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Faculty of Graduate Studies

Namitha George

Notice of the Final Oral Examination for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Topic

The Politics of Caste and Cooptation: A Case Study of Kerala, India

Department of Political Science

Date & location

  • Wednesday, August 12, 2026

  • 10:00 A.M.

  • Virtual Defence

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

  • Dr. Reeta Tremblay, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

  • Dr. Michelle Bonner, Department of Political Science, UVic (Member)

  • Dr. Kristin Ciupa, Department of Sociology, UVic (Outside Member) 

External Examiner

  • Dr. Mathieu Boisvert, Religious Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal 

Chair of Oral Examination

  • Dr. Aditya Mojumdar, School of Biochemistry and Microbiology, UVic

     

Abstract

Kerala has long occupied a celebrated place in comparative politics and development studies for its history of Left-led social democracy, redistributive governance and high human development. Yet this celebrated model presents a persistent political puzzle: why do Dalits continue to experience marginalization despite a sustained left party committed to egalitarian reform, welfare expansion, and redistributive justice? More specifically, how does Dalit marginalization persist within a political order shaped by Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political party that has historically claimed to represent the oppressed, the working class, and the poor? 

Based on a qualitative case study of Kerala, this dissertation examines that puzzle by analyzing the role of CPI(M)’s Marxist class-centered ideological framework in shaping the political recognition, incorporation, and containment of Dalit grievances in Kerala. I argue that CPI(M)’s class-centered ideology operates as the key intervening variable in this puzzle. The party does not simply ignore caste. Rather, it recognizes caste oppression through an ideological framework that prioritizes class struggle, worker-peasant unity, scientific socialism, redistribution, and the universal category of the oppressed masses. As a result, caste is often translated into class-compatible categories such as poverty, backwardness, landlessness, labor vulnerability, educational deprivation, and welfare need. This translation makes Dalits visible within CPI(M)’s political and administrative universe as workers, peasants, the poor, beneficiaries, party cadre, and subjects of redistribution, while limiting their recognition as autonomous political agents confronting caste as a structure of power. 

The dissertation identifies three interconnected mechanisms of cooptation through which CPI(M)’s ideological framework shapes Dalit politics and governance: discursive cooptation, organizational cooptation, and welfare cooptation. Discursive cooptation occurs when caste is acknowledged but reframed through the language of class struggle, social reform, scientific progress, and working-class unity. Organizational cooptation incorporates Dalits into CPI(M)’s party structures, mass organizations, electoral networks, and affiliated platforms while regulating the terms of autonomous caste-based assertion. Welfare cooptation operates through CPI(M)-led governance by treating caste-structured deprivation as a set of welfare and development deficits. Dalit landlessness, caste-marked labor, segregated housing, educational lag, and weak representation are addressed through schemes, welfare categories, and redistributive programs, while the caste relations that reproduce these conditions remain underplayed. This positions Dalits primarily as beneficiaries of welfare rather than as political agents confronting caste as a structure of power. 

The central finding is that Dalit marginalization in Kerala persists not simply because Dalits are excluded from Kerala’s Left-led redistributive order, but because they are included on terms structured by CPI(M)’s class-centered ideological framework.

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