ABSTRACT
The political ethnography of the Yadavs and other comparative material on powerful politicised castes in India show how some socio-cultural structures and political cultures are more prone to create room for ambiguity, and in so doing facilitate the process of the vernacularisation of democratic politics. In the case of the Ahir/Yadavs, importantly, their kinship system was traditionally informed by openness and flexibility and this characteristic meant that Ahirs never constituted a jati in a conventional sense. Yadav historiography depicts a ‘caste cluster’ composed of hundreds of subdivisions occupying similar but not equal positions in the caste system. In such a social system real and symbolic kinship bonds were informed by a descent-centred kinship ideology. The Yadavs of North India represent an informative case study about general democratisation processes in India and elsewhere because they show us how democratic procedures and symbols have been internalised and reinterpreted.
