ABSTRACT
The relation between the members of the Yadav community, their ancestor-god Krishna and their political activism is well-established both within the community and outside. The politics of identity representation in colonial times and democratic politics in independent India provided ordinary Yadavs and their leaders with a stage on which the community’s interests and demands could be successfully articulated. This chapter looks at the historiography of its creation and shows how ‘democracy’, through vernacularisation, enters local understandings of ‘history’ and shapes who the Yadavs think they are and how they are perceived by others. By the early 18th century, in the Braj-Ahirwal area, the Ahir title, rather than defining a ‘caste’, was used as a description for people with a pastoral background, military power and landholding rights. By the 1990s, Yadav caste associations had been revitalised as a response to the political mobilisation of the OBCs.
