Party politics and the north Indian peasantry: The rise of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh

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Abstract
In the last 20 years politics in the rural areas of north India has been transformed by the emergence of non‐Congress parties with strong support among the prosperous strata of the peasantry. Studies of these developments have placed different emphases on the importance of class and caste factors, as well as drawing attention to the existence of blocs of potential support previously alienated from the Congress. In Uttar Pradesh (UP) the defection from the Congress of peasant leader Charan Singh and the formation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) in the late 1960s, has been seen as one of the most important examples of these changes in rural politics. The purpose of this article is to examine the formation and initial electoral fortunes of the BKD in one locality, and, at the same time, to assess the applicability, to a local setting, of general explanations of the emergence and success of the party.