“Analyse the nature of transition from ideology to identity politics in India.” (2022)
Early post-1947 politics spoke the language of ideology: socialism, secular nationalism, planning and the free-market right. From the late 1960s, and decisively after 1990, parties mobilised voters as castes, religious communities, regions and tribes. Daniel Bell (The End of Ideology, 1960) expected the West to settle into consensus. India’s transition was different. Ideology did not end. It was re-rooted in group identity.
1. The ideological phase (1947 to late 1960s)
- Rajni Kothari (“The Congress ‘System’ in India”, 1964) described one-party dominance built on a broad Nehruvian consensus: democracy, secularism, a mixed economy and non-alignment. Left, socialist and Swatantra opposition competed on programmes.
- Yet caste was already at work underneath. M. N. Srinivas showed dominant castes delivering “vote banks” through patron-client ties. The ideology was elite-led; the social base stayed traditional.
2. Components of the transition
- Agrarian change. The Green Revolution and land reforms created prosperous peasant castes. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph called them “bullock capitalists” (In Pursuit of Lakshmi, 1987). They sought power in their own name.
- Mandal, Mandir and market. The 1990 decision to implement the Mandal Commission report made OBC identity a political category. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement mobilised a Hindu identity. The 1991 liberalisation narrowed economic differences between parties, so difference moved to identity.
- Subaltern assertion. Kanshi Ram’s Bahujan Samaj Party (1984) turned B. R. Ambedkar’s thought into a Dalit-Bahujan electoral project. Regional and ethnic movements, from the Dravidian parties to the North-East, asserted regional identity.
3. The nature of the transition
- Democratising. Yogendra Yadav called the 1990s a “second democratic upsurge“: SCs, STs, OBCs and the rural poor voted in larger proportions than upper castes. Christophe Jaffrelot (India’s Silent Revolution, 2003) documented power passing to lower castes in North India through the ballot.
- Ideology fused with identity, not replaced by it. Social justice, Ambedkarism and Hindutva cultural nationalism each tie an ideological claim to a community. Kothari (Caste in Indian Politics, 1970) had already argued that caste was being politicised, not politics “casteised”.
- Recognition plus redistribution. In Nancy Fraser’s terms, Indian identity claims seek both recognition (dignity) and redistribution (quotas, land, jobs), because disadvantage follows group lines.
- Fragmentation into micro-identities. Politics now works at the level of sub-castes: EBC and Mahadalit categories, and the Supreme Court’s permission to sub-classify SCs in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (August 2024).
- Fresh re-aggregation. Identities are being bundled into broader coalitions again. The Bihar caste survey (2023) found EBCs at 36% and OBCs at 27% of the population. Census 2027 will count caste (decision of 30 April 2025). The Lokniti-CSDS 2024 post-poll found upper castes staying with the BJP and a roughly five-point Dalit swing towards the INDIA bloc.
4. Costs and critiques
- Marxists see identity masking the shared class interests of informal workers; André Béteille warned that electoral use keeps caste consciousness alive as ritual hierarchy weakens.
- Identity can harden into conflict, as in the Meitei-Kuki violence in Manipur since May 2023.
Conclusion
India has moved not from ideology to its absence but from universalist ideology led by elites to ideology spoken through identities by newly empowered groups. The shift deepened participation, but it is only democratic when group claims are turned back into equal citizenship rather than rival enclosures.