Being Middle-class in South Asia

Abstract

In this interesting, wide-ranging book Markus Daechsel argues that historians of colonial India, especially those concerned with Muslim separatism in the Punjab and United Provinces, have focused on what he calls the politics of interest. By this he means politics conducted within the representative structures established by the colonial state, where influential individuals belonging to local elites tended to represent the interests of their caste and religion, rather than their economic or social class. This accorded with the official British view of India as a society dominated by primordial collective loyalties rooted in caste, religion or tribe, which in turn were reflected in the truncated electoral system established by the British state. In addition, from the first decennial census of 1871 onwards, caste and religion were the key categories in the collection of statistical data on the Indian population, thereby reinforcing their importance as the determinants of political allegiances in the public arena. The prevailing presumption was that the numerical strength of communities, defined by these categories, should determine their share of resources. Since politics found it difficult to shake off the straitjacket of these communal categories, the colonial state in India was successful in forestalling the emergence of class politics at various levels of the Indian social hierarchy. One result of this was to inhibit the emergence of a politically conscious middle class. Even those who could be classified as middle-class lawyers, urban professionals, government servants, journalists, and so on identified less with each other than with networks of patronage formed around powerful local elites. In the case of the Punjab in the period covered by Daechsel, this lack of an autonomous middle class was partly due to communal differences between 'Hindus' and 'Muslims', but the dominant position of landowners in the province, who had been heavily favoured and protected by the colonial state in its bid to ensure social stability in the countryside of the Raj's most important recruiting ground for the army, was also an important factor. This politics of interest formed the background to what Daeschel describes as 'the politics of self-expression' prominent in the South Asian