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Engaging with Discourse on Caste, Class and Politics in India

Dr Ashok K. Pankaj is a Senior Fellow, Institute for Human Development, NIDM Building, Third Floor, IIPA Campus, I.P. Estate, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110002, India. [email: ashokpankaj{at}rediffmail.com]

This article maps the changing profile of pre-Mandal and post-Mandal debates on caste, class and politics in India, showing that the centrality of caste as an agent of politics and its dominant role in public-political life has remained a reality throughout. What is contested now is the extent to which recognition of caste as an instrument of socio-political change (following the Mandal Commission) and caste-centric socio-political movements of the 1980s and 1990s (the Dalit and Backward Class movements) has reinforced caste-centric public-political life by giving it a modern value and a secular purpose.

The article argues that the contemporary elaborate discourses on caste, class, and politics in India should seek to develop new paradigms for the discussion of caste and should interrogate more vigorously the democratic and secular roles of caste in relation to class and politics.

Key Words: backward class movements • caste • class • Dalits • Mandal Commission • modernisation • politics • secularism • tradition

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