ABSTRACT
More than 60 years after independence, the Indian political class still relies on caste identities to organise its power at the local, state and central level. The question asked almost 40 years ago in Rajni Kothari’s pioneering study on caste and politics in India: ‘What form is caste taking under the impact of modern politics and what form is politics taking in a caste-oriented society?’ has not lost its relevance, and the importance of the subject hardly needs to be argued (Kothari 1970).
