Coercive gifts: Ritual and electoral transactions and political value in village Tamil Nadu1

Abstract

This article considers the gift as a medium of politics in two parallel domains, namely the electoral and the ritual. Juxtaposing the material transactions during a rural election campaign and the distribution of meat after a sacrifice in a vernacular polity, it traces the continuing interpenetrations between philanthropy and politics in lubricating political associations. The properties of the political gift and the proprieties of its giving are what create political value. The right to govern is premised upon the prerogative to give. The right to give, however, is premised on the obligation to receive. The coercive gift—which one is not allowed to reciprocate but more importantly does not want and is forced to receive—is the animus of a politics that is premised upon caste and class hierarchies that also reverberate through democratic governance. What compels the political gift’s receiving, and deliberately negates its reciprocity—its spirit or force—is the implicit threat of violence that it harbours.