The Impact of Caste on Voting Behaviour in India

It is often said that in India, people do not cast their vote; they vote their caste. The phrase is catchy, but it captures a deep truth about how elections actually work. Decades after the Constitution promised an egalitarian, casteless social order, caste continues to shape who contests, who wins, and who gets a share of power. Understanding why caste remains such a powerful determinant of voting behaviour is essential to understanding the political process itself.

Why caste still matters at the ballot box 🔗

Caste was a significant factor in voting behaviour even in the years right after Independence, but its influence became far more visible from the 1990s onwards. The reason was a single, transformative policy decision. In 1990, the V.P. Singh government implemented the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, which reserved 27% of central government jobs and university seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). This move triggered mass mobilisation and reshaped the electoral landscape almost overnight.

The political scientist Rajni Kothari offered the most influential framework for understanding this. In his classic work Caste in Indian Politics, he argued that the relationship between caste and politics changed both. According to Kothari’s analysis, what critics call “casteism in politics” is really nothing more than the politicisation of caste. Where caste is one of the main ways large numbers of people are organised in society, any democratic politics seeking votes must work through that structure. In the process, caste itself acquires a new, secular role beyond the old ideas of purity and pollution.

This insight matters because it reframes the debate. Caste did not simply refuse to disappear; it was actively pulled into the democratic arena because it offered a ready-made structure for mobilising voters.

The rise of caste-based parties 🔗

Before the 1990s, the Congress party dominated by holding together a broad coalition of many castes under one umbrella. The post-Mandal period broke this arrangement apart. Marginalised castes realised they could organise their own parties rather than depend on Congress patronage. This led to the emergence of powerful regional parties, as detailed in academic studies of voting behaviour in north India.

BSP, SP and RJD: representing the marginalised 🔗

Three parties became the face of this transformation, each identified with a specific social base.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP): Founded by Kanshi Ram in 1984 and later led by Mayawati, the BSP sought to unite Dalits and other oppressed communities around Ambedkar’s vision of empowerment. It became closely identified with Dalit voters, particularly in Uttar Pradesh.

Samajwadi Party (SP): Under Mulayam Singh Yadav, the SP mobilised OBCs, especially the Yadav community, along with Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD): Founded by Lalu Prasad Yadav in 1997, the RJD became dominant in Bihar by building a coalition of Yadavs and Muslims. As one analysis notes, the Yadav community, making up over 14% of Bihar’s population, emerged as a central force in OBC politics after Mandal.

The rise of these parties did something important: it gave previously voiceless communities genuine political representation. It also sharply increased competition among different castes, since every group now had a reason to organise and assert its electoral strength.

How caste shapes electoral decisions 🔗

Caste does not influence elections in the abstract. It works through specific, concrete channels that determine outcomes.

Candidate selection and party tickets 🔗

One of the most direct ways caste enters politics is through the distribution of party tickets. Parties carefully calculate the caste composition of each constituency before nominating a candidate. The aim is to field someone whose caste identity matches the dominant voting bloc in that seat. As scholars have observed, parties accommodate various castes when distributing tickets to maximise their chances of winning.

A clever variation of this strategy appeared in the 2024 elections. The SP fielded Dalit candidates from non-reserved seats, relying on its OBC core vote to carry the candidate to victory. The win of Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit SP leader, from the general seat of Faizabad, which includes Ayodhya, became a striking symbol of this approach.

Party manifestos and the politics of reservation 🔗

Caste also shapes what parties promise. Manifestos are crafted with caste arithmetic in mind. Promises to protect or expand reservations are a standard tool to win the support of OBCs, SCs and STs. In 2024, the opposition INDIA bloc placed a caste census at the centre of its campaign, framing the election around social justice and proportional representation.

Voter preferences and loyalty 🔗

At the level of the individual voter, caste often functions as a shortcut for deciding whom to trust. Surveys consistently show that caste can outweigh purely economic or developmental considerations. The political scientist Paul Brass observed that in rural areas, caste remains the single most significant factor in voting behaviour, an observation echoed in studies of electoral patterns.

What the data actually shows 🔗

Much of what we know about caste and voting comes from a single, invaluable source. Since 1996, the Lokniti programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) has conducted National Election Studies during every Lok Sabha election. These large post-poll surveys, archived by Lokniti-CSDS, provide the empirical backbone for serious analysis of Indian voting behaviour.

The 2024 results offer a vivid illustration of how caste can swing an election. According to CSDS-Lokniti data, support for the NDA among Dalits fell from 41% in 2019 to 36% in 2024, while its share among dominant OBCs dropped from 52% to 48%. At the same time, the INDIA bloc won the support of a remarkable 82% of Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and 73% in Bihar. These shifts, however small at the national level, were enough to reshape the outcome in key states.

The numbers reveal an important nuance. Caste blocs are not perfectly fixed. While the SP, RJD and JD(U) are generally identified with OBCs, the BSP with Dalits, and the BJP with upper castes, voters do shift. In the 1990s, many OBCs in Uttar Pradesh backed the BJP, leading some scholars to speak of a “Mandalisation” of the BJP. Sections of upper castes have, on occasion, supported the BSP and SP. Caste shapes the playing field, but it does not eliminate genuine political competition.

Does caste politics help or harm democracy? 🔗

This is where scholars genuinely disagree, and the debate is worth understanding carefully.

The case for democratic deepening 🔗

Many influential thinkers argue that bringing caste into politics has had a positive, democratising effect. Kothari, Christophe Jaffrelot and Yogendra Yadav broadly belong to this camp. Yadav, for instance, sees caste consciousness as a driver behind India’s “democratic upsurge”, in which historically excluded groups began voting in large numbers and asserting their identity. By organising around caste, communities like Dalits and OBCs gained recognition, representation, and a real share in policy-making and power structures that had excluded them for centuries.

The case for concern 🔗

Other voices are more sceptical. Critics argue that an excessive focus on caste identity can crowd out developmental politics, deepen social divisions, and at times fuel conflict. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar himself, during the Constituent Assembly debates, warned that caste was not a positive basis for organising society. The phenomenon often described as vote bank politics, in which parties treat entire communities as captive blocs, can reduce elections to a contest of group loyalties rather than a debate over governance and policy.

There is also the deeper paradox identified by the sociologist Andre Beteille: the Constitution sought to abolish untouchability without abolishing caste, and it continues to use caste as a basis for public policy through reservations. This tension between a casteless ideal and a caste-conscious reality sits at the heart of the entire debate.

The road ahead 🔗

Recent years suggest caste is not fading away but taking new forms. Agitations by relatively prosperous communities, such as the Patidars in Gujarat and the Marathas in Maharashtra, show that economic development may be producing fresh waves of caste-based mobilisation rather than dissolving old ones. The 2024 election, with caste census demands and visible caste consolidation, confirmed that identity remains central to Indian elections even when parties try to subsume it under broader appeals.

The real challenge for Indian democracy is to retain the empowering, voice-giving potential of caste-based politics while limiting its capacity to divide. That balance is difficult, and no party has fully resolved it.

What do you think? Has the politicisation of caste strengthened Indian democracy by empowering the marginalised, or has it weakened it by entrenching divisions? And as India urbanises and grows wealthier, do you expect caste to lose its grip on voting behaviour, or simply to reinvent itself in new forms?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandal_Commission_protests_of_1990
2. https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/books/kothari-1973-caste-in-indian.html
3. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/66628/1/Block-2.pdf
4. https://www.populismstudies.org/how-has-hindutva-populism-blurred-the-line-between-caste-and-religion-in-indian-democracy/
5. https://adrindia.org/content/caste-returns-centre-stage-2024-lok-sabha-election
6. https://www.thequint.com/elections/dalits-adivasi-obc-nda-bjp-congress-india-bloc-lokniti-csds-survey-2024-elections
7. https://www.99notes.in/upsc-notes/general-studies-2/polity/elections-in-india/voting-behaviour/
8. https://www.lokniti.org/national-election-studies
9. https://www.ijset.in/wp-content/uploads/IJSET_V11_issue3_452.pdf