Moreover, the state is affected by the village and by how village society functions as a polity. The village scene is the first and main arena for public participation of the rural population. It conditions their participation and fundamentally influences their outlook. Villagers’ participation in the larger polity, whether by foot or vote, is formed at a level which is, in many ways, different from and even alien to the world of civil society, elected office and independent judiciary. The village polity is strongly influenced by the larger world, but it is still very much a polity that functions by itself, for itself, by its own rules, and following its own concerns. Consider for instance Ashutosh Varshney’s point about how rural power in the Indian polity is self-limiting. Peasants may have common economic interests but they are split along a number of divisions that prevent cooperation. As the peasant leader Sharad Joshi points out, if one village participates in the peasant movement, the next village may not because of local animosity and rivalry (Varshney 1995: 196).

Joshi contrasts ‘India’ to ‘Bharat’ to underline the difference in outlook, goals, and means of how politics is conducted and what the aims are. The contrast is evocative and reflects a wider debate on the nature of the Indian polity. The innocence of the post-Independence period is felt to have been lost to an increase in unrest, communal divisions, and unconstitutional means of achieving political aims. There is a sense of a division between the culture and ideology of the modernizing Indian elite, on the one hand, and those of village society, on the other; a division which the modernizing elite was not able to bridge. Sudipta Kaviraj argues that there seems to be ‘some incompatibility between the institutional logic of democratic forms and the logic of popular mobilisation’ (Kaviraj 1991). The inability to bridge the cultural gap while at the same time extending rights of participation to the villages, created a situation in which the fundamental building blocs of secular democracy were undermined. The paradox formulated by T. N. Madan holds that the more democratic India became, in terms of participation, the less democratic it became, in terms of conforming to secular and democratic principles (Madan 1987). The points in this debate, to which many scholars have contributed, constitute a dramatic view of the modern Indian polity and its contemporary health. Sharp divisions are drawn between the political cultures of the villages and those of the state to explain a lack of adherence to an ideal performance. It is a very pessimistic view.

We need to ask whether or not the dichotomy is too sharply drawn, whether or not it allows for an understanding of political mobilization in the Indian countryside. A fundamental problem with the dichotomy is that it does not allow for any gradual change, any piece-by-piece development by which values and norms are altered, by which the outside influences the inside and not just vice versa. The dichotomy tends to obscure that village society has an ability to change. The present study seeks to investigate the relationship of village to state and vice versa, to investigate a case of mutual adaptation.

This is a story of the meeting of political cultures from both sides of the dichotomy. It is the story of influences, opposition, and reaction; and of meetings, adaptations, and adjustments. Thirty years of history of two adjoining villages in Burdwan district in West Bengal and these villages’ place in the history of communist mobilization, will be used to investigate the mechanisms and tools of village politics, and how village politics affected and was affected by political or ideological changes in the larger society. I will, in particular, focus on the circumstances—social, political, and cultural—of communist mobilization, institutional change and changes in political culture and on the broader context in which political change took place. The aim is to put the contemporaneous political issues, ideological values, and other inventions into the time and society they were received or rejected, where old ways were challenged, and compromises and conflicts took place. The emergence of rural communism was perhaps the most striking development in West Bengal in this period, but it was not the only change. Together with it came changes in the position of women and in caste practices, efforts towards economic improvements and ‘development’, and, interestingly, an increase in the incidence of village poetry recitals.

Were these changes connected? I shall argue that they were, if not in any other way than by coming at the same time and being associated with one another. The changes were also associated with a particular social group; but one that was urban and distant from even the village ‘elite’. Or were they? Perhaps social distance is not the relevant issue. As we shall see, social distances may be bridged by other means, such as cultural adoption or ideological affinity. The issue is how values reached the village and what changes they brought about there, and how they, in turn, were changed and reinterpreted in the process.

Poetry recitals may seem peripheral to the theme of peasant mobilization, but both to villagers themselves and to this researcher, the appropriation of symbols through poetry recitals formed part of a drawn-out history of struggle over status and power and ultimately over the criteria for leadership and the moral basis of society. Poetry recitals became an arena for the portrayal of individuals as adherents to a particular and increasingly prominent ideology and implicitly as erect moral beings and holders of the right values. This potent role of poetry to leadership draws from the fact that village leadership is not only based on power and the ability to enforce, but also in the ability to appear (or be) legitimate, to possess authority. In these villages, as in probably most Indian villages, there is rivalry over leadership positions. Rivals of similar economic and ritual status have to fight in the world of values, morality, and symbols in order to gain an upper hand. But even rivals of very different socio-economic status find themselves locked in combat over issues of morality, mainly in order to attract support from the many who are not tied by strong bonds of reciprocity with one or the other rival.

These considerations make for a much more fluid picture of village politics and allow us to pose questions about the usefulness of the elite-subaltern dichotomy. Most researchers would agree that village politics is crucial to the developments of the Indian state. However, it is a little understood field, understudied, and often quite misunderstood. A simplistic dichotomy-based model does not allow an understanding of the interplay of local to supralocal society, or the ability of the local to change and adapt. But more importantly, it does not allow us an informed understanding of how village society in turn influences the larger polity. In a country where the majority of people still live in villages and where the countryside is one of the crucial premises for political life, little is understood of the hows and whys of changes in political culture. A long-term study of political change or reactions will allow us to see villagers as subjects, and not just objects, of change. Cultural change takes place as much in local society as elsewhere, and values are appropriated, fought over, forwarded, or disclaimed. This study is an effort in that direction.

A different and more common, although somewhat restricted understanding, would be to regard village politics as merely a set of social mechanisms for the daily regulation of community affairs and distribution of scarce resources. This is the approach we meet in ‘traditional’ village politics studies of the 1950s and 1960s,¹ where concepts such as ‘dominant caste’, ‘faction’ and ‘patron-client relationship’ were developed. These concepts as well as much of the literature that gave them to us, have been much criticized and in many cases rightfully so. They do easily land us in an anthropological never-never land where the normative system within which conflicts arise and are solved is seen as largely unchanging and unaffected by external political developments. Nonetheless, we need to investigate the usefulness of these concepts and also consider some of the very interesting ethnographical material and observations they contain.

‘Dominant caste’ is perhaps the least controversial of the concepts. It refers to the phenomenon that in many villages or regions certain castes are economically and politically dominant. These castes also often have a reasonably high ritual status in the local hierarchy and enjoy social pre-eminence in their localities. How to precisely define and identify a dominant caste is debated, but that it refers to an observable phenomenon seems accepted. The question is whether or not it is interesting. As many have noted, most ‘dominant castes’ are torn by internal rivalry and factionalism. According to Oommen, it is ‘a matter of common knowledge [that] there exists a high degree of factionalism in Indian villages…’ (Oommen 1970: 76–77). It is not the caste that is dominant, but a group of individuals within that caste—or even from several castes (Miller 1975, cf. Mandelbaum 1970b: 358ff). The notion of a dominant caste cannot be maintained unless one assumes the unity of that caste. This we can do, at least in some cases and with some modifications. But mostly the unity is not political. It is beyond doubt that political cleavages in Indian villages cut through the dominant caste. The unity of the caste is cultural, a matter of a strong identity and an ethos. As Mayer observed, a particular codex deemed appropriate to a historically elevated position was shared by the whole caste, not just a few powerful individuals, and was an element in the perpetuation of their dominance.²

The dominant caste in many and perhaps most regions of India, ideally fill a role in society and vis-a-vis its subjects, which is akin to the role of a king. Dominant castes, as kings, have a right to rule, to deliberate, to take pre-eminence (in rituals, for instance). They also have an obligation to protect subjects, to nourish and sustain. Kings have an elevated position because they are protectors of society. This position is particularly well represented in the kings special relationship with the Brahmin-priest, where the king represents society and where, at least in one interpretation, the priest removes pollutants from the whole of society by taking gifts from the king (Raheja 1988a and 1988b). The king as protector is also the king as benevolent provider, the distributor of boons, engaging in magnanimous acts of largesse. He generously gives paddy to the needy and land to his subjects. He is annapurna (in Bengal at least), the ‘destined provider of subsistence’ (Greenough 1982: 19). Given the importance of this construct in Indian thought (replicated in the God-devotee relationship for instance, or that of father-son), it is not surprising that we find it in common usage in villages where big landlords are referred to as ‘king’ and smaller ones as ‘father. These forms of address evoke the construct where the superior’s obligation to protect and nourish is as prominent as the subordinates obligation to show respect and to obey.

Two considerations make it imperative to rethink the importance of this construct. One is that the position of dominant castes all over India is reported to be fast waning. As far back as the 1960s, it was suggested that although certain castes had enjoyed social, economic, and political positions of privilege, this was changing with the emergence of electoral democracy. Numerically large, lower castes have had much to gain from political engagement, and have in many places introduced party politics.³ This development may not be universal though, and in many places the former dominant castes have preserved their clout by engaging in new activities—from business to electoral politics (Frankel 1993).

Another consideration has to do with the village faction, and the individual follower’s loyalty to his group. Factions are held together precisely by patron-client relationships, by the glue of kinship or caste, credit or labour, or the mere expectancy of future patronage. Although some writers see the village-level faction as a stable and enduring formation,⁴ others have regarded them as circumstantial and shifting alliances, occasionally appearing to be permanent, but ultimately ‘transactional’, i.e. where membership in a faction ‘depends on a return for support given.⁵ In reality the client may not always have much choice even where patronage is not forthcoming. Still, it is often the case that there are rival leaders and many potential clients who are not immediately in dire need of patronage. Patron-client relationships are thus not necessarily the reality they are made out to be, but are more in the nature of cultural constructs evoked, applied, used and manipulated in different contexts and by different actors. This makes the possibility of ‘investing’ in subordination a political reality. Subsequently, the construct of the king-subject has much potential bearing on the subordinate’s perception of what the patron should be like. This is a line of thinking that has recently enjoyed renewed support from unexpected quarters, namely what has been termed the Subaltern Studies school.