Author Description

This study analyzes the interactions between caste, class, ethnicity, and dominance in India from colonial times through the 1989 national election and 1990 state elections. Departing from modernization theories, the contributors set out an interactional framework of society-state relations to provide an explanation of how state policies have undermined the religious legitimacy of dominant groups in the hierarchical social order, at the same time as democratic politics has been used in manipulation of linguistic, communal, caste, and ethnic loyalties to diffuse class differentiation. The analysis clearly shows that low caste groups are mounting increasingly militant challenges to the hold of the upper castes and classes over state institutions which have provided the most important avenue of social mobility in modern India.