Comment: Caste and religion as operative factors with Indian polity. (2000, 20 Marks)
A factor is operative when it shapes outcomes — which parties form, whom they nominate, how people vote, what the state legislates — not merely when it exists in society. The Constitution intended caste and religion to recede into private life, yet it lists castes for remedy and protects religious denominations. Rajni Kothari reminded critics that politics mobilises the allegiances society already has; caste and religion are the largest.
Caste as an operative factor
- Built into the state: Articles 341–342 notify caste lists, and Census 2027 will count every caste for the first time since 1931. André Béteille noted the paradox: a Constitution that condemns caste keeps it alive as the basis of entitlement.
- Shaping the party system: Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph traced a shift from vertical mobilisation (upper-caste notables delivering dependants to the Congress) to horizontal (a large caste organising itself) and differential mobilisation (parties assembling blocs such as the OBC category). Mandal (1990) nationalised it; the BSP (1984), Samajwadi Party (1992) and RJD (1997) are its vehicles.
Religion as an operative factor
- Electoral ascent: the BJP rose from 2 Lok Sabha seats in 1984 to 303 in 2019. Shreyas Sardesai’s analysis of the 2019 National Election Study found that the party built a Hindu vote cutting across caste hierarchies; in 2024 about 65% of Muslims consolidated behind the opposition, yet only 24 Muslims entered the Lok Sabha.
- Law and policy: from the Shah Bano case (1985) and the 1986 Act that reversed it to the CAA rules (March 2024), the Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code (January 2025) and the Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025, partly stayed on 15 September 2025, religion sets the legislative agenda.
- Legal limits blunted: Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act bars religious appeals, and Abhiram Singh (2017) extended it to the voter’s identity, but Ramesh Prabhoo (1995) held Hindutva a “way of life”, leaving the main idiom outside its reach.
- Theory: T. N. Madan and Ashis Nandy argue that secularism was an alien imposition on a religious society, which makes religion’s return predictable; Rajeev Bhargava replies that Indian principled distance permits state engagement with religion only to protect equality.
The interaction of caste and religion
- Mandal versus Kamandal: on a widely shared reading, the temple movement was a religious answer to the caste fragmentation of the Hindu vote.
- Caste inside Hindutva: the BJP’s gains among non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits show religion aggregating castes rather than erasing them — “subaltern Hindutva” in Badri Narayan’s account.
- Caste inside minorities: the Pasmanda movement of backward Muslims, and Dalit Christians and Muslims kept off the Scheduled Caste list by the 1950 Presidential Order, show caste crossing faiths.
- 2024: caste reasserted itself — the Samajwadi Party’s PDA coalition won Uttar Pradesh’s largest share of seats, and the BJP lost Faizabad after the Ram temple consecration.
Significance and limits
- Democratising: caste mobilisation produced Christophe Jaffrelot’s “silent revolution” of lower-caste representation, and religious identity gave minorities a vocabulary for claims on the state.
- Corrosive: Paul R. Brass showed how religious polarisation is manufactured through riots, and Jaffrelot (Modi’s India, 2021) warns of drift towards an “ethnic democracy”.
- Not all-determining: welfare, leadership and region also decide elections — Tamil Nadu’s 2026 verdict for TVK turned on youth and women, not caste blocs.
Conclusion
Caste and religion are the Indian polity’s two most operative factors, working less as rivals than as alternating ways of assembling majorities — caste fragmenting, religion aggregating. Neither will leave politics; the constitutional task is to keep caste’s claims redistributive and to keep religion out of the calculation of citizenship and power.