Caste Mobilisation in Chandrapur District Bar Association Elections

Elections are a divisive time for the voters in general. We consider elections as a mechanism through which the electorate exercises its voting rights to elect their representatives. This is a complex exercise, where voters take into account the factors they will consider before casting their vote.

The CDBA as a Microcosm of Larger Democratic Processes

The Chandrapur District Bar Association (CDBA) is a microcosm of the general elections that take place from time to time. This is because the CDBA elections, at a nominal level, represent the same understanding of the electorate as they exercise their vote in general elections. The lawyering community represents the society outside the court system, which means that the society from which lawyers come to practice in court is the same society that is reflected in the electoral choices they make. It goes without saying that lawyers represent society in general.

As the society and electorate are divided on ideological lines, similarly the lawyering community is divided on ideological lines. This is even more so because lawyers are a thinking community. They shape the understanding of the community and, at a rudimentary level, represent society itself. Therefore, what happens in the CDBA elections is representative of society itself.

It is a general understanding that society is divided into two parts: one liberal and the other conservative. By definition, liberals are progressive in nature, meaning they want to test everything at the altar of logic and see whether the inter-relationship of members of society and the social and economic characteristics are progressing (developing, improving) in some manner or the other. The conservative, on the other hand, wants to conserve and safeguard the existing social, political, and economic structures.

Misconceptions About Voting and Personal Friendships

It goes without saying that these existing structures are represented in the lawyering community. However, common understanding does not follow this logic. Common people think that the choice of vote is only related to personal friendship and factors not directly concerned with ideological outcomes. The question of the right to vote is generally not deliberated on the lines of the vision of the society in which we want to shape our lives. People forget that every single deliberation and exercise of vote is not merely connected with personal relationships but concerns the larger vision of society and its ideological outcomes.

So, for example, if we are voting for a conservative group, it is a vote for the sustenance of an older version of society and the inequalities that have been levelled by the Constitution of India after independence. Similarly, a vote for a progressive faction means a vote for a faction that challenges the older version of society.

The rules of electoral dynamics suggest that if an appeal to the electorate has to be successful, it has to be made on the basis of a grouping. Although democracy is based on individual voting, for it to be a successful enterprise, the appeal has to be made to a group, class, or category which is manageable. This management is called mobilisation. Mobilisation can be on the basis of either a group as described above or on any issue which resonates with the group being targeted.

The Modern Critique of Caste-Based Mobilisation

Caste is one of such groups. In spite of caste being a relic of the past, it can be used as a handle of mobilisation. The prevalence of this kind of mobilisation can be seen in general electoral processes. In the recent CDBA elections, an outcry has been made that caste is being used as a weapon of mobilisation. This negative connotation exists because caste is considered a derogatory form of mobilisation.

The modern democratic idea entails that such primitive forms of mobilisation should not be used. Since democracy is a modern enterprise and, by all means, a function of a progressive agenda, the only mobilisation that is permitted is mobilisation based on individual identity. It is also considered a facet of modernisation which demands putting on the back burner any mobilisation based on identity, religion, or other such primitive aspects. If that is so, then mobilisation or appeal to electorates on the basis of caste or religion will be considered antithetical to modernisation.

Unlike religion, caste reconfigures itself with modernisation and transforms while operating within electoral democracy, market economy, and urban labour markets. Going by this understanding, caste no longer remains within the domain of purity and pollution but manifests itself through power, networks, and access to resources. If there is material inequality and exclusion, then mobilisation with respect to caste does not remain at the level of belief and culture but becomes a representation of social inequality as well as economic inequality.

Now, if the two groups standing for election in the CDBA elections represent conservative and progressive factions, then appeal to the electorate on the basis of caste cannot be termed a regressive agenda. Moreover, if the hallmark of conservative mobilisation is religion, then progressive mobilisation on the basis of caste cannot be termed regressive. In fact, mobilisation on the basis of caste is not a failure of democracy but its logical outcome in an unequal society.

Political assertion of caste (since the democratic exercise is the highest form of political assertion) is a response to historical exclusion and not merely identity politics. Structural inequalities vis-à-vis caste make it an important mechanism, and caste becomes a symbol of such representation. The critique of caste-based mobilisation by conservative groups becomes an upper-caste elite claim.

It is also important to note that the adaptation to new socio-economic conditions is not confined to a particular caste or community. The so-called upper caste or Savarna groups have also adjusted themselves to the emerging socio-economic realities of modern India. This means that the processes of transformation, interest formation, and political articulation operate across the spectrum of castes, and not merely within the OBC or Dalit segments. As a result, mobilisation on the basis of caste is not an exclusive feature of the marginalised; it is equally present among the upper castes, who also mobilise to safeguard their interests, resources, and institutional access. Therefore, the deployment of caste as a political handle is a phenomenon that cuts across caste hierarchies, and this explains why caste-based alignment is visible among the Savarna, the OBC, and the Dalit groups alike.

One of the foremost writers on caste, Prof. Surinder Jodhka, calls this ‘privileged castelessness’, which means that those who benefit from caste can afford to ignore it. Jodhka further argues that caste changes form with capitalism, democracy, and modern institutions — it does not disappear; it adapts. (Surinder S. Jodhka, Caste in Contemporary India, 2015)

This stands in contrast to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who famously argued that caste is not merely a system of social organisation but “a system which is not merely division of labour but a division of labourers” and that it must be annihilated, not accommodated. (B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, 1936)

The debate on caste mobilisation in the CDBA elections must therefore be seen not through a moral panic about backwardness, but through the constitutional and democratic lens of political assertion. In an unequal society, democracy naturally produces identity-based mobilisation because representation cannot be divorced from history. Caste mobilisation is not the opposite of modern democracy; in contexts marked by structural inequality, it is one of its instruments.

To delegitimise caste as a vehicle of mobilisation is to delegitimise the very conditions that made political equality necessary in the first place.