‘Though he is a landlord, that Sarpanch is my servant!’ Caste and democracy in a village of south India

Abstract

Much of the research exploring democratisation of rural society has focused on changes occurring in the formal political process of elections. In contrast, this article examines the extent of democratisation and the decline of caste in rural society by investigating morality and interactions in diverse political spaces of a village in south India. Our findings suggest that although caste hierarchy and the ideology of patronage have lost their legitimacy in regulating interactions in the course of formal political processes such as elections and institutions of local administration, they continue to command the moral allegiance of village society in the domain of everyday social and political interactions. The study concludes that although there are significant discontinuities in the use of caste power in rural India, caste dominance continues to persist.