Marcel Proust wrote, “Men, their natures not altering overnight, seek in every new order a continuance of the old.” Caste and religion have remained the master cleavages of Indian politics for most of the last century. The caste survey, released by the Bihar government, with coordinated support from the entire Opposition, can be described as a Proustian political move. It tries to constitute a new political opening through the instrument of an old paradigm.
This unfurling of the contesting flags of caste and religious identity gives the first clear shape to the ideological contours of the 2024 general elections. It also firmly reinforces the role of these twin ethnic identity constructions as the fundamental pillars of political mobilisation.
Many critics have dubbed the move as regressive, cynical, and unimaginative, and a return to the ‘Mandal versus Mandir’ politics we had supposedly left behind in the 1990s. Yet, this framing assumes caste- and religion-based identity politics to be pre-formed packages, whose practices have remained stagnant over the last three decades, even as the political economy has been transformed by liberalisation.
