The Court and the Silent Revolution: Have Indian Judges Heard the Lower Castes?

This paper studies judicial policy-making in the context of India's compensatory discrimination policies (also known as affirmative action, reservations, or positive discrimination). Although these policies entail systematic departures from the general principles of formal equality underlying Indian democracy and the individual right to equal treatment, compensatory discrimination has been incorporated into a regime of constitutionally guaranteed group rights mandating targeted redistribution and preferential treatment. Locked into a legal discursive cage, India's Supreme Court judges have thus take centre stage in the transformation of compensatory discrimination policies as India has shifted towards economic liberalisation and new patterns of democratic participation, dominated by party fragmentation and coalition governments, interest group pluralism and demand politics. Studying this process, the paper focuses on the judicial response to caste-based political mobilisation, the electoral victories of the backward classes and the new assertiveness of hitherto marginalised social groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]