India, April 18 -- When the socialist block led by the Soviet Union collapsed around the beginning of the 1990s, Francis Fukuyama (in) famously declared the 'end of history', a hubris driven proclamation declaring a permanent victory for the so-called liberal order. Indian politics, or at least its primary fault line, entered a "battle over history" phase around the same time, with the central conflict boiling down to one between Mandal and Kamandal.

Named after the Commission headed by B P Mandal which recommended reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Mandal is a moniker for politics which pushes for rising assertion of OBCs. Kamandal, literally an oblong water pot, is used as a lexicon for the political weaponization of Hindu...