Akio Tanabe | The University of Tokyo (original) (raw)

Papers by Akio Tanabe

“The South Asian Path of Development: A Historical and Anthropological Perspective” In The Cultural Basis of Economic Growth in India, edited by Kazuo Mino and Tadashi Yagi, 1-27. Singapore: Springer Nature., 2022

This chapter explores the cultural basis of economic development in the long-term history of Indi... more This chapter explores the cultural basis of economic development in the long-term history of India. India has always been a meeting place of diver­sities, where the development path is “diversity-driven”. It did not rely solely on enhancement of productivity, but more on diversification of knowl­edge leading to the multiplication of the kinds of products and services. Early-modern India developed a socio-economic system that adapted to seasonal and inter-annual variations in rainfall, managed risks through a system of shares, and accumulated the fruits of labor in the form of specialized skills in social groups. The colonial period saw a partial divergence from the development path when caste hierarchy was “traditionalized” and various social groups were “peasantized”. Today, we see a reconvergence to the diversity-driven path where the post-peasant masses are diversifying sources of income to secure livelihood and increase life chances. Also, there is a new reassembling of diversities where varied skills and knowl­edge meet and give rise to innovations. The agenda for the Indian economy lies in mediating and enabling a smooth linking between various sectors and modes of production with a balance between the rural and the urban, agri­cultural and non-agricultural, informal and formal, and livelihood and profit.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we ca... more Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we can identify potential cultural resources in the ritual that provide the foundations of people’s moral–ethical agency for overcoming the postcolonial predicament. The ritual goes through three phases: (a) the arrival of the goddess’s power from the forest into the fort-village through the tribal medium, which manifests the value of ontological equality; (b) the union of the divine power with the royal authority mediated by the brāhmaṇa priest, which affirms the value of hierarchy; and (c) the consumption of the product of the union in the form of sacrificial meat, which represents the value of the centrality of power. I argue that this ritual can be seen as an enactment of the sacrificial drama of regeneration, where the three values and social configurations of ‘equality’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘centrality’ unfold and interact to reproduce the community. The three phases of the ritual represent ‘revolving values’ which are legitimate, plural and multifaceted cultural resources utilised by the people to valorise their existence as well as their social practices. This chapter also analyses how the ritual form and the structure of patronage changed historically (‘ritual in history’) and how the ritual invokes historical memory in the form of myths, legends and family narratives (‘history in ritual’). The ritual can be said to be a representation of local history not in terms of linear transformation but of an accumulation of the past: tribals worshipping the goddess, the gradual migration of peasant-warriors and other caste members into the area, the chief challenging and being defeated by the medium/goddess, royal patronage of the goddess in the form of royal sacrifice, the introduction of the new rich as new patrons of the ritual during the colonial era etc. The entanglement of history and ritual enable the people to reflect upon their past and present. This has the effect of not only legitimising the status and power of the upper castes but also unsettling their hegemony by calling into question the prevailing practices. In the postcolonial situation, there is, on the one hand, the hegemonic attempt by the old and new elites to ritually assert the colonially constructed structure of status and power and, on the other hand, also the subaltern attempts to emphasise the importance of devotion and service, thus placing weight on ontological equality in the face of divine power. It is noteworthy that, in the ritual, there is an increasing number of people making offerings individually and approaching the medium/goddess directly on the hill outside the village. Also, the medium/goddess now enters every house, instead of a chosen few as in the past, to bless family members, particularly married women who cannot come out in public. These changes suggest that more emphasis is now placed on the devotion and service of individuals and direct ties and contact with the goddess. Here, we observe dilemma and contestation between the superalternate values of hierarchy and centrality and the subalternate value of ontological equality. In this way, the ritual not only leads to the reproduction of the structure of status and power, but also illustrates the potential of subaltern resistance against the hegemonic structure.

Asian and African Area Studies

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , Jul 16, 2021

Chapter 2 investigates the history of state and social formation in Khurda kingdom in the early m... more Chapter 2 investigates the history of state and social formation in Khurda kingdom in the early modern period. An integrative process took place in which the state and local society, the coast and the interior and human society and the natural world began to be be increasingly connected. Instead of seeing this increasing connectivity as a result of the penetration of modernising forces from outside, permeating the forest and expanding agriculture, this chapter looks at history from the inside out, and explores how the frontier was opened from within the forest. Forest-dwellers responded to new opportunities and availed their environmental knowledge and martial capabilities to become warriors, peasants and herdsmen, thus enabling state and social formation from below. In the course of this, social and ecological spaces opened at the interface of the coastal plain and the interior forest, accompanied by the twin processes of Hinduisation and tribalisation, allowing the diversification of resource utilisation and lifeways. Inner transformative dynamics arose from the engagement between and the management of these diversities.

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021

The incongruence between elite nationalism and popular patriotism was poignantly exposed after In... more The incongruence between elite nationalism and popular patriotism was poignantly exposed after India’s independence. Chapters 6 and 7 describe the postcolonial predicament in the early 1990s, where there was a disjunction between the politico-economic sphere based on ‘the logic of the fish’ (where a big fish eats a smaller one) and the socio-ritual sphere based on the logic of the sharing in the community. Chapter 6 explores the socio-cultural sphere of postcolonial Indian rural society through ethnographic data. The order of the body, society and nature is believed to be maintained when a body is born from a union between a man and woman who match each other, ‘eat’ the proper land and perform the prescribed duty as sacrifice in accordance with the ‘tradition’. Here, we find the idea that the balance of the whole is maintained in the service of each one whose position is distinct in terms of food, gender, living space and work. The idea of the connection between body, kinship and land is also closely related to people’s ideas and practices of the agricultural cycle and annual reproduction. Farming and ritual activities related to rice cultivation involve community relationships, the division of agricultural and ritual labour, a cyclic view of time coinciding with the annual cycle of rice farming and an intimate connection with the worship of the earth as goddess, the whole of which has a sense of harmony and contact with the sacred. It is through the ritual processes that the seemingly harmonious and holistic world of ‘traditional culture’ is most prominently represented, enacted, reaffirmed and also transformed and recreated. It should be noted, however, that this idealised ‘organic whole’ is contained within the limited sphere of the socio-cultural and does not constitute the moral basis of the politico-economic sphere, dominated by the cash economy and factional politics. The idealised religio-ontological identity is stressed precisely in contrast to the politico-economic realities.

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021

Chapter 10 locates endogenous potentialities for building local democracy in contemporary India t... more Chapter 10 locates endogenous potentialities for building local democracy in contemporary India through analyses of new dynamics in panchayat politics. I pay particular attention to the agency of subalterns in redefining the ontology of caste and, thereby, attempting to culturally underpin the significance of democratic representation and the cooperation of multiple social groups in local self-government. Instead of seeing the democratisation process in India as a sign of the internalisation of the values of the modern state, which would entail a top-down perspective towards universalising subjects, I see the new possibilities as a sign of subaltern agency that utilises and mediates both indigenous and exogenous resources towards the realisation of democratic cooperation that recognises difference. What we are witnessing in contemporary India may be the creation of a ‘vernacular democracy’ based on the creative mediation by the people between embodied cultural resources and the ideas and institutions of democracy. Here ‘vernacular’ refers to the non-official cultural resources of discourse and practice that are historically accumulated and moral-practically embodied in the lifeworld of the villagers. Notably, the lower castes draw on the sacrificial idioms of ‘duty’ (kartabya), ‘service’ (sebā) and ‘share’ (bhāga) to legitimise and insist on their equal participation and entitlement in the public sphere. These vernacular idioms, related to the ontology of caste and sacrificial principles, are employed in the present local politics to ensure proper representation and entitlements to the multiple groups in the recognition of difference and yet retain the sense of cooperation and community. Moreover, there is a subaltern emphasis on ontological equality in sacrificial ethics. This egalitarian sacrificial ethics is presented today from a subaltern viewpoint as the new foundational idea for the democratic local community.

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure an... more This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives.

Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality.

This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction: towards a cultural-politics of ethics in everyday practice

2. Managing diversities: frontiers, forest communities and little kingdoms

3. Local society and kingship: reconsidering ‘caste’, ‘community’ and ‘state’

4. Early colonial transformation: the emergence of wedged dichotomies

5. Consolidation of colonial dichotomy: political-economy and cultural identity

6. Postcolonial tradition: the biomoral universe

7. Cash and faction: ‘the logic of the fish’ in the political-economy

8. Ritual, history and identity: goddess Rāmacaṇḍī festival

9. Recast(e)ing identity: transformations from below

10. Vernacular democracy: a post-postcolonial transformation

11. Conclusion: beyond the postcolonial

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 7 describes how factional politics and corruption became prevalent in the politico-econom... more Chapter 7 describes how factional politics and corruption became prevalent in the politico-economic sphere. The downward spread of democracy in India was linked to populism based on the redistribution of wealth by the state. This led to people fighting for shares in state resources through factional politics. Core members of factions belonged to the dominant castes, reflecting the power structure of local society. The existence of factional politics is lamented in the village as one of the prime examples of corrupted modernity, where the struggle for personal gain rather than the harmony of the community is given importance. It is considered a manifestation of the social deterioration characteristic of the declining age of kaḷi juga (the age of corruption). While such a negative evaluation is made about factional politics from the viewpoint of the moral community, it is also true that people accept and adopt the practices of bribery and embezzlement as being necessary in the world of the political economy. Factional politics, in fact, exemplifies people’s agency to adapt to new opportunities for political participation under electoral democracy. Ironically, the development of factional politics in postcolonial India epitomises the diffusion of the idea and institution of democracy, where more people can imagine exercising some influence in the distribution of state resources. However, factional politics is often carried out according to the logic of majority formation where electoral votes are sought at the expense of the rights of minorities and the public good. This is a typical example of the paradox of democracy in India, namely, the incongruity between the institutional logic of democratic forms and the logic of popular mobilisation. In this light, the agenda for postcolonial India is to mediate democratic institutions and values with embodied cultural ethics, which also involves the issue of how to overcome the colonial dichotomy between the socio-cultural sphere and the politico-economic sphere.

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure an... more This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives. Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality. This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 3 looks at the system of managing diversity at a local level and how it was connected wit... more Chapter 3 looks at the system of managing diversity at a local level and how it was connected with the larger state, market and religious systems in the Khurda kingdom and the local community of Garh Manitri in the eighteenth century. It gives details of the ‘system of entitlements’, which prescribed the rights and duties of community members who offered administrative, military, economic, ritual and religious services for the local community and the state in lieu of shares of the local produce. The king was the central sacrificer and the grantor of entitlements, the semantics of which were represented in the terms ‘service’ and ‘duty’ both in historical records and in myths, legends and ritual performances. Since the Khurda king was considered the earthly representative of the universal god Jagannātha, the positions of local community members in the socio-politico-cosmic whole were guaranteed through their performance of prescribed duties and ‘eating the land’ as ascribed by the king. A person’s everyday activity was a meaningful sacrificial offering to the local goddess, the king and Jagannātha, which in turn secured his/her place in the local community, the kingdom and the universe. Hence, I refer to this system as the ‘sacrificer state and sacrificial community’. There were significant interrelationships between caste, community ethos, patriotism and religious devotionalism. The importance of the local community should also be understood in relation to the development of the market economy and military–administrative technology in eighteenth-century early modern Orissa. The local communities––each centred on a fort in Khurda––functioned as important local military–administrative centres for the state. They were also the basic sites of production in the hinterlands that provided raw cotton for manufacturing textile and rice for the market that thrived on Indian Ocean trade.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapters 4 and 5 look at social transformations under colonialism. Colonial rule brought about ma... more Chapters 4 and 5 look at social transformations under colonialism. Colonial rule brought about major changes in two stages. Chapter 4 depicts early colonial transformation. During the early colonial encounter, the structure of the ‘sacrificer state and sacrificial community’ began to fragment. The intricate system of totality that connected the local system of entitlements, kingship and the Jagannātha cult was broken down and their depoliticised and ritualised forms were created. The villagers had to seek their ‘traditional’ identity in the limited sphere of ‘community rituals’ and ‘ritual kingship’. The introduction of private landownership some decades after colonisation led to the collapse of the system of entitlements, and the formation of the dominant caste–centred jajmani relationships based on unequal landownership. The introduction of land proprietorship also delinked everyday productive activity from traditional identity. The colonially constructed land tenure structure privileged the local elite of brāhmaṇas and karaṇas (scribes) and the dominant caste of khaṇḍāyatas (peasant-militia), thus creating a ‘unitary caste hierarchy’ where brahmanical ritual hierarchy overlapped with the economic landholding hierarchy. Early colonialism thus ‘traditionalised’ hierarchy and dominance in local society. The sacrificial idea of the cooperation of ontologically equal parts and duty as a devotional service to god came to be confined to the religio-ritual sphere and cut off from socio-economic relationships.

In The Kyoto Manifesto for Global Economics: The Platform of Community, Humanity, and Spirituality, edited by Stomu Yamash’ta, Tadashi Yagi and Stephen Hill, 179-193. Singapore: Springer. , 2018

‘Vernacular democracy’ is emerging in contemporary India with increasing participation of more di... more ‘Vernacular democracy’ is emerging in contemporary India with increasing participation of more diverse population in public activities. This new deepening of democracy is upheld by the affirmation of diversity based on the ethico-spiritual value of ontological equality.

Sharing Sovereignty, 2004

“The South Asian Path of Development: A Historical and Anthropological Perspective” In The Cultural Basis of Economic Growth in India, edited by Kazuo Mino and Tadashi Yagi, 1-27. Singapore: Springer Nature., 2022

This chapter explores the cultural basis of economic development in the long-term history of Indi... more This chapter explores the cultural basis of economic development in the long-term history of India. India has always been a meeting place of diver­sities, where the development path is “diversity-driven”. It did not rely solely on enhancement of productivity, but more on diversification of knowl­edge leading to the multiplication of the kinds of products and services. Early-modern India developed a socio-economic system that adapted to seasonal and inter-annual variations in rainfall, managed risks through a system of shares, and accumulated the fruits of labor in the form of specialized skills in social groups. The colonial period saw a partial divergence from the development path when caste hierarchy was “traditionalized” and various social groups were “peasantized”. Today, we see a reconvergence to the diversity-driven path where the post-peasant masses are diversifying sources of income to secure livelihood and increase life chances. Also, there is a new reassembling of diversities where varied skills and knowl­edge meet and give rise to innovations. The agenda for the Indian economy lies in mediating and enabling a smooth linking between various sectors and modes of production with a balance between the rural and the urban, agri­cultural and non-agricultural, informal and formal, and livelihood and profit.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we ca... more Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we can identify potential cultural resources in the ritual that provide the foundations of people’s moral–ethical agency for overcoming the postcolonial predicament. The ritual goes through three phases: (a) the arrival of the goddess’s power from the forest into the fort-village through the tribal medium, which manifests the value of ontological equality; (b) the union of the divine power with the royal authority mediated by the brāhmaṇa priest, which affirms the value of hierarchy; and (c) the consumption of the product of the union in the form of sacrificial meat, which represents the value of the centrality of power. I argue that this ritual can be seen as an enactment of the sacrificial drama of regeneration, where the three values and social configurations of ‘equality’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘centrality’ unfold and interact to reproduce the community. The three phases of the ritual represent ‘revolving values’ which are legitimate, plural and multifaceted cultural resources utilised by the people to valorise their existence as well as their social practices. This chapter also analyses how the ritual form and the structure of patronage changed historically (‘ritual in history’) and how the ritual invokes historical memory in the form of myths, legends and family narratives (‘history in ritual’). The ritual can be said to be a representation of local history not in terms of linear transformation but of an accumulation of the past: tribals worshipping the goddess, the gradual migration of peasant-warriors and other caste members into the area, the chief challenging and being defeated by the medium/goddess, royal patronage of the goddess in the form of royal sacrifice, the introduction of the new rich as new patrons of the ritual during the colonial era etc. The entanglement of history and ritual enable the people to reflect upon their past and present. This has the effect of not only legitimising the status and power of the upper castes but also unsettling their hegemony by calling into question the prevailing practices. In the postcolonial situation, there is, on the one hand, the hegemonic attempt by the old and new elites to ritually assert the colonially constructed structure of status and power and, on the other hand, also the subaltern attempts to emphasise the importance of devotion and service, thus placing weight on ontological equality in the face of divine power. It is noteworthy that, in the ritual, there is an increasing number of people making offerings individually and approaching the medium/goddess directly on the hill outside the village. Also, the medium/goddess now enters every house, instead of a chosen few as in the past, to bless family members, particularly married women who cannot come out in public. These changes suggest that more emphasis is now placed on the devotion and service of individuals and direct ties and contact with the goddess. Here, we observe dilemma and contestation between the superalternate values of hierarchy and centrality and the subalternate value of ontological equality. In this way, the ritual not only leads to the reproduction of the structure of status and power, but also illustrates the potential of subaltern resistance against the hegemonic structure.

Asian and African Area Studies

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , Jul 16, 2021

Chapter 2 investigates the history of state and social formation in Khurda kingdom in the early m... more Chapter 2 investigates the history of state and social formation in Khurda kingdom in the early modern period. An integrative process took place in which the state and local society, the coast and the interior and human society and the natural world began to be be increasingly connected. Instead of seeing this increasing connectivity as a result of the penetration of modernising forces from outside, permeating the forest and expanding agriculture, this chapter looks at history from the inside out, and explores how the frontier was opened from within the forest. Forest-dwellers responded to new opportunities and availed their environmental knowledge and martial capabilities to become warriors, peasants and herdsmen, thus enabling state and social formation from below. In the course of this, social and ecological spaces opened at the interface of the coastal plain and the interior forest, accompanied by the twin processes of Hinduisation and tribalisation, allowing the diversification of resource utilisation and lifeways. Inner transformative dynamics arose from the engagement between and the management of these diversities.

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021

The incongruence between elite nationalism and popular patriotism was poignantly exposed after In... more The incongruence between elite nationalism and popular patriotism was poignantly exposed after India’s independence. Chapters 6 and 7 describe the postcolonial predicament in the early 1990s, where there was a disjunction between the politico-economic sphere based on ‘the logic of the fish’ (where a big fish eats a smaller one) and the socio-ritual sphere based on the logic of the sharing in the community. Chapter 6 explores the socio-cultural sphere of postcolonial Indian rural society through ethnographic data. The order of the body, society and nature is believed to be maintained when a body is born from a union between a man and woman who match each other, ‘eat’ the proper land and perform the prescribed duty as sacrifice in accordance with the ‘tradition’. Here, we find the idea that the balance of the whole is maintained in the service of each one whose position is distinct in terms of food, gender, living space and work. The idea of the connection between body, kinship and land is also closely related to people’s ideas and practices of the agricultural cycle and annual reproduction. Farming and ritual activities related to rice cultivation involve community relationships, the division of agricultural and ritual labour, a cyclic view of time coinciding with the annual cycle of rice farming and an intimate connection with the worship of the earth as goddess, the whole of which has a sense of harmony and contact with the sacred. It is through the ritual processes that the seemingly harmonious and holistic world of ‘traditional culture’ is most prominently represented, enacted, reaffirmed and also transformed and recreated. It should be noted, however, that this idealised ‘organic whole’ is contained within the limited sphere of the socio-cultural and does not constitute the moral basis of the politico-economic sphere, dominated by the cash economy and factional politics. The idealised religio-ontological identity is stressed precisely in contrast to the politico-economic realities.

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021

Chapter 10 locates endogenous potentialities for building local democracy in contemporary India t... more Chapter 10 locates endogenous potentialities for building local democracy in contemporary India through analyses of new dynamics in panchayat politics. I pay particular attention to the agency of subalterns in redefining the ontology of caste and, thereby, attempting to culturally underpin the significance of democratic representation and the cooperation of multiple social groups in local self-government. Instead of seeing the democratisation process in India as a sign of the internalisation of the values of the modern state, which would entail a top-down perspective towards universalising subjects, I see the new possibilities as a sign of subaltern agency that utilises and mediates both indigenous and exogenous resources towards the realisation of democratic cooperation that recognises difference. What we are witnessing in contemporary India may be the creation of a ‘vernacular democracy’ based on the creative mediation by the people between embodied cultural resources and the ideas and institutions of democracy. Here ‘vernacular’ refers to the non-official cultural resources of discourse and practice that are historically accumulated and moral-practically embodied in the lifeworld of the villagers. Notably, the lower castes draw on the sacrificial idioms of ‘duty’ (kartabya), ‘service’ (sebā) and ‘share’ (bhāga) to legitimise and insist on their equal participation and entitlement in the public sphere. These vernacular idioms, related to the ontology of caste and sacrificial principles, are employed in the present local politics to ensure proper representation and entitlements to the multiple groups in the recognition of difference and yet retain the sense of cooperation and community. Moreover, there is a subaltern emphasis on ontological equality in sacrificial ethics. This egalitarian sacrificial ethics is presented today from a subaltern viewpoint as the new foundational idea for the democratic local community.

Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure an... more This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives.

Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality.

This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction: towards a cultural-politics of ethics in everyday practice

2. Managing diversities: frontiers, forest communities and little kingdoms

3. Local society and kingship: reconsidering ‘caste’, ‘community’ and ‘state’

4. Early colonial transformation: the emergence of wedged dichotomies

5. Consolidation of colonial dichotomy: political-economy and cultural identity

6. Postcolonial tradition: the biomoral universe

7. Cash and faction: ‘the logic of the fish’ in the political-economy

8. Ritual, history and identity: goddess Rāmacaṇḍī festival

9. Recast(e)ing identity: transformations from below

10. Vernacular democracy: a post-postcolonial transformation

11. Conclusion: beyond the postcolonial

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 7 describes how factional politics and corruption became prevalent in the politico-econom... more Chapter 7 describes how factional politics and corruption became prevalent in the politico-economic sphere. The downward spread of democracy in India was linked to populism based on the redistribution of wealth by the state. This led to people fighting for shares in state resources through factional politics. Core members of factions belonged to the dominant castes, reflecting the power structure of local society. The existence of factional politics is lamented in the village as one of the prime examples of corrupted modernity, where the struggle for personal gain rather than the harmony of the community is given importance. It is considered a manifestation of the social deterioration characteristic of the declining age of kaḷi juga (the age of corruption). While such a negative evaluation is made about factional politics from the viewpoint of the moral community, it is also true that people accept and adopt the practices of bribery and embezzlement as being necessary in the world of the political economy. Factional politics, in fact, exemplifies people’s agency to adapt to new opportunities for political participation under electoral democracy. Ironically, the development of factional politics in postcolonial India epitomises the diffusion of the idea and institution of democracy, where more people can imagine exercising some influence in the distribution of state resources. However, factional politics is often carried out according to the logic of majority formation where electoral votes are sought at the expense of the rights of minorities and the public good. This is a typical example of the paradox of democracy in India, namely, the incongruity between the institutional logic of democratic forms and the logic of popular mobilisation. In this light, the agenda for postcolonial India is to mediate democratic institutions and values with embodied cultural ethics, which also involves the issue of how to overcome the colonial dichotomy between the socio-cultural sphere and the politico-economic sphere.

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure an... more This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives. Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality. This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 3 looks at the system of managing diversity at a local level and how it was connected wit... more Chapter 3 looks at the system of managing diversity at a local level and how it was connected with the larger state, market and religious systems in the Khurda kingdom and the local community of Garh Manitri in the eighteenth century. It gives details of the ‘system of entitlements’, which prescribed the rights and duties of community members who offered administrative, military, economic, ritual and religious services for the local community and the state in lieu of shares of the local produce. The king was the central sacrificer and the grantor of entitlements, the semantics of which were represented in the terms ‘service’ and ‘duty’ both in historical records and in myths, legends and ritual performances. Since the Khurda king was considered the earthly representative of the universal god Jagannātha, the positions of local community members in the socio-politico-cosmic whole were guaranteed through their performance of prescribed duties and ‘eating the land’ as ascribed by the king. A person’s everyday activity was a meaningful sacrificial offering to the local goddess, the king and Jagannātha, which in turn secured his/her place in the local community, the kingdom and the universe. Hence, I refer to this system as the ‘sacrificer state and sacrificial community’. There were significant interrelationships between caste, community ethos, patriotism and religious devotionalism. The importance of the local community should also be understood in relation to the development of the market economy and military–administrative technology in eighteenth-century early modern Orissa. The local communities––each centred on a fort in Khurda––functioned as important local military–administrative centres for the state. They were also the basic sites of production in the hinterlands that provided raw cotton for manufacturing textile and rice for the market that thrived on Indian Ocean trade.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapters 4 and 5 look at social transformations under colonialism. Colonial rule brought about ma... more Chapters 4 and 5 look at social transformations under colonialism. Colonial rule brought about major changes in two stages. Chapter 4 depicts early colonial transformation. During the early colonial encounter, the structure of the ‘sacrificer state and sacrificial community’ began to fragment. The intricate system of totality that connected the local system of entitlements, kingship and the Jagannātha cult was broken down and their depoliticised and ritualised forms were created. The villagers had to seek their ‘traditional’ identity in the limited sphere of ‘community rituals’ and ‘ritual kingship’. The introduction of private landownership some decades after colonisation led to the collapse of the system of entitlements, and the formation of the dominant caste–centred jajmani relationships based on unequal landownership. The introduction of land proprietorship also delinked everyday productive activity from traditional identity. The colonially constructed land tenure structure privileged the local elite of brāhmaṇas and karaṇas (scribes) and the dominant caste of khaṇḍāyatas (peasant-militia), thus creating a ‘unitary caste hierarchy’ where brahmanical ritual hierarchy overlapped with the economic landholding hierarchy. Early colonialism thus ‘traditionalised’ hierarchy and dominance in local society. The sacrificial idea of the cooperation of ontologically equal parts and duty as a devotional service to god came to be confined to the religio-ritual sphere and cut off from socio-economic relationships.

In The Kyoto Manifesto for Global Economics: The Platform of Community, Humanity, and Spirituality, edited by Stomu Yamash’ta, Tadashi Yagi and Stephen Hill, 179-193. Singapore: Springer. , 2018

‘Vernacular democracy’ is emerging in contemporary India with increasing participation of more di... more ‘Vernacular democracy’ is emerging in contemporary India with increasing participation of more diverse population in public activities. This new deepening of democracy is upheld by the affirmation of diversity based on the ethico-spiritual value of ontological equality.

Sharing Sovereignty, 2004