Question

how does caste system affect politics

Answer 1

Ideologically, caste and democracy differ from each other and cannot co-exist because caste advocates fragmentation of society whereas democracy stands for the unification of society.

Caste is leased on inequality by birth. Democracy is based on principles of equality.

Caste advocates social exclusion and democracy advocates social inclusion. Caste provides wealth, power and status to specific groups but democracy provides equal chance to all categories irrespective of bias. However, the peculiarity is that both caste system and democracy co-exist in Indian society.

In connection to democracy three things are happening to which caste system is also closely related:

1. Participation of all adults in the process of decision making, i.e. their voting behaviour. It means all caste groups without any consideration of high/low must participate in giving their vote.

2. Electoral campaigning through different methods. One of the methods is that the candidates appeal that he belongs to a particular caste.

3. Winning elections has become a principal means of gaining power.

In this political process, the dominant caste groups come to the forefront. For example – During 1955 elections in Andhra Pradesh, two dominant caste groups, Reddy’s and Kamma’s particularly contested in the election and were involved directly/indirectly. Kamma’s supported the communist party and Reddy’s supported the Congress party.

The relationship between caste and politics may be analyzed at two levels:

(i) How caste affects politics?

(ii) How politics influences caste?

Caste influences politics and political system influences caste. It is because both are interrelated.

Political System Influences Caste:

1. All political parties calculate caste support at the time of distribution of tickets.

2. Political behaviour also influences the caste people.

Caste Influences Political System:

1. Caste reserves its votes for its own members.

2. People prefer to vote for a candidate of their own caste irrespective of the merits/demerits of the candidate.

3. Leader of a particular caste prefers to select his own caste people in different posts.

Politics provides mainly three things to caste people:

1. Prestige and power.

2. Economic benefits.

3. Administrative patronage.

Caste provides, on the other hand, leadership to the political structure.

This leads to the following consequences:

(a) The leaders mobilise politics and its principles through their caste ideologies.

(b) The leaders are bound to give importance to the caste opinion.

Anil Bhatt’s study conducted in early 1970s may be taken as one objective basis for assessing the interest of castes in politics and awareness about political affairs.

Bhatt (1975) studied 1,713 persons belonging to high, middle and low castes including Harijans in four states:

UP, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Bhatt’s analysis were in different fields.

1. Political interest

2. Political awareness

3. Identification with political parties

4. Political influence

Rajni Kothari (1970) studied relationship between caste and politics as a relationship for the specific purpose of organising public activity.

He did this in two ways:

(a) By examining the nature of relationship between caste and politics.

(b) By examining the type of changes that have taken place in the political system as a result of the involvement of caste organisations.

According to Kothari, caste has three aspects:

(a) Secular (relevance of caste in politics in terms of the relations within and between castes.)

(b) Integrative (castes being relevant to politics through differentiation and Integration.)

(c) Ideological (which is heightened by its value structure. This is where gestures for cultural mobility, such as sanskritization, westernization and secularization, assume or disguise political over tones in their manifestation.) These three aspects work together.

Answer 2

Influence of caste on politics :

(i) While choosing candidates for election, political  parties consider the caste composition of the  voters to win support.

(ii) When the government is formed, political parties  takecare that representative from different castes  find place in the government.

(iii) Political parties make appeal to the caste  sentiments to win votes.

(iv) Some political parties are known to favour some  particular caste.

(v) Universal adult franchise and the principle  of one-person one-vote have compelled the  political leaders to bring caste sentiments into  politics to muster support.