowments and environmental privi
leges’.50 The M andal Commission had therefore no inhibition in
recognising caste as the main factor in the backwardness of the
OBCs: ‘Caste is also a class of citizens and if the caste as a whole is
socially and educationally backward, reservation can be made in fav
our of such a caste on the ground that it is a socially and educationally
backward class of citizens within the meaning of Article 15(4)’."’1Yet,
the Commission did not regard caste as the sole criterion for the
definition of the OBCs. In fact, it evolved an index based on eleven
indicators subdivided into three categories - social, educational and
economic. Three of the indicators were concerned with caste: whether
the group was regarded as backward by others, whether it depended
47 For Lai and Nair, Desai appointed the second Backward Classes Commission
as ‘the usual answer of most governments in India to silence strident demands
without acceding to them’ Lai and Nair, Caste vs Caste, op. cit., p. 90.
48 One of them, Dina Bandhu Sahu had to resign on the ground of ill-health,
but he w'as replaced by a Scheduled Castes former MP, L.R. Naik.
49 Ibid., p. 21.
50 Ibid., p. 23.
51 Ibid., p. 62.
322 India s Silent Revolution
on manual labour and whether or not its members married at a younc
age. The three educational indicators tried to measure the proportion
of children attending school and obtaining their matriculation. The
four economic indicators concerned the family’s assets, whether at
least one quarter of the group had a kuccha (proper) house, whether
they had easy access to water and whether they had taken out loans.52
U ltim ately social indicators were given heavier weighting than other
criteria and thus the OBCs were defined as caste-groups. This is evi
dent from Table 9.5 where the Commission ventured to present an
overview of Indian society under the title ‘Distribution of Indian
Population by Caste and Religious Groups’.
The table was criticised by scholars because it drew on several
sources (the 1931 census for the forward castes and the 1971 census
for the SC/STs and the religious groups) and arrived at a figure of
52% for the OBCs through a roundabout route.53 Yet it did for the
hrst time provide a statistical straight-point which could be used for
affirmative action and was not reliant only on caste criteria - econo
m ically disadvantaged Brahmin and Rajput sub-castes had been
previously classified as OBCs for instance.54
After identifying the OBCs, the M andal Commission recom
mended that 27% of posts in the administration and public sector
should be reserved for them, a conclusion that reflected an Ambedkarite
and Socialist-style approach to compensatory discrimination since
the objective was to give the OBCs access to power, not jobs:
It is not at all our contention that by offering a few thousands jobs to OBC
can d id ates we shall be able to m ake 52% o f the Indian population as forward
52 Ibid., p. 52.
53 P. Radhakrishnan wrote for instance that the M andal Com m ission’s
estim ate of the O BC population is a hotpotch, arrived at by subtracting from
100 the population percentages for SCs, STs and non-Hindus (22.56 and 16.16
respectively) as per the 1971 Census, and the percentage for “forward H indus” ’
(17.58) as extrapolated from the incomplete 1931 Census, and adding to this
derived sum (43.7) about h alf o f the population percentage for non-Hindus
(8.4) . He also criticised the fact that for its “socio-educational survey”, sup
posedly its most comprehensive inquiry, the Commission selected only two
villages and one urban block from each district’ (P. Radhakrishnan, ‘ Mandal
Comm ission Report: A Sociological C ritique’ in Srinivas (ed.), Caste —hi
Twentieth Century Avatar, op. cit., p. 207).
54 For a list of these Brahmin and Rajput sub-castes see Prasad, Reservational
Justice , op. cit., pp. 6 8 -9 .
The quest fo r pow er and the first Janata Government 323
Table 9.5. DISTRIBUTION OF INDIAN SOCIETY BY
CASTE AND COMMUNITY ACCORDING TO
MANDAL COMMISSION
% o f total population
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes 22.56
Scheduled Castes 15.05
Scheduled Tribes 7.51
Non-Hindu communities, religious groups 16.16
Muslims 11.19
Christians 2.16
Sikhs 1.67
Buddhists 0.67
Jains 0.47
Forward Hindu castes and communities 17.58
Brahmins (including Bhumihars) 5.52
Rajputs 3.9
Marathas 2.21
Jats 1
Vaishyas/Banyas 1.88
Kayasthas 1.07
Others 2
Remaining Hindu caste/groups to be treated as OBCs 43.70’
(Religious groups which may also be treated as OBCs) (8.40)
Total 100
’ Derived figure.
Source: Report o f the Backward Classes Commission - First Part, op. cit., p. 56.
But we must recognise that an essential part o f the battle against social
backwardness is to be fought in the m inds o f the backw ard people. In India
Government service has alw ays been looked upon as a sym bol o f prestige and
power. By increasing the representation o f O BCs in governm ent services, we
give them an im m ed ia tefeelin gofp a rticip a tion in the govern a n ce o f this country.
When a backw ard class candidate becomes a C ollector or a Superintendent
of Police, the m aterial benefits accruing from his position are lim ited to the
members o f his fam ily only. But the psychological spin off o f this phenom
enon is trem endous; the entire co m m unity o f that backw ard class candidate
feels socially elevated. Even when no tangible benefits flow to the com m unity
at large, the feeling that now it has its ‘own m an ’ in the 'corridors ofp ow er'a cts
as morale booster.55
1 Report o f the [second] Backward Classes Commission -F irst Part, op. cit.,
P- 57. Emphasis added.
324 India s Silent Revolution
The report modestly presents access to, and the exercise of, power
from a psychological point of view but its ambitions were greater
than that: it goes on to say that ‘reservation will certainly erode the
hold of the higher castes on the services’,56 and this was one of its
objectives, albeit one balanced by the attention paid to education. In
contrast to Lohia’s reluctance to introduce reservation in schools and
universities, the M andal Commission Report recommended that
27% of ‘seats should be reserved for OBC students in all scientific,
technical and professional institutions run by the Central as well as
State Governments’.’ T he Commission resigned itself to maximum
quotas of 27% in order to remain within the limits of the ‘law laid
down in a number of Supreme Court judgements’58 after the Baiaji
case.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., p. 59.
58 Ibid., p. 58.
59 Yadav, India's Unequal Citizens., op. cit., p. 134.
The quest fo r pow er and the first Janata Government 325
Commission. It recommended a quota of 32% for the OBCs so that
total quotas whould not exceed 50% but M.G. Ramachandran pre
ferred to bury the report.60
Andhra politics was even more clearly dominated by leaders
advocating the cause of the low castes in the 1980s after the rise to
power of the Telegu Desam Party, a regionalist organisation whose
electoral basis largely consisted of OBCs. In 1983, shortly after its
success in the state elections, Rama Rao, its founder-president and
then Chief M inister, increased the OBC quota from 25% to 44%
in the state administration. The High Court declared the decision
invalid because the total quotas now exceeded 50%. Rama Rao with
drew his project, which triggered off violent street demonstrations
from the OBCs,61 evidence of their newly found self-assurance.
The OBCs had not only gained new assertiveness but had also
been empowered to a certain extent. In 1982, they made up 28.6%
of Andhra civil servants and were well represented in the entire
administration, except among the IAS elite, the last stronghold of the
Brahmins.62 Ultimately they were to benefit substantially from re
servations because of the political determination of the main parties
but also because of a shift in attitude o f the courts, an issue to which
we return below.
In Gujarat, shortly after its return to power in 1980, the Congress
appointed a second ‘Backward Classes Commission’ in order further
to cultivate its low caste support. This Commission, in its report of
1983, recommended that caste be abandoned as a criterion for de
fining quotas and that the existing quota should be increased from
10% to 28%. Solanki kept the findings secret until January 1985 -
60 Ibid., p. 135. The increase of the quotas granted to the OBCs in Tamil
Nadu had already restricted the number of places available to Brahmins, who
had either to opt for the private sector, or to migrate to the North or to go abroad
(mosdy to England or the United States) to forge a career in medicine or in
engineering. After the introduction of quotas in the 1920s already, many Brah
mins left for Bombay. (R.K. Hebsur, ‘Reaction to the reservations for Other
Backward Classes’, Bombay, T ata Institute o f Social Sciences 1980, in Report
o f the Backward Classes Commission, second part, vols III—VII, New Delhi: Gov
ernment of India, 1980, pp. 147-50)
61 P. Brass, The New Cambridge History o f India - The politics o f India since
independence , Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 212.
G~G. Ram Reddy, ‘The politics of accommodation - Class, caste and domi
nance in Andhra Pradesh’, op. cit., pp. 300-2.
326 In dia’s Silent Revolution
two months before the state elections —and then supported the
increase in quotas up to 28% but without abandoning the caste
criterion. He even appointed a new Commission in order to identify
more ‘backward castes’.63 These decisions partly explain the excellent
showing of the Congress (I) in the M arch 1985 state elections, after
which Solanki formed a government in which fourteen ministers out
o f twenty were ‘Kshatriyas’. This triggered off violent reactions from
the upper castes. Their opposition to quotas had already been
manifested in 1981 when riots had broken o u t - in particular in
Ahmedabad - to protest against quotas granted since 1975 to Sche
duled Castes in ‘M edical Colleges’.64 In fact, these quotas had re
mained unfulfilled: in 1 9 79-80, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes students numbered only 507 out of 4,500 (instead of the
nominated 945, according to the 10% quota) and in 1984, only 34%
of seats reserved for the OBCs were effectively occupied.65 The viol
ent response of the upper caste seemed even less justified in 1985
when, once again, students were in the forefront of the protest. They
formed the All Gujarat Education Reforms Committee and began
attacking symbols ofthestate (bus stations, post-offices, schools . ..),
forcing the cancellation of examinations. The High Court imposed
a stay order on the implementation of the measures but violence
continued unabated and on 5 Ju ly the deliberate derailment of a
train, which injured more than 200 people, led Solanki to resign. His
successor, Amarsingh Chaudhari cancelled the increase in the quotas
and in June 1987 appointed a new Commission presided over by
R.C. M ankad. Thus the 1985 riots (and their impact) revealed the
lim its of the reservation policy in Gujarat: in contrast with the South,
positive discrimination measures were facing mounting opposition
from the upper castes fearful o f reduced opportunities and of a chal
lenge to their pre-eminent status.
66 See ‘The Lok Dal’ in A.M . Zaidi, ARIPP-1979, New Delhi: S.Chand,
1980, p. 385.
6 Interview with Rabi Ray, New Delhi, 24 O ct. 1998.
,s However, many Socialists had stayed in the Janata Party.
69 Lok Dal, ‘Election Manifesto - 1980 mid-term poll’ in ibid., pp. 3 96 -7 .
328 India s Silent Revolution
Table 9.6. CASTE AND COMMUNITY IN THE NATIONAL
EXECUTIVE OF LOK DAL
0 Ibid., p. 407.
1‘ Lok Dal and Reservation, Statement, April 1981’, cited in Hasan, ‘Pattern
o f resilience and change’, op. cit., p. 187, n.76.
The quest fo r pow er and the first Janata Government 329
The Report was submitted to Indira Gandhi’s government in
December 1980 but it was put before the Lok Sabha only on 30 April
1982, when there was barely a quorum in the House, a clear i ndication
of the ruling party’s priority. The most vehement speakers were Lok
Dal MPs such as Chandrajit Yadav who emphasised what to him was
its main finding: the fact that ‘the other backward classes constituted
52% of our population’. : OBC leaders were obviously realising that
their ‘community’ was a majority and could form an unbeatable
constituency. Ram Vilas Paswan was also very combative in the de
bate even though he was not an OBC but a Dusadh (the member
of a Scheduled Caste of pig herders). Paswan had a socialist back
ground - he had been secretary of the Bihar SSP - and joined the
Lok Dal in 1974, to become the secretary of the party' Bihar unit.73
When he appeared before the Mandal Commission he suggested that
the existing percentage of reservation for OBCs should be increased
and greater educational facilities provided to them’ but he also added
that ‘in case the family income of a candidate exceeded Rs. 10,000
per year, [an OBC applicant] should not be given the benefit of
reservations’. 4 In the 1982 M andal debate he adopted an Ambedkar-
like position in denouncing caste hierarchy as inherent in Hinduism,
invoking the Law of M anu to this end.75 The senior Congress repre
sentative then in the House, the Defence Minister, R, Venkataraman
objected that the essence of Hinduism was found not in Manu but
in the Gita whose hero, Krishna ‘was a Yadava’, 6 an attempt at flat
tering the Sanskritization tendencies of the Yadavs. Venkataraman
went on to claim that the M andal Commission Report, which had
identified 3,743 castes, contradicted the findings of the Kalelkar
Commission, which ‘identified somewhere 2,000 and odds’ such
1 Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Debates, New Delhi, vol. 31, Aug. 11,
1982, col. 359. Chandrajit Yadav also used this opportunity to recall that the
Yadav community' has also made a great sacrifice for the country’ in the 1962
war and that it was unfair to them not to create a Yadav regiment (ibid., cols
518-19).
3 Paswan had been first elected in the Bihar Assembly at the young age of
23 in 1969 and to the Lok Sabha in 1977 in H ajipur ( Who s Who in Lok Sabha —
1977, op. cit., p. 422).
4 Report o f the [second] Backward Classes Commission, op. cit., p. 45.
5 Lok Sabha Secretariat, Lok Sabha Debates, New Delhi, vol. 31, 11 August
1982.
76 Ibid., col. 562.
330 India s Silent Revolution
castes. According to him, neither could it be reconciled with the lists
established by the states. More importantly, he expressed the view
that the reservation policy ‘should be extended to include economically
backward people’78 and concluded that ‘this is only a point o f view;
this is not the decision of the Government’. This decision was never
implemented since the Congress was not interested in developing
affirmative action. On 15 January 1982, Indira Gandhi had announced
a new 20-point programme which emphasised health care, welfare
programmes for women and greater provision of education.79 A few'
days after the Lok Sabha debate, the Home Minister, Giani Zail
Singh, gravely declared that ‘the recommendations made by the
Commission raise important and complex issues which have wide
and deep implications for the country as a whole’ but that ‘the
Central Government have forwarded the Report of the Commission
to the various State Governments for obtaining their views’.80 That
was the only action taken by the Congress.
The tabling o f the M andal Commission Report before the Lok
Sabha - which had been set for mid-February' and then postponed -
marked the partial conversion of Charan Singh to the notion of
quota-politics:
S. C hand, 1980, p. 301. In 1983, other Socialists joined the Janata Party and
became its office-hearers in the JP, such as M adhu Dandavate and Yamuna
Prasad Shastri. They were joined in 1986 by George Fernandes and Mrinal
Gore.
s See the long argument by the Lok Dai National Executive, which met on
25 August 1982 in, Zaidi, The Annual Register o f Indian Political Parties - 1982,
New Delhi: S. Chand, 1982, pp. 6 7 3 -9 .
84 Interview with Rashid Masood.
85 Ibid.
The quest fo r pow er and the first fanata Government 333
to, w hether they are proprietors of their land or are mere landless labourers
[. . .] W e are against caste system and regard casteism as the greatest enem y
of our society, country and dem ocracy. C asteism leads to all round degrada
tion, that is for persons practising casteism , character, ab ility and capacity
have no appeal.86
In fact, the 1987 split of the LD resulted also from the desire of
Yadav leaders - such as M ulayam Singh Yadav - to emancipate them
selves from jat tutelage. Interestingly, only 5 of the 18 Uttar Pradesh
Lok Dal MLAs continued to support, Ajit Singh but not one Jat left
him.87
To sum up, while quota politics and kisan politics crystallised in the
1960s as two distinctive methods of promoting social transforma
tion, they had many similarities and their social constituencies
overlapped to such an extent that the proponents of the former, the
Socialists, and of the latter, Charan Singh and his group, began to
make common cause in the 1970s. This rapprochementwas intended
to catapult their coalition to power. It was partly successful since the
Janata Party enabled the Socialists and Charan Singh’s followers to
sit in government at the Centre for the first time. But the other
components of this p a r ty -th e ex-Congress(O) and the ex-Jana
Sangh —were associated with social groups —mainly the upper caste
middle class -th at the Socialists and Charan Singh were eager to
dislodge from their privileged position. Thus reservations was one
of the factors that precipitated the collapse of the Janata coalition.
An important outcome of the Janata government however was the
appointment of the Mandal Commission, which had fewer inhibitions
than previous, similar commissions regarding the use of caste as a
relevant criterion for identifying the Other Backward Classes. Its
approach was bound to relaunch quota politics. The Lok Dal - which
gathered together proponents of quota politics and kisan politics
once again under the aegis of Charan Singh - epitomised the growing
synthesis of these two currents. Gradually, quota politics was taking
over. Charan Singh himself supported this development for some
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