Neither Silent, Nor Revolution

Silent revolution, my foot. I believe it is neither silent, nor a revolution. The book would have been more aptly titled The Paradoxes of Mandal Politics.

While disagreeing with the title and some conclusions, let me, however, state that Jaffrelot’s scholarship is unparalleled. Among contemporary political scientists writing on India, there is no one who can match his mastery over two of the most powerful agendas of modern Indian politics, the Mandal and Kamandal phenomena.

The book begins with a quotation from the father of Constituent Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar: ‘‘We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well… (since) in politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.’’

Next, Jaffrelot shows how the conservative Congress Party in the north was unable to bring about such a transformation. He maps the trajectories of the various non-Congress movements in north India that have led the polity towards social democracy. He examines Lohia’s socialism, Charan Singh’s Kisan movement, BSP’s Dalit movement, the Mandal agitation, and the Janata Dal. In short, the movements from below which empowered the low castes and Dalits in north India. His focus: how they changed the composition of the various legislative bodies. He finds that while one-third of MPs in the Lok Sabha are today from the upper castes, they were two thirds in 1952. OBC MPs were one-tenth in 1977, today they constitute one-fourth of the Lok Sabha.

One wishes Jaffrelot had been more ambitious and asked more probing questions: why were Muslims not part of this empowerment? The representation of minorities has declined since the ’50s. Why are third front parties not able to consolidate themselves? And much more paradoxical, why have the leaders of these movements not concerned themselves with governance or economic development? Jaffrelot’s answer: the trajectory of social democracy is still ongoing and change in representation is an important precondition for any further changes.

If the bottomline is a mere change in caste composition of representation, then why use the phrase Silent Revolution? In fact, Jaffrelot also seems to assume that Dalits and backwards are natural allies, although the empirical facts, especially in UP, seem to prove otherwise. Despite such limitations Jaffrelot’s scholarship is impressive. There are very few French scholars who study India. But the handicap in quantity is made up by sheer quality. If Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus changed the course of sociology of caste, then Jaffrelot’s twin volumes on Indian politics have set new standards for anyone working on Mandal and Mandir politics.