Behind the Ballot: Democracy, Chicanery, and Electoral Technique in Modern India

Abstract

AbstractPolitical commentaries on elections highlight the act and outcome of suffrage. Votes are tallied and trends analyzed as pundits distill election results, post facto, into predictable storylines said to reveal the so‐called pulse of the nation, littered with clichés about popular mandates and the people's verdict. Such accounts interpret elections as a straightforward index of a “popular will” without attention to their differentiated experience and how historically disenfranchised groups navigate their complex institutional landscape. Elections are not extraordinary events that transcend the inequalities of everyday life but a time when hierarchies are asserted, contested, and fortified. This occurs through the ballot as well as through the architecture of the institution and tactical use of its routine procedures. The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK; Liberation Panthers Party), a prominent Dalit‐led (ex‐untouchable) party in India, is a case in point. Combining ethnography from inside a political campaign and interviews with VCK candidates, party leaders, and grassroots activists, this article employs election symbols as a diagnostic to study the architecture of the electoral institution, exploring how its tools and techniques—which are neither neutral nor freely available to all—consolidate structural advantages that privilege well‐resourced players while hindering those historically excluded from political power. [democracy, elections, inequality, India, caste, Dalits]