Sons of Krishna: the Politics of Yadav Community Formation in a North Indian Town
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Sons of Krishna: the politics of Yadav community formation in a North Indian town Lucia Michelutti London School of Economics and Political Science University of London PhD Thesis Social Anthropology 2002 UMI Number: U61BB38 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U613338 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 TH£ S£ £ f Zosz ABSTRACT This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of the inter-locking relationships between politics, popular democracy, religion and caste/community formation in a North Indian town. This study is conducted through an exploration of the political rhetoric and political participation of a community of Yadavs in Mathura town, western Uttar Pradesh. The Yadavs were traditionally a low- to middle- ranking cluster of pastoral-peasant castes that have become a significant political force in Uttar Pradesh (and other northern states like Bihar) in the last thirty years. The analysis of Yadav political culture involves the historical exploration of varying local conceptions of caste, race, primordialism, socio-religious segmentation, factionalism, history/myth, politics and democracy. Throughout the thesis runs a concern with the elaboration of a theoretical framework which makes sense of the transformation of the caste system, and its interrelations with modem politics and Hinduism. It is concluded that in order to understand contemporary processes of ethnicisation of caste, attention should be paid to descent and kinship, and to the ways in which the ‘traditional’ caste ideology of hierarchy has been usurped by the religious ideology of descent. The thesis demonstrates how the successful formation of a Yadav community, and the political activism of its members in Mathura, are partly linked to their descent view of caste, folk theories of religious descent, horizontal caste-cluster social organisation, marriage patterns, factionalism, and finally to their cultural understanding of ‘the past’ and ‘the political’. It is concluded that Yadav socio religious organisation directly and indirectly helped the Yadav community to adapt to the modem political world. In so doing, the political ethnography of Mathura Yadavs sheds light on why certain groups are more apt to successfully exert their influence within the democratic political system, and why others are not, regardless of the fact that in many instances they have similar economic and political incentives and resources. 1 Contents Acknowledgments ______________________________________________ 5 Figures, maps, plates and tables___________________________________ 6 Orthography and transliteration__________________________________ 8 Glossary of Selected terms _______________________________________ 9 INTRODUCTION________________________________________________ 14 About this thesis _______________________________________________ 14 Methodology__________________________________________________ 18 Ethnographic method__________________________________________ 18 Survey method_______________________________________________ 22 Historical method_____________________________________________ 24 Chapter contents______________________________________________ 25 Chapter 1 Mapping the Yadavs* socio-economic and political spaces________________ 28 The political landscape of Uttar Pradesh state______________________ 28 Caste, elections, political parties and caste associations: an introductory note___________________________________________ 28 Uttar Pradesh politics in the 1990s: Samajwadi Party and the rise of the Y adavs _____________________________________________________ 31 The Yadavs’ ancestral landscape: the Braj and Ahirwal areas ________ 43 Mathura: Krishna’s ‘divine’ and ‘political’ business __________________ 48 The Yadavs’ ‘imaginary numerical strength’ in Mathura town__________ 53 The sociology of Yadav living space: Ahir Para/Sadar Bazaar locality 58 Mahadev Ghat Akhara: the local Yadav ‘political’ stage ______________ 70 Chapter 2 Competing Demands of Power and Status: from ‘Ahir* to ‘Yadav*_________ 77 Introduction__________________________________________________ 77 The Ahirs: ‘ethnography’ in the archives from pre-colonial times to Independence_________________________________________________ 80 Rajas, sepoys and cowherders: Rajput-like culture and the making of the Ahir category________________________________________________ 81 ‘Collecting the Ahirs’: official ethnographies and theories of caste______ 88 Materialist and functionalist ethnographic portrayals ______________ 91 From Ghosi and Kamaria-Ahirs to Nandavanshi-Ahirs: processes of fu sio n ____________________________________________________ 93 The Yaduvanshi as the martial Ahirs: military culture and racial theories _____________________________ 96 Yadavs and the British army: the emergence of the Ahir Kshatriya Mahasabha ______________________ 99 2 The politics of reading and ‘re-writing’: competing demands of status and power_______________________________________________________ 103 Reshaping primordialism______________________________________ 105 Sons of Krishna: the politics of ‘blood’ and ‘numbers’ _______________ 107 Yadavs, the Other Backward Classes social category and the Yadav regiment 110 Manipulating ‘status’ in Mathura________________________________ 120 Conclusion __________________________________________________ 124 Chapter 3 The internal structure o f the Yadav caste/community and processes offusion ______________________________________________________________ 127 Introduction_________________________________________________ 127 The Ahir/Yadavs’ horizontal organisation and lineage view of caste 128 The vansh (line of descent): the Yaduvanshi, the Nandavanshi, the Goallavanshi and the Krishnavanshi-Yadavs_____________________ 131 Locality (place and territory) and subdivisions ___________________ 134 Commensality _____________________________________________ 141 Indigenous theories about Mathura Yadav subdivisions: functional explanations and ideologies o f blood __________________________ 142 Talking about vanshs and the internal social hierarchy in Ahir Para/Sadar B azaar __________________________________________________ 146 The Krishnavanshi-Yadavs __________________________________ 148 The Clan {got) ______________________________________________ 150 Lineage (parivar) ____________________________________________ 153 The Chaudhri Parivar, the Dudh Parivar and the Netaji Parivar in Ahir Para: economic graduality __________________________________ 154 Ideologies of marriage and processes of fusion_____________________ 156 Endogamy, hypergamy, exogamy: the reproduction vanshsof and the creation of the Yadav community_______________________________ 159 Yadavs’ views about inter-caste marriages ________________________ 161 Caste associations: encouraging processes of fusion_________________ 166 IntQi-vansh marriages and hypergamy____________________________ 170 Inter-state marriages, mass marriages and anti-dowry campaigns ______ 173 Conclusion __________________________________________________ 176 Chapter 4 From lineage deity to caste/community deity: gods are ancestors and ancestors can become gods ________________________________________________ 179 Introduction_________________________________________________ 179 Reformist religious processes: becoming ‘Kshatriyas who behave like Vaishyas’____________________________________________________ 181 Superior and inferior forms of Hinduism: the issue of sacrifice________ 181 The reinforcement of the purity-pollution barrier: a ‘religious’ and ‘political’ issue______________________________________________________ 186 ‘We are Kshatriyas but we behave like Vaishyas’: vegetarians ‘with fighting spirit’_____________________________________________________ 189 3 Ahir/Yadav ‘lineages’ and their sacred protectors___________________ 192 Ahir/Yadav kuldevtas and Kshatriya-pastoral themes________________ 194 Gods are ancestors and ancestors can become gods _________________ 197 The cult of Mekhasur: from hero-cowherder god to the epic Krishna 200 Mekhasur: ‘the totemic god of the Aheriya tribe’ ___________________ 201 Mekhasur’s cult in Ahir Para. The kuldevta of the ‘Dudh Parivar’ and ‘Chaudhri Parivar’ ___________________________________________ 203 Mekhasur’s shrine in Gangiri _______________________________ 208 Goverdhan Baba versus the epic Krishna _________________________ 210 Conclusion____________________________________________________ 211 Chapter 5 ‘Past' and rhetoric: the political recruitment o f Krishna ________________ 215 Introduction___________________________________________________ 215 The making of a Yadav past_________________________ 222 Regional martial epics, the tradition of martial folk cults and the Mahabharata: from Ahir to Yadav _______________________________ 222 Contemporary martial heroes* tales______________________________ 227 ‘History’ and ‘Mathura Hindu histories’: recuperating Krishna’s moral integrity and masculinity______________________________________