Lucia Michelutti offers an original approach to the transformations of Indian democracy. From an ethnography of the Yadavs, it analyzes the sociological and anthropological consequences of access to the political representation of the groups of “ bass caste ».
Christophe Jaffrelot defends the thesis that India has known, since independence, a long “ silent revolution “: Democracy was imposed by the caste and allowed the dominated castes to take over electoral and occupy an increasingly central place in the political field. Many clues thus suggest the transition from a formal democracy to a substantive democracy characterized by greater electoral participation, increased political competition and better representativeness of elected assemblies. If this “ revolution “(Marked by the progressive erosion of the domination of the Congress party and the growing importance of parties constituted on the basis of a caste identity) is undeniable on a strictly electoral level, it remains to be seen whether it is accompanied of a revolution comparable to the level of individuals who make up these castes. The work of Lucia Michelutti helps to fill this gap by abandoning the institutional analysis of the transformations of Indian democracy in favor of an analysis centered on its most cultural aspects. This anthropologist thus chooses to focus on the Yadavs, a community present throughout the territory of the Indian Union and which has participated for twenty years, and mainly in certain states of northern India, in the process of Democratization of democracy, the process by which access to political representation extends to all groups traditionally kept away from it.
Yadavs, a highly politicized caste group
Yadavs are one of the most important and politically important caste groups of India, a group that has benefited socially, economically and politically from the Green Revolution and agrarian reforms. At the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, Yadavs were, with other caste groups, at the head of the mobilization in favor of the application of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission opening quotas of jobs in the administration for people belonging to the jurisdiction-administering category of Other backward classes (other backward classes, Obc) to which the Yadavs belong. The latter arise as the first defenders of the interests of this category by claiming to be God Krishna – a process of interpretation or reinterpretation of a mythological past present in many groups of caste which aims to homogenize the community and which is generally accompanied by a reorganization of internal hierarchies to the group – and therefore taking responsibility for the fight for social justice. At the level of the political field, this mobilization has contributed to the electoral decline of the hitherto dominant congress party and has led to a significant change in the sociology of legislative assemblies of several states of northern India, in particular the Uttar Pradesh, With the arrival of a large number of caste elected officials Obc and Yadavs in particular.
The accession of Lalu Prasad Yadav as Chief Minister From Bihar, where he remained from 1990 to 1997 before his wife took over, thus constitutes one of the significant events in the history of access to this group in political power. If the Yadavs have become an essential political force in several states in northern India, Lucia Michelutti, however, chooses Mathura, a city of Uttar Pradesh (the most populous state of this country, located in the plain of Ganges , and who saw in the early 1990s Mulayam Singh Yadav, a Yadav leader, arriving at the head of the state).
It indeed supports its argument on a rich and various material composed not only of the ethnography which it carried out in Mathura between 1998 and 2000 but also of the analysis of political texts, religious publications, administrative archives, or still electoral surveys carried out by the CSDS (Center for the Study of Developing Societies). It thus describes a group of caste whose members seem to be extremely politicized and marked by a sense of much sense of the community: the Yadavs come to design as “ innate “Their political skills and do not hesitate to describe themselves as” a caste of politicians ». This particularly acute politicization would be linked to the feeling of being part of a group that has built its identity around the idea of a divine ancestry, that of Krishna, redefined as a virile, socialist and democratic divinity, ancestry that influences in depth On the speech of Yadavs intellectuals, politicians and social activists.
The varnacularization of politics
By studying Mathura’s Yadavs, Michelutti shows that the identity and political affirmation of this caste community takes place in a process of “ varnacularization »Democratic policy. It defines this process as the rooting of political ideas in fields which are traditionally considered foreign to politics (family, caste, kinship, religion, etc.), rooting which, in return, structures the practice of popular politics (Popular Politics). The general idea of this concept is that from the moment when democracy penetrates a singular socio-cultural environment, it tends to vernacularize in contact and that it thus contributes to the production of new values and singular social relations who will structure politics in turn. The challenge of this book is therefore to identify the particular forms that the idea and democratic practice will take within the Yadav community in Mathura. In a more ambitious way, this book is also intended to show that the entry into the policy of dominated groups is not the consequence of the changes that took place at the level of electoral policy: on the contrary, the political parties are would have made it that adjust to changes in the social and cultural structure of the dominated groups.
Lucia Michelutti thus strives to objectify the way in which democratic values and ideas are embedded in idioms and kinship practices, in the ideologies of marriage, in Hinduism, in the conceptions of masculinity, in the ‘Caste identity, etc. It shows in particular that the varnacularization of democracy is particularly clear in the field of kinship: the different sub-casts around which marriage strategies are organized to merge into a single unit of kinship ( THE Krishnavanshi Yadav). This sociological development of marriage structures, promoted in particular by caste organizations, contributes to creating a sufficiently large and unified community to be competitive electoral.
Religion, both in its ritual and daily dimension and in its more ideological dimension, also leads to the transformation of power relations at the local level and to the political mobilization of the Yadavs which then manage to become aware of their number. Krishna has thus become both the main divinity and the most prestigious ancestor of the Yadavs of Mathura and her cult gradually replaced the deities of local lineage. This process of unification around Krishna contributes to the adoption of a neo-humanism which favors the unity of the group to its traditional divisions: the kinship with the mythical and divine figure of Krishna thus legitimizes the equality of the whole members of the community.
A “ ethnicization »Of Caste ?
Through this study of the process of varnacularization, Michelutti therefore strives to show how the ideas and practices of democracy are anchored in social and cultural practices, and are rooted in the consciousness of individuals. Michelutti’s work helps us to understand how a caste group can manage to unify at a level “ micro-local », To assert his identity as modern and progressive and, therefore, to participate in the rooting of democracy in India. If the role of castes in the process of democratization of Indian democracy and as a directory of mobilization has long been known and recognized, Michelutti’s work makes it possible to illustrate and identify with more precision the methods of this process.
However, we could have hoped that the author will set up a comparison between several fields of study elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh, in regions where the Yadavs are strongly present and represented or, in contrast, in spaces characterized by a Low presence of Yadavs. Indeed, the city of Mathura where Lucia Michelutti conducted her investigation occupies a special place in the mythology of the Yadavs in that it is the city where, according to the texts of Hinduism, was born Krishna. We can therefore assume that living in this city has a strong impact on the construction of the social identity of the Yadavs.
In her conclusion, Lucia Michelutti, however, calls for more comparatism and affirms that the process of varnacularization which she puts forward would certainly find himself in a similar way in other groups, such as the Maharashtra Marathas or the Gujarat patidars . Relying on the ethnography of Manuela Ciotti, it develops more particularly the comparison with Shamarsa caste traditionally considered as untouchable in Uttar Pradesh and which places the valuation of modernity and access to education in the center of its social identity. Having access to knowledge would be for the Chamars a “ ontological experience “Which would allow them to acquire a new” substance ” moral. Just as in the case of Yadavs, he would thus take a process of “ substantialization From the caste which, while reinvesting the repertoires of modernity and democracy, would turn into a kind of “ ethnic group Prompts to defend his interests.