Abstract
Skin color's effects on political outcomes, including identity-based voting, are often studied in multiracial societies. In these settings, skin color is a marker of group identity and is politicized. This makes it difficult to separate the effects of race politics from those produced by skin color. The relationship between skin color and identity-based voting, then, has to be investigated in contexts where skin tone is neither politicized, nor a marker of group identity. In this paper, we turn to one such setting, India, to study the relationship between an individual’s skin tone and his or her attitude towards caste-based bloc voting. We also document the lived experience of skin color through 76 one-on-one interviews of individuals with different skin tones. We find that preferences for fair skin and against dark skin are strong and experienced during interactions with family, friends, and fellow caste members. We suggest that alienation experienced by dark skinned individuals among these intra-caste ties could potentially undermine attachment to the caste networks that facilitate caste-based bloc voting. We then explore the relationship between individual skin tone and attitudes towards caste-based bloc voting in a survey of 5100 voters. We operationalize attitudes towards caste-based voting in several ways. We ask whether or not respondents think it important to vote with fellow caste members, as well as whether or not they think caste interests are important in choosing parties and candidates. We find that individual skin tone is related to attitudes on caste-based voting, and dark-skinned individuals are less inclined towards caste-based voting than their fair counterparts.