Their numbers also included some of the large landowners as well as tenant labourers together justifying their newly attained prosperity by mounting claims on the Kshatriya status, thus rejecting the notion of prevalent Shudra categorisation for themselves.
Despite their attempt to seek a noble Kshatriya past by claiming themselves as belonging to the lineage of Rama, the British authorities and the Brahmins continued to view them as Shudras.
The antipathy of social elites was also seen during this period, when Kunwar Chheda Sinha published a book on anti-Kshatriya reform in 1907, which was widely circulated by Rajput Anglo-Oriental Press.
The Triveni Sangh, which claims to have a million members, paved the way for upper-backwards for getting into the electoral politics, but failed due to Congress's superior organisational structure, although it achieved some success in form of many social reforms, away from the ballot.
This coalition has been described as 'coalition of extremes' by political scientist Paul Brass, on the basis of stark differences in the socio-economic conditions of these groups.
The Congress regime ignored these developments with the view that the upper-caste which included rural gentry and urban intelligentsia has again returned their support to it, which was lost in 1977 due to pro-Dalit stance taken by Indira.
[14] According to Sanjay Kumar, Dalits were a socially very weak community to pose any serious challenge to the upper-caste, who controlled the bureaucracy as well as their economic life during the period of Congress rule in Bihar.
[14] While the Congress remained inconspicuous to give important position to the upper-backwards within its ranks, the socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia was in the favour of it.
Nitish Kumar, a former ally of Lalu Prasad Yadav thus broke away to form Samata Party, which represented political ambition of the Koeri and Kurmi caste.
[14][15] By the 1995 elections, the upper-caste were completely marginalised in the political space and were replaced by the upper-backwards, who by now were divided into two faction dominating both the ruling party as well as the opposition under Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar respectively.
The upper-caste though lost in political space to upper-backwards, were still powerful economically, as at the social level, Yadavs were still serving as the milkman while the Koeri-Kurmi were farmers.
According to this report, the economic benefits of the Mandal politics could be seen as affecting only few backward castes of agrarian background leading to their upward mobilisation.