What is the most attractive way to enjoy power?
It is the power without responsibility. Governance without accountability is the dream come true for a politician. Identity politics is right method to achieve this fate. It has been tested from country after country. Nobody can say who invented it but British pioneered this method of governance in it’s empire by promoting different identities and keeping them at each other’s throat at all the time and act as nice pacifist arbitrator of bloody disputes.
Shashi Tharoor in his book ‘An Era of Darkness’ has given the details as to how census operations were used to shoe horn different communities into ‘caste’ identities and then promote some and oppress others for 15 years and then patronize different caste and oppress other.
Sandeep Bhalla's Blog 