Since the 1960s a new assertiveness has characterized India's formerly silent majority, the lower castes that comprise more than two-thirds of the population. Today India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is controlled by lower-caste politicians, as is Bihar, and lower-caste representation in national politics is growing inexorably. Jaffrelot argues that this trend constitutes a genuine "democratization" of India and that the social and economic effects of this "silent revolution" are bound to multiply in the years to come.

Building on his brilliant study of Hindu nationalism, Jaffrelot has established himself as one of the leaders of a new generation of Western scholars whose work will be essential reading for India specialists, practioners, and scholars concerned with problems of democratic transition and consolidation. Essential. Choice This big... will allow [readers] to interpret the profound and tantalizing transformations going on in north India today. -- Robin Jeffrey Pacific Affairs

Christophe Jaffrelot is director of the Centre d'Etudes et Recherches Internationales (CERI), part of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris. He is the author of The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, which the New York Review of Books hailed as "a scholarly tour de force."