9 - ‘Caste wars’ and the mandate of violence

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Both today and in the past, the language and conventions of caste have proclaimed the value of absolute standards and proprieties, while accommodating uncertainty, change and conflict in both public and private life. While this has involved coercion as well as acts of ‘resistance’, Indians of many different backgrounds have found that both the exclusions and bonds of caste could help them to adapt and prosper in conditions of insecurity. This has been the case particularly for the struggling landed groups discussed in previous chapters. It has been evident above all where such people have moved to claim supremacy over lower-caste tenants and labourers, both in the nineteenth century and in the age of computerised communications, modern wage labour and mass electoral politics.

This chapter will focus on the second of the two manifestations of caste consciousness identified in Chapter 8 – the phenomenon of so-called caste war. In the decades of post-Independence ‘new agrarianism’ and its turbulent aftermath, appeals to both ‘traditional’ and ‘substantialised’ forms of caste solidarity have continued to put real power into the hands of those who feel wronged and insecure. This is nowhere more apparent than in the outbreaks of mass violence for which academics and journalists have coined such terms as ‘caste war’, ‘caste feud’, ‘caste battle’ and even ‘caste genocide’. For all their crudeness these expressions are used by a wide range of commentators, including many leftists who might be expected to portray these confrontations as a story of casteless ‘subaltern’ solidarities and class conflicts.