ABSTRACT
India claims to be a democracy-indeed, the world’s largest democracy —and there are serious reasons to accept that claim. It is certainly one of the few countries in the South to have established a stable parliamentary system with regular free and fair elections. One may object that India’s democracy lacks substance, since the institutional mechanisms of the state are superimposed on a social system that is dominated by the logic of castes, which seems incompatible with the values of democracy. A normative commitment to equality, after all, would seem necessary for a “real” democracy. This essay explores the explicit and growing role of caste-based political parties in India and how their commitment to affirmative action fits with the evolving Indian democratic polity.
