Gender, Religion and Caste

The first two chapters (jess401, jess402) showed how democracies share power among groups and levels of government. This chapter applies the idea that social diversity need not threaten democracy to three Indian divisions: gender, religion and caste. For each, NCERT asks what the division looks like in India and whether its expression in politics is healthy or otherwise. Its broad answer: gender politics has been largely positive, communal politics largely negative, and caste politics both.

• Live pages to pair with: jess401 (power-sharing — social groups and reserved seats) and jess402 (federalism and the 73rd/74th Amendments); keps108 (Secularism, Class 11 — Indian versus Western models, principled distance); keps103 and keps104 (equality and social justice — reservations); keps203 (elections and representation — reserved seats, women’s reservation); keps208 (local government); leps208 (Mandal, communal politics and the politics of the 1990s); lesy103 (caste and tribe); lesy105 (patterns of social inequality and exclusion — caste, gender, the women’s movement); lesy106 (communalism, secularism and the nation-state); lesy102 (sex ratio and demography).
• UPSC: Society (GS1) and Polity (GS2) are among the most heavily tested areas. Mains has asked about communalism (2017, 2018), caste’s changing forms (2018, 2020, 2023, 2026), Dalit assertion (2015), women’s challenges and patriarchy (2019, 2021) and women’s reservation (2019, 2023, 2026); Prelims has asked what ‘secular’ means (1979–81), whether legislative reservation for women needs a constitutional amendment (1997), equal pay in the Constitution (2006) and the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (2024).

• Frame: social differences can become divisions; their political expression can be healthy — gender (largely positive), religion as communalism (largely negative), caste (both).
• Gender: social, not biological; sexual division of labour; feminist movements; India’s gaps in literacy, work, pay, child sex ratio (918–919 in 2011) and representation (Lok Sabha 14.36% in 2019).
• Reservation: one-third in panchayats and municipalities (1992); 106th Amendment (2023) — one-third in Lok Sabha, Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly after the next census and delimitation.
• Communalism: religion as the basis of nation; four forms — everyday beliefs, quest for dominance (majoritarian or separatist), mobilisation, violence.
• Secular state: no official religion, freedom to profess, practise and propagate, no discrimination, intervention for equality (untouchability banned).
• Caste: changing but persisting (endogamy, untouchability, link with poverty); caste in politics and politics in caste; caste alone does not decide elections.

NCERT begins with gender: a hierarchical social division found everywhere but rarely studied in politics. It is often treated as natural and unchangeable, yet it rests not on biology but on social expectations and stereotypes. Boys and girls are raised to believe that women’s main job is housework and child-rearing. The result is a sexual division of labour: women do (or organise through domestic helpers) the work inside the home — cooking, cleaning, washing, tailoring, childcare — and men the work outside. Men can do housework; they simply think it is women’s job. When such work is paid, men take it up — most tailors and hotel cooks are men. And women do work outside: fetching water, fuel and working in fields in villages; as domestic workers or office workers in towns. Most women do some paid work besides domestic labour, but their work is not valued or recognised.

So, though women are half of humanity, their role in public life, especially politics, has been minimal in most societies. Earlier only men could take part in public affairs, vote and stand for office. Women organised and agitated for equal rights — first for the vote, then for better political and legal status and educational and career opportunities; more radical movements sought equality in personal and family life too. These are feminist movements. Political mobilisation, NCERT says, improved women’s role in public life: women now work as scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, managers and university teachers, once thought unsuitable for them; in Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland) women’s participation in public life is very high.

India, NCERT says, is still a male-dominated, patriarchal society despite improvement since Independence. Women face disadvantage, discrimination and oppression in several ways:

• Education: female literacy only 54 per cent against 76 for men (these are 2001 Census figures — see below); fewer girls go for higher studies. Girls do as well as boys in school results, sometimes better, but drop out because parents spend more on sons’ education.
• Work: few women in highly paid and valued jobs. On average an Indian woman works one hour more than a man every day, but much of her work is unpaid and unvalued.
• Pay: the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 requires equal wages for equal work, yet in almost every field — sport, cinema, factories, fields — women are paid less for the same work.
• Son preference: sex-selective abortion has pushed the child sex ratio (girls per 1,000 boys) down to 919 (NCERT; 2011) and, NCERT says, below 850 or even 800 in some States.
• Violence: harassment, exploitation and violence, in public spaces — NCERT singles out urban areas — and at home, as domestic violence.

Women’s problems, NCERT notes, get inadequate attention. Many feminists and women’s movements conclude that unless women control power, this will not change — and one way is more women as elected representatives. In India the proportion has been very low: women’s share of the Lok Sabha touched 14.36 per cent for the first time in 2019; in State assemblies, NCERT says, it is under 5 per cent. India is among the bottom group of nations, behind the averages for several developing countries of Africa and Latin America; cabinets are largely all-male even when a woman is Chief Minister or Prime Minister.

One remedy is to make a fair proportion of women in elected bodies legally binding. Panchayati raj did this: one-third of seats in panchayats and municipalities are reserved for women, and there are now more than 10 lakh elected women representatives in rural and urban local bodies (NCERT). Women’s organisations long demanded at least one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies; a bill was pending for decades. In 2023 the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act) was passed, providing one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly. NCERT’s conclusion: gender shows that some social divisions need political expression, and that disadvantaged groups benefit when their division becomes a political issue.

Religious division is not as universal as gender, but religious diversity is widespread, and — unlike gender — it is often expressed in politics. Even where most people share one religion there can be serious differences over practice (NCERT recalls Northern Ireland). Not every link between religion and politics is wrong. NCERT gives three acceptable examples: Gandhiji held that religion — meaning the moral values common to all religions, not any one faith — can never be separated from politics, which must be guided by ethics; human rights groups have asked the government to prevent communal riots and protect religious minorities; and the women’s movement has argued that the family laws of all religions discriminate against women and should be made more equitable. People may express needs and demands in politics as members of a religious community, and governments may sometimes regulate religious practice to prevent discrimination — so long as every religion is treated equally.

Communalism begins when religion is seen as the basis of the nation, and becomes acute when religion is expressed in politics in exclusive and partisan terms: when one religion’s beliefs are presented as superior, when one group’s demands are framed in opposition to another’s, and when state power is used to establish one group’s domination. Communal thinking holds that followers of a religion form one community with the same fundamental interests, that followers of different religions cannot belong to the same community, and — in its extreme form — that they cannot live as equal citizens in one nation: one must dominate, or they must form separate nations. NCERT calls this fundamentally flawed: people of one religion do not share interests in every context; everyone has many roles and identities; every community has many voices, all with a right to be heard; so bringing all followers of a religion together outside religion suppresses many voices.

Communalism, NCERT says, was and remains one of the major challenges to Indian democracy. The Constitution’s makers chose a secular state, reflected in provisions studied in Class IX: (1) there is no official religion — unlike Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Islam in Pakistan and Christianity in England, no religion has special status; (2) all individuals and communities have freedom to profess, practise and propagate any religion, or none; (3) the Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion; (4) the State may intervene in religious matters to ensure equality within religious communities — for example, it bans untouchability. So secularism is not the ideology of some parties or persons but one of the foundations of the country; communalism threatens not just some people but the very idea of India. A secular Constitution is necessary but not sufficient: prejudice and propaganda must be countered in everyday life, and religion-based mobilisation in politics.

Unlike gender and religion, caste division is, in NCERT’s words, special to India. All societies have inequality and a division of labour, and in most occupations pass from generation to generation; caste is an extreme form of this, distinctive because hereditary occupational division was sanctioned by rituals. Members of a caste formed a community with the same or similar occupation, married within the group (endogamy) and did not eat with other castes. The system was based on exclusion of and discrimination against ‘outcaste’ groups, subjected to untouchability. Reformers and leaders — Jotiba Phule, Gandhiji, B.R. Ambedkar and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Naicker — worked for a society without caste inequality.

Partly through their efforts and partly through socio-economic change — economic development, urbanisation, literacy and education, occupational mobility and the weakening of village landlords — the old notions of caste hierarchy are breaking down; in cities it rarely matters who walks beside us or eats at the next table. The Constitution prohibited caste-based discrimination and laid foundations of policies to reverse past injustice. Yet caste has not disappeared: most people still marry within their caste or tribe; untouchability persists despite the constitutional ban; and the effects of centuries of advantage and disadvantage continue — groups with access to education under the old system did well in modern education too, so ‘upper castes’ are disproportionately present in the urban middle classes. Caste remains closely linked to economic status.

Like communalism, casteism rests on the belief that caste is the sole basis of social community, that people of one caste form a natural community with interests not shared by others. Experience does not bear this out: caste is one aspect of our lives, not the only or most important one. Caste enters politics in several ways: parties choose candidates with the caste composition of the electorate in mind and include different castes when forming governments; parties and candidates appeal to caste sentiment, and some parties are known to favour, and be seen as representing, some castes; and universal adult franchise and one-person-one-vote compelled leaders to mobilise support and brought new consciousness to castes hitherto treated as inferior.

But elections are not all about caste. No parliamentary constituency has a clear majority of one caste, so every candidate needs more than one caste and community; no party wins all the votes of a caste — a ‘vote bank’ only means a large share; several parties may field candidates of the same caste, so some voters have more than one candidate of their caste and many have none; and ruling parties and sitting MPs and MLAs frequently lose, which could not happen if castes were frozen in their preferences. Voters’ attachment to parties is often stronger than to caste; people of the same caste vote differently by economic condition and gender; and assessments of government performance and leaders’ popularity are often decisive.

The relation runs both ways. Politics also influences caste by bringing it into the political arena — NCERT’s phrase: ‘it is not politics that gets caste-ridden, it is the caste that gets politicised’. Caste groups try to grow by absorbing neighbouring castes or sub-castes once excluded; they must form coalitions with other castes and communities, entering dialogue and negotiation; and new kinds of caste groups appear in politics, such as ‘backward’ and ‘forward’ castes. So caste plays different roles: its expression has given many disadvantaged communities the space to demand a share of power, helping Dalits and OBCs gain access to decision-making, and organisations have campaigned against discrimination and for dignity, land, resources and opportunities. Yet exclusive attention to caste can be unhealthy: it can divert attention from poverty, development and corruption, and sometimes leads to tension, conflict and violence.

The chapter’s side questions in page order. Short outlines follow.

Twelve questions, pages 44–45. Keys for the objective items are given with reasons; note the comments on Questions 8 and 11.

Numbers

One-liners

• Gender division rests on social expectations, not biology.
• Sexual division of labour keeps women’s home work unpaid and unrecognised.
• A feminist is a woman or a man who believes in equal rights for women and men.
• Patriarchy is a system that values men more and gives them power over women.
• Women in India work more hours than men, mostly unpaid (time use survey).
• The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 requires equal pay for equal work.
• One-third of seats in panchayats and municipalities are reserved for women.
• The 106th Amendment (2023) provides one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha, Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly, after the next delimitation.
• Communalism treats religion as the principal basis of social community.
• Communalism can be majoritarian or separatist.
• India has no official religion.
• The Constitution allows the State to intervene in religion to ensure equality, e.g. banning untouchability.
• A secular Constitution is necessary but not sufficient to combat communalism.
• No parliamentary constituency has a clear majority of one caste.
• It is not politics that gets caste-ridden; caste gets politicised.

Traps to avoid

• NCERT’s literacy figures (54% vs 76%) are from 2001; 2011 is 65.46% vs 82.14%.
• Child sex ratio 2011 is usually 918; NCERT prints 919; ‘below 800 in some States’ is 2001 data.
• Women’s legislative reservation is enacted but not yet in force — local bodies are still the answer to ‘where are seats reserved for women?’
• The 106th Amendment has no OBC sub-quota and does not cover the Rajya Sabha or Legislative Councils.
• The 2018 graph (India 11.8%) and the 2019 text figure (14.36%) are different years; 2024 was 13.63%.
• Sikh and Buddhist shares fell slightly between 1961 and 2011 — NCERT says they rose.
• Religiosity is not communalism; communal politics is the issue.
• A ‘vote bank’ never means all voters of a caste.
• ‘Castiest’ in the exercise means casteist.
• Feminists can be men (NCERT glossary).
• Art. 39(d) does provide for equal pay for equal work (Prelims 2006).
• Reservation for women in legislatures needed a constitutional amendment (Prelims 1997).

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Asked so far (kept here): meaning of ‘secular’ (1979, 1980, 1981 — freedom of religion; no official religion); legislative reservation for women needs a constitutional amendment, party quotas do not (1997); equal pay is in the Constitution (Art. 39(d)) and backward classes were not defined (2006); the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (2024 — stored key debated, see the trap box).
• Likely: Articles 25–28, 15, 17; 106th Amendment details (330A, 332A, 334A, 239AA; SC/ST women within quota; not Rajya Sabha); census figures (SC 16.6, ST 8.6, sex ratio 943, child sex ratio 918, literacy 2011); Equal Remuneration Act 1976; PCPNDT; Mandal and Indra Sawhney; Section 123(3) RPA.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 — communalism (2017 religiosity vs communalism; 2018 power struggle or relative deprivation; 2026 unity in diversity): use NCERT’s definition and four forms, Bipan Chandra and Varshney for causes, historical examples, and remedies (civic engagement, rule of law, secular education). No present-day party labels.
• GS1 — caste (2015 Dalit assertion; 2018 new identities; 2020 relevance; 2023 fluid and static; 2026 urban India; 2024 diversity and marginality): change (urbanisation, mobility, law) vs persistence (endogamy, untouchability, economic gaps); ‘politics in caste’ — expansion, coalitions, backward/forward blocs; Kothari, Srinivas, Jaffrelot, Yadav.
• GS1/GS2 — gender (2019 continued challenges; 2018 women’s movement and lower strata; 2014 adverse sex ratio in prosperous regions; 2021 patriarchal attitudes; 2019, 2023, 2026 reservation): data with years (literacy, sex ratio, time use, representation), the 73rd/74th and 106th Amendments, debates on quotas (critical mass vs proxy, OBC sub-quota).
• GS2 — secularism (2024 India vs US): NCERT’s four features plus Arts. 25–28; principled distance (Bhargava) vs the US ‘wall of separation’; attributed critiques.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.