Land Reforms In India Quotes

India is a land where contradictions will continue to abound, because there are many Indias that are being transformed, with different levels of intensity, by different forces of globalization. Each of these Indias is responding to them in different ways. Consider these coexisting examples of progress and status quo: India is a nuclear-capable state that still cannot build roads that will survive their first monsoon. It has eradicated smallpox through the length and breadth of the country, but cannot stop female foeticide and infanticide. It is a country that managed to bring about what it called the ‘green revolution’, which heralded food grain self-sufficiency for a nation that relied on external food aid and yet, it easily has the most archaic land and agricultural laws in the world, with no sign of anyone wanting to reform them any time soon. It has hundreds of millions of people who subsist on less that a dollar a day, but who vote astutely and punish political parties ruthlessly. It has an independent judiciary that once set aside even Indira Gandhi’s election to parliament and yet, many members of parliament have criminal records and still contest and win elections from prison. India is a significant exporter of intellectual capital to the rest of the world—that capital being spawned in a handful of world class institutions of engineering, science and management. Yet it is a country with primary schools of pathetic quality and where retaining children in school is a challenge. India truly is an equal opportunity employer of women leaders in politics, but it took over fifty years to recognize that domestic violence is a crime and almost as long to get tough with bride burning. It is the IT powerhouse of the world, the harbinger of the offshore services revolution that is changing the business paradigms of the developed world. But regrettably, it is also the place where there is a yawning digital divide.

Within the time span of a single generation surrounding the year 1500, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their many masterworks of the High Renaissance, revealing the birth of the new human as much in da Vinci's multiform genius and the godlike incarnations of the David and the Sistine Creation of Adam as in the new perspectival objectivity and poietic empowerment of the Renaissance artist; Columbus sailed west and reached America, Vasco da Gama sailed east and reached India, and the Magellan expedition circumnavigated the globe, opening the world forever to itself; Luther posted his theses on the door of the Wittenberg castle church and began the enormous convulsion of Europe and the Western psyche called the Reformation; and Copernicus conceived the heliocentric theory and began the even more momentous Scientific Revolution. From this instant, the human self, the known world, the cosmos, heaven and earth were all radically and irrevocably transformed. All this happened within a period of time briefer than that which has passed since Woodstock and the Moon landing. (p. 4)

New version: A republican Government was established under George Lavoff, a member of the Royal Family. It failed to secure popular support and proved incapable of ending the war or of effecting social and economic reforms. At this time, Lenin arrived in Russia and this gave impetus to the Russian people. A new Government with Lenin as President was evolved. First, Lenin made the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. Then land and other capital goods were nationalised. All agricultural land was taken away from the landlords and divided among the peasants. All factories became the property of the State. The privileges of the clergy and the nobility were abolished. Mines, railways and banks were taken over by the Government. And thus to the astonishment of all, a new world, based upon Socialism, took shape in Russia and the dreams of Karl Marx were realized in this way. Old version: Lenin established a Workers’ Government. But the first election showed that the Bolsheviks had no majority. However, to maintain themselves in power, they dissolved the Duma on the ground that it was reactionary. Local Soviets who did not support the Bolsheviks were also disbanded. Private schools were forbidden and education was taken over by the State. Voting right was denied to the nobility and the clergy. Communism encourages violence, and does not believe in an omnipotent God. The Communists forget that man has a soul. It is a one-party Government that prevails in Communist Russia. There is neither freedom of opinion nor of religion. Many other defects in the System may also strike the eye of an observant critic.

However, during the East India Company’s rule, the system of land revenue auction was such that many Muslim landholders could not compete with the emerging Hindu and European elites to retain control of their lands. This was compounded by the fact that the British elites distrusted the Muslims and preferred the Hindus in their allocation of land revenue. Not surprisingly, one British observer referred to this policy as the: Most sweeping act of oppression ever committed in any country by which the landed property of the country had been transferred from the class of people entitled to it to a set of baboos, who had made their wealth by bribery and corruption.6

Diem listened to them all, accepted almost $2 billion in aid between 1955 and 1960, and again and again went his own way. Americans urged him to make sweeping land reforms; he expropriated vast tracts of land from wealthy French and Vietnamese landlords but then failed to redistribute most of them among the landless. They suggested he encourage democracy on the local level; instead, he replaced elected village chiefs and village councils with outsiders, hand-picked by bureaucrats loyal to him. Urged to adopt principles of small-scale community development that had been adopted in India and elsewhere, he tried forcibly resettling thousands of people into new communities instead, and then required them to perform weeks of compulsory and uncompensated labor. “Coercion,” he explained, “has had a vital role in most change.

The Classic Question: The Paradox of The Majority or Bahujen. The term Bahujan refers to India’s demographic majority—Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes—constituting nearly 70% of the population. Yet this numerical strength has not translated into structural empowerment, giving rise to what scholars call the Bahujan paradox: the tension between political visibility and persistent social marginality. Historically, caste society imposed graded inequality (Ambedkar), ensuring that even among oppressed groups, internal hierarchies prevented unity. Despite the promise of democracy, land ownership, wealth, education, and cultural capital remain concentrated in upper-caste hands. This creates the first axis of the paradox: majority in numbers, minority in power. The second dimension lies in politics versus structure. From the 1980s, the rise of the BSP, SP, RJD, DMK, and others marked a political awakening. Bahujan leaders captured state power in several regions, but institutions like the bureaucracy, judiciary, and media remained dominated by elites. Electoral success has thus not dismantled systemic dominance. Third is the tension between unity and fragmentation. Kanshi Ram envisioned solidarity across SCs, STs, and OBCs, yet rivalries and caste sub-identities often splinter this bloc, weakening collective bargaining. Fourth, policy gains contrast with social realities. Reservations and welfare have created upward mobility for a small segment, but caste violence, everyday discrimination, and failed land reforms persist. Finally, there is empowerment without emancipation. Leaders once rooted in radical anti-caste thought often compromise with dominant caste and capitalist frameworks. Cultural icons like Ambedkar and Phule are celebrated, but frequently co-opted by parties unwilling to confront caste hierarchies. In essence, the Bahujan paradox reveals a striking contradiction: India’s majority commands votes but not full dignity, wielding political clout without achieving structural transformation.

The word caste finds its etymological roots in the Latin term castus, meaning "pure" or "chaste." This purity-based connotation undergirds much of how the caste system has been historically understood—especially by external observers—as a rigid hierarchy structured around notions of ritual cleanliness. The term entered the Indian lexicon via the Portuguese word casta, used by colonial seafarers and administrators in the 16th century to categorize the unfamiliar, complex social divisions they encountered on the western coast of India. This importation of the term marked a profound epistemic shift. As Nicholas Dirks argues in Castes of Mind (2001), colonial rule did not merely document Indian caste hierarchies; it reified, codified, and bureaucratized them. The colonial state transformed caste from a fluid, local, and context-specific social structure into a rigid administrative category essential to governance. Prior to this colonial intervention, Indian society spoke of varna and jati. Varna, meaning "color" in Sanskrit, refers to the idealized four-fold division of society into Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (traders), and Shudras (laborers). However, the everyday lived reality of caste was mediated through jatis, localized, birth-based communities linked to specific occupations and ritual statuses. Jatis are numerous—over 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes exist across India—and form the actual basis of caste identity and exclusion. The colonial flattening of these complexities into the singular term caste was not an act of innocent taxonomy; it was, as Dirks shows, a political maneuver that essentialized caste as the defining feature of Indian civilization, thereby justifying British imperial rule as a civilizing mission. Sociologically, caste has been defined as a hereditary, endogamous, and hierarchical group characterized by common traditional occupations, social status, and restrictions on mobility. Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus (1966) famously theorized caste as a system of ritual hierarchy organized around the oppositional categories of purity and pollution. In his structuralist framework, the Brahmin is the apex of purity, while the "Untouchable" (now self-identified as Dalit) is the embodiment of pollution. Although Dumont’s work remains foundational, it has been widely criticized for ignoring the material realities of caste, including land ownership, labor exploitation, and violence. B.R. Ambedkar, the foremost anti-caste intellectual and architect of the Indian Constitution, directly opposed such idealist readings. For Ambedkar, caste was not a religious or ritual order but a system of graded inequality rooted in birth-based discrimination and enforced through violence and denial of rights. In his seminal work Annihilation of Caste (1936), Ambedkar rejected the metaphysical justifications of caste and called instead for its total dismantling, arguing that no reform could succeed without challenging its structural core.

The word caste finds its etymological roots in the Latin term castus, meaning "pure" or "chaste." This purity-based connotation undergirds much of how the caste system has been historically understood—especially by external observers—as a rigid hierarchy structured around notions of ritual cleanliness. The term entered the Indian lexicon via the Portuguese word casta, used by colonial seafarers and administrators in the 16th century to categorize the unfamiliar, complex social divisions they encountered on the western coast of India. This importation of the term marked a profound epistemic shift. As Nicholas Dirks argues in Castes of Mind (2001), colonial rule did not merely document Indian caste hierarchies; it reified, codified, and bureaucratized them. The colonial state transformed caste from a fluid, local, and context-specific social structure into a rigid administrative category essential to governance. Prior to this colonial intervention, Indian society spoke of varna and jati. Varna, meaning "color" in Sanskrit, refers to the idealized four-fold division of society into Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (traders), and Shudras (laborers). However, the everyday lived reality of caste was mediated through jatis, localized, birth-based communities linked to specific occupations and ritual statuses. Jatis are numerous—over 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes exist across India—and form the actual basis of caste identity and exclusion. The colonial flattening of these complexities into the singular term caste was not an act of innocent taxonomy; it was, as Dirks shows, a political maneuver that essentialized caste as the defining feature of Indian civilization, thereby justifying British imperial rule as a civilizing mission. Sociologically, caste has been defined as a hereditary, endogamous, and hierarchical group characterized by common traditional occupations, social status, and restrictions on mobility. Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus (1966) famously theorized caste as a system of ritual hierarchy organized around the oppositional categories of purity and pollution. In his structuralist framework, the Brahmin is the apex of purity, while the "Untouchable" (now self-identified as Dalit) is the embodiment of pollution. Although Dumont’s work remains foundational, it has been widely criticized for ignoring the material realities of caste, including land ownership, labor exploitation, and violence. B.R. Ambedkar, the foremost anti-caste intellectual and architect of the Indian Constitution, directly opposed such idealist readings. For Ambedkar, caste was not a religious or ritual order but a system of graded inequality rooted in birth-based discrimination and enforced through violence and denial of rights. In his seminal work Annihilation of Caste (1936), Ambedkar rejected the metaphysical justifications of caste and called instead for its total dismantling, arguing that no reform could succeed without challenging its structural core.