I saw a so-called journalist asking every person, lady or gentleman, on election day only one question - kaon jaat hauw [which caste you are]? Others may be doing the same. So many analysts know no other method of reckoning than caste arithmetic. This I find not only a wrong way of inquiry or analysis as this yields no correct outcome but also an abhorrent practice in the name of journalism or scholarship. I see such persons have no self-respect as they go on insulting sprees not sparing any lady or gentleman on the street. Isn't it showing gross disrespect to a citizen to ask their caste on the day they are performing their most crucial democratic role? In that particular coverage, many individuals did not take their caste names and yet the journalist insisted that his respondents speak their caste identity. This is to treat the members of this great republic as dumb herds. In India democracy survives, nay thrives, despite these so-called intellectuals but because of the common folks of the country. I see them or each of us as the greats as they are the people who sustain the largest democracy on the planet despite all the things contrary to conditions needed for a democracy to survive.
This is not to deny that caste is a factor when a person selects a button on EVM to press, but it is not the sole factor and not a factor every time. The other related fact which is grossly ignored is that caste coincides with so many other factors like kinship network, locality, economic conditions, gender relations, so on and so forth, and all these conditions do act on the decision of an elector but analysts simply do not pay heed to the fact.
Let me add this here that the commoners of the county remain secular and political savvy on the whole despite they have been subjected to all undemocratic ideas and institutions as the imperial-colonial structure-function continued and the Bolsheviks decided its goals.
Niraj Kumar Jha
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