The vernacularisation of democracy: politics caste and religion in India Michelutti, Lucia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-245) and index.

During the 1990s, Indian democracy witnessed an upsurge in the political participation of lower castes/communities and the emergence of political leaders from humble social backgrounds who presented themselves as promoters of social justice for underprivileged communities. This book is a vivid account of how Indian popular democracy works on the ground. Setting itself against conventional theories of democratization, the book shows how the political upsurge of one of the most assertive and politically powerful communities in north India - the Yadavs - is situated within a wider process of the vernacularisation of democratic politics, referring to the ways in which values and practices of democracy become embedded in particular cultural and social practices, and in the process become entrenched in the consciousness of common people. Drawing on a large body of archival research and combining ethnographic material with colonial and post-colonial history, the study shows how the analysis of local idioms of caste, kinship, kingship, popular religion, the past and politics (the vernacular) inform popular perceptions of the political world, and of how the democratic process, in turn shapes ideas and practices of the vernacular. This line of enquiry provides a novel framework to understand the unique experience of Indian democracy as well as the rise of popular politics and its meaning in different parts of the world. (Source: http://www.lse.ac.uk