Urban Poverty and the Politics of Caste and Religion in Early 20th Century North India: Implications for Development Practice and Research

摘要

This paper seeks to bring out the importance of engaging with the themes of religious and ethnic politics in development studies. With case studies from urban north India in the early 20th century, the paper argues that religion and caste are centralto both the incidence and conditions of poverty and to the experience of development and change for the poor. The paper shows that with rapid social and economic transformation, various groups of the low caste poor refashioned and reformulated their religious ideas and caste ideologies, in an attempt to construct a political vocabulary and a cognitive framework with which to conceptualize the changing nature of social relations, deprivation, poverty and inequality, as well as to question or challenge them. Drawing lessons from these cases, the paper also advocates the need to take on board the politics of caste and religion, not only as an academic exercise, but also in development practice, instead of ignoring or condemning them as anachronistic and backward. A seripus engagement with religious or ethnic politics amongst the poor, both ideologically and organizationally, may well enable development activists to facilitate grassroots initiative and involvement, and thus achieve a greater degree of democratization in development practice.