Write short note: Backward Classes Movement. (2006)
The Backward Classes movement is the mobilisation of the intermediate cultivating and artisan castes — today the Other Backward Classes — against Brahmanical ritual dominance and upper-caste monopoly of education, administration and office. It must be kept distinct from the Dalit movement: the backward classes were never untouchable, were usually landholding, and sought a larger share within the social order rather than exit from it.
Historical formation
The category is colonial: “Backward Classes” was in administrative use in Madras Presidency from the 1870s, in Mysore from 1918 and in Bombay from 1925. Jyotirao Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj (1873) in Maharashtra, the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam among the Ezhavas of Kerala, the non-Brahmin movement in the Madras Presidency, and E. V. Ramasamy’s Self-Respect Movement (1925) formed its main currents. From the 1920s caste federations proliferated, and the Dravidian movement carried the non-Brahmin impulse into regional state power.
Sociological interpretation
- M. S. A. Rao (Social Movements and Social Transformation, 1979) identified three ideologies of backward-caste assertion: claiming Kshatriya descent and adopting upper-caste lifestyles — M. N. Srinivas’s Sanskritisation; rejecting Brahmanical Aryan religion outright, as the Dravidian movement did; and abandoning Hinduism altogether. Its motive force was relative deprivation in religion, education, economy and politics.
- T. K. Oommen explained why some succeeded: not at the ritual bottom, locally well-off, numerically substantial, occupationally diversifying, exposed to education and urbanisation, and charismatically led.
- Rajni Kothari (Caste in Indian Politics, 1970) showed the decisive shift — from ritual claims to political mobilisation, as caste became secularised into an electoral resource.
The Mandal moment and after
The Kalelkar Commission (1953) was shelved; the Mandal Commission (1979, reporting 1980) recommended 27 per cent reservation, implemented in August 1990 and upheld in Indra Sawhney (1992), which fixed the 50 per cent ceiling and excluded the creamy layer. Mandal converted caste from stigma into a resource claim and reorganised north Indian party politics.
Critique
- Benefits concentrate at the top: the Rohini Commission, reporting in July 2023, found roughly 97 per cent of OBC reservation benefits going to about 25 per cent of OBC communities, with some 983 communities wholly unrepresented.
- Dominant landholding OBCs are frequently the antagonists of Dalits in the village, so the two movements are allies nationally and adversaries locally.
- It has won office and quota more than structural change in land or capital.
Conclusion
The movement democratised Indian politics by ending upper-caste monopoly of representation, and the caste enumeration notified for the 2027 Census promises it fresh arithmetic. Its unresolved question is internal: whether the category can be made to deliver to its own most deprived members.