ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the political articulation of people at the grassroots, especially concerning democratic politics. It highlights vernacular criticism of the official state-led democratic sphere-in-the-making in north Indian rural society. The chapter explores the articulations of the people regarding politics and political democratic ethos, which are reflected in their folklore, folk stories, anecdotes, proverbs, and metaphors about kings and queens. The idea of democracy also created cultural resources that bear a process of critical adjustment with outer modernity. Politics also lies at the grassroots. This is because politics is perceived as a means of defining society’s selfhood by renegotiating the distribution of power and the legitimacy of existing centres of power in different domains of life, which may be observed even at the grassroots.
