Plurality and Pluralism

This chapter demonstrates the decline of state pluralism, the logic of aggregative identities in political mobilization in independent India, and, in closing, the moral psychology and institutional structure of democratic violence. It argues that caste’s hierarchical and segmenting features produced a logic of mobilization that, over time, accorded legitimacy to identitarian aggregation of all shades—not just those identified by the constitution-makers as deserving of recognition on the grounds of social justice. Simultaneously, the chapter shows how the definition of Hinduness acquired meaning through the differences with Muslims and Christians. Electorally, this identity took shape only over the past three decades, and the BJP’s electoral rise and sustenance have come alongside a rise in “everyday violence.” This chapter explores the conditions of possibility for such violence—the complexity of agential structures in the modern Indian state; the nature of mob violence; and mismatch between a social organization’s incentives and a political party’s compulsions.