Invention or Inversion? Revisiting the Question of Caste Tradition

Abstract

The main theme of this paper is to revisit the question of caste and the politics of/on traditions. We have explored the questions of mythology; how ‘we’, the lower caste people associate and (re)interpret the mythical characters as a process of social upward mobility. So, is it the invention of tradition or is it the inversion of tradition or both? Interestingly, we could be able to locate a distinct regional pattern in this case. Thus, we argue that in the Northern part of India, specifically in Uttar Pradesh, though it is the process called the invention of tradition, it can be framed as a little tradition under the grand Hindu tradition. On the other hand, in the Southern part of the country specifically in Tamil Nadu, it is rather the process called the inversion of tradition which is much more radically grounded in sub-national ethos. Based on these premises, this article further argues that Uttar Pradesh’s caste politics is based on the invention of a tradition model which can incorporate the lower castes’ little traditions within the larger ambit of the Hindu grand narratives. Thus, new Hindutva politics has easily appropriated them within their polemic. On the contrary, in the South, due to the inversion of the tradition model embedded in a pre-existing political tradition and sub-national ethos, Hindutva failed to get a proper hold in recent times.