Caste, class and conflict: organization and ideological change in an Orissa village

Abstract

This essay, based on a diachronic analysis of electoral mobilization in an Indian village, presents evidence of upward political mobility of the Pāna, an untouchable caste. This change is due primarily to the organizational efforts of caste leaders who have successfully exploited the opportunities offered by the electoral system.Mobilization of the lower strata on this scale has been made possible by a comprehensive and significant change in the dominant value system within which social egalitarianism has now appeared as a contender for the dominant position against the former undisputed supremacy of social hierarchy. To understand this social ferment, which characterizes political life in rural India today, we need a basic reappraisal of the varṇa system which still forms the dominant paradigm of research on rural India.