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Classes, Like Ethnic Groups, Are Imagined Communities: a Response to Rao Author(S): Ashutosh Varshney Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol

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Classes, Like Ethnic Groups, Are Imagined Communities: a Response to Rao Author(S): Ashutosh Varshney Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol Classes, like Ethnic Groups, Are Imagined Communities: A Response to Rao Author(s): Ashutosh Varshney Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 32, No. 28 (Jul. 12-18, 1997), pp. 1737-1741 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4405624 . Accessed: 15/04/2011 22:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=epw. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic and Political Weekly. http://www.jstor.org DISCUSSION internalrural divisions, but primarily in terms Classes,Like Ethnic Groups, of caste and religion which, accordingto Rao, contradictsmy sectoralargument. Are ImaginedCommunities (ii) Are caste and religious identitiesmore basicthanclass considerations in rural India? A Response to Rao The caste- and religion-basedconcept of intra-ruraldivisions, argues Rao, is also Ashutosh Varshney wrong. The pull of caste and religious identities,DDC argues, is blockingthe further growthof rural,sectoral power in India.A THE applicationof class analysis to India's individual interests can no longer be lower versus upper caste constructionof countryside is in need of an intellectual maintainedin the social sciences. politics splits rural India because castes, renewal. By repeatedly giving rise to, or I would, instead,focus on the second line whetherupper or lower,cut acrossthe town participatingin, the caste- andreligion-based of reasoning that has emerged from the and countryside. Large-scale caste movements,rural India has not only continued theories of ethnicity and nation-building. mobilisation, thus, undermines sectoral to floutthe core predictionsand propositions Thoughthe primary purpose of thesetheories movements,and the same, I argue,is true of the standard class analysis, but more is to show that ethnic and national groups of religiousmobilisation. Class, Rao argues, importantlyfor our purposes,the concept of areimagined communities,2 they have serious capturesintra-rural divisions better than caste class has also undergoneserious changes in implications for the concept of class. Any or religion, and should be given primacy. thelast decadeand a half.The key challenges collectivity that is larger than a village, a (iii) How should one theorisethe relation- to the conceptof class, as we used to practise neighbourhoodor a small organisationis an ship between class power and state it the 1960s and 1970s, have come from the imagined community for it does not allow behaviour?"The first three-quartersof the theoriesof collective action on the one hand face-to-face intimacy. Thus, sectors of the book",Rao contends,"holds no surprises" andof ethnicityand nationalism on the other. economy and classes, like nations, are also (p 1743), contributingnothing to what we Theories of collective action argue that imaginedcommunities.3 An individualdoes already know about India's agricultural classes consist of individuals - hence it not "naturally" feel his class; such policy. Rao has in mind partsof the book must, at the very least, be demonstratedwhy consciousness depends on political where I make a distinctionbetween power as articulated in society and power as individuals would choose to act according mobilisation,public policy, orotherpeople's expressedwithin the state institutions,and to class, not individual, interests.This is an behaviour towards that individual. The explainpublic policy andstate behaviour as analytic imperativebecause individual and implication is not that class analysis is an outcome more of the latter,less of the class interests can often clash.' A landless irrelevant.All thatis requiredis thatclasses former. peasant may be hurt by the decision of the notbe seen as axiomaticallycentral to politics (iv) Canmy return index meaningfullycapture landlordto keep wages stagnant,but it does or politicaleconomy but demonstratedto be returnsto farming? Rao believes that my not follow that it is in his interests to join actually so. index for measuringwhether farm returns a union or party mobilising agricultural J Mohan Rao's vigorous attack4on my have gone up or down since 1970-71 is workers. From an individual perspective, book, Democracy, Development and the seriously flawed. class mobilisation can have a serious cost: Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in CLASSESAND SECrORS the peasantmay be dismissed altogetherby India' (DDC hereafter)is admittedlybased the lord, and a dismissal may incalculably on a class perspective, but he is somewhat Rao misreads the basic analytic purpose increase his misery which the resources of blithely inattentiveto the developmentsthat of my book. DDC is not about the internal an agriculturalunion are typically unableto have posed new questions for the concept workings of the countryside.It is about the alleviate. Moreover, and this is the second of class. His critiqueis strikinglyreminiscent impactof the countrysideon statebehaviour/ partof the argument,if the mobilisingunion of Ashok Mitra's claims in Termsof Trade economic policy. That being so, my key did succeed in getting wages raised for the and Class Relations.6The latter was a fine questions required"going inside the state", landless class, the peasant would benefit tractfor its times,but the times havechanged. not going inside the countryside.The Latter anywaywhether or not he participatedin the Theneat simplicity ofa class-theoreticworld, is relevant only insofar as it is necessary to agitation.We may have moralcompunctions as we used to know it, has been shaken by understandthe former, not in and of itself about such "free-riding"behaviour, but let the resilience of non-class economic and Why? us not conflate the normative and the political actors.,and by the corresponding The way an analystslices up the empirical empirical.The landlessworker has an interest theoreticaltrajectories in the social sciences. universe depends on what the analyst is in the benefitsof class action,not in its costs, ThoughRao's attackon my book is wide- asking.Forexample, my currentproject deals andclass benefits, if available,cannot easily ranging, one can identify, in the order of with Hindu-Muslimrelations in six Indian be denied to the landless peasant,but costs theoreticalimportance, four basic disputes. towns, threepeaceful and three violent. The of class mobilisation must ie individually key puzzle of the projectis: why are Hindus (i) Shouldclasses or sectors be the unit of borne.A collective and Muslims able to live peacefully in some actionproblem thus exists. analysis?Rao agreesthat in the 1970s and For this Behaviour according to class interest can, 1980s the urban-ruraldivide was a highly towns but not in others? question, - and does, take place, but it requiressolving chargedand visible issue in Indianpolitics. the Indianstate or nationalpolitics which the collective action problem. But he arguesthat a sectoralconstruction of is dissected in DDC - provides only the Given the constraintsof space, I will not politicsdoes not requirethe sectoras a unit context within which Hindu-Muslimrela- pursuethis line of inquiryfurther. Wherever of analysis, for India's countryside is tions in the various townr(and the selected required, my book deals with puzzles of internally divided between classes. The neighbourhoods within each towh) are collective action in the countryside. I call sectoralmovements, Rao argues,were only examined.The book, as a result,has a mode attentionto these points only to indicatethat apparentlysectoral but, in reality, class-biased of narration and analysis that is highly an assumption about the identity of class and andagainst the have-nots. I do conceptualise town-based.The questionposed madegoing Ebonomic and Political Weekly July 12, 1997 1737 inside the neighbourhoods and towns for-itself was the earlierway of statingwhat conditions are met.7According to one such necessary. I have just said. A similardistinction can be condition,it shouldbe demonstratedthat the The sectoral abstractionin DDC is not drawnbetween a nation-in-itselfand nation- observed consequences were anticipatedin meant to deny that divisive issues do not for-itself, or a countryside-in-itself and a the original motivations of the actors. exist in rural India. Indeed, as already countryside-for-itself. Motivations of the participantsshould be indicated,a principalargument of the book Just as Indian nationalists attacked the establishedindependently, not imputedfrom is thatdivisive identitiesof caste
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