The Origins of Identity Politics: Caste in Colonial India

Why are some ethnic identities become of focus of activist campaigns, while others are not? I argue that identity mobilization is non-linearly related to group socioeconomic status, since very poor groups do not have an educated elite to participate in activism, while in very rich groups this elite exists but its members are so wealthy that they have no need to use explicit identity rhetoric to gain political influence. This theory is tested using a novel panel dataset of Indian caste groups during the colonial period, with petitions to the colonial census authorities being used as an index of caste organization. The results show petitioning is most common among groups at intermediate levels of literacy. This finding is robust to a wide variety of controls and robustness checks. These findings emphasize the importance of long-term social and economic changes in identity development.