Revision summary
Caste is a social ranking that democracy turned into a vote-and-office identity. The Constitution both abolishes untouchability and uses caste for reservation, which politicises it. Kothari’s Congress factions, the Rudolphs’ caste associations, and Jaffrelot’s OBC-Dalit parties are the sequence. Mandal made backward caste a national political category. Politicisation yields representation and can also freeze caste as an electoral brand.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Caste began as a social grammar of marriage, occupation, and honour. Adult franchise turned that grammar into a count of votes. Rajni Kothari, the Rudolphs, and Christophe Jaffrelot explain how a social category became a political one without ceasing to be social.
Body
From social to political
- A social category ranks persons in everyday life. A political category organises tickets, alliances, reservations, and ministries.
- The Constitution attacked caste as hierarchy (Article 17) and then used caste as a remedy (reservations). That double move politicised it.
- The First Amendment and Champakam already showed caste in the law of education. Mandal (1990) and Indra Sawhney (1992) made OBC a national political language.
How democracy converts the category
- Kothari’s Congress system absorbed caste factions inside a dominant party. Caste was already political, but as faction, not always as a named party of the excluded.
- The Rudolphs argued that caste associations become modern interest groups: the “modernity of tradition”.
- Jaffrelot traces the rise of OBCs and Dalit parties, especially in the Hindi belt, when Congress could no longer monopolise mediation.
- First-past-the-post and federal Assemblies reward a locally concentrated jati cluster with seats, which is Easton’s allocation through cleavage.
Becoming, not finished
- Caste as politics now includes demand for a caste census, sub-quotas, and creamy-layer fights: the category is remade in the state.
- It also includes majoritarian attempts to overwrite caste with a religious majority, which never fully erases jati bargaining at the booth.
- Ambedkar wanted annihilation. Politicisation can freeze caste as a permanent electoral brand even as it yields office to the backward.
- Explanation: democracy did not invent caste. It gave caste a new career as a legitimate claim-making identity.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SO[Caste as social hierarchy] --> POL[Caste as political category] POL --> K[Kothari factions] POL --> J[Jaffrelot OBC Dalit parties] POL --> MD[Mandal reservations]
Conclusion
Caste becomes a political category when votes, reservations, and parties use a social hierarchy as a resource of mobilisation. Kothari, the Rudolphs, and Jaffrelot map that conversion. Mandal is the national hinge. The social category remains; politics gives it a second life.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Does politicisation of caste end casteism?
It can reduce some exclusion by giving office. It does not automatically end marriage rules or everyday discrimination.
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Is class replacing caste in politics?
Class issues enter through prices and jobs. Caste still structures who is trusted to represent a constituency.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2025 · Q7(b) · PSIR GS 1 · 20 marks
Caste remains a vital axis for political mobilisation in India. How would the caste census address the aspirations of people? Discuss -
2023 · Q8(a) · PSIR GS 1 · 20 marks
The rise of caste politics is to be attributed to both regional aspirations and electoral manifestations. Comment
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