Rohan Venkataramakrishnan Aug 30
BJP votebanks
Where does the BJP stand on the caste census?
The leadership has so far been quiet. It hasn’t encouraged pushback against the demands, either directly or by empowering the BJP’s digital minions to make the argument online – even though plenty of upper castes are firmly opposed to the idea.
In the recently conclued Parliament Session, the BJP’s first speaker in the Lok Sabha on a Constitutional Amendment giving states the power to draw up their own OBC lists openly called for a caste census, which left many others in the party wondering, since the leaership has not endorsed such a call yet.
What could be the reason to oppose a census?
One explained might be the fear of pushback from upper castes, who are a key source of political an economic support for the BJP.
“As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, the top of Indian society remains overwhelmingly upper caste while its bottom has stayed almost entirely lower caste,” wrote Satish Deshpande. “A caste census threatens to push this dimension into the open, making it impossible for the political class to continue to hide behind euphemism and circumvention.”
Equally important is what such a move might do to the non-dominant OBC coalition that the BJP has built. Sanjay Kumar writes,
“The reason why BJP seems reluctant about a caste census may be for fear that the numbers that might come up about different castes, especially the OBC castes, might give a new issue to the regional parties to mount pressure on the ruling party for reshaping the OBC quota in central government jobs and educational institutions. It might result in a situation of Mandal II, giving a new lease of life to many regional parties which otherwise are struggling to find a positive agenda to challenge the BJP that has dominated Indian electoral politics for the last one decade.”
If the BJP were indeed to hand power over to the OBCs in a big way, while folding that effort within its broader anti-Muslim Hindutva narrative, that might serve to deepen the appeal of the party among a huge swathe of the population for even longer. But the actual act of handing over power will involve renegotiating current quotas and reducing the relevance of dominant groups, a complex process with many potential pitfalls, and the potential for competing demands to fell the current dispensation, or at least unsettle its political calculations in the medium term.
This is why governments in the past have preferred to kick this can down the road.
By not coming out openly against the caste census and permitting demands for it from various state leaders, the BJP is clearly suggesting that it recognises the appeal and doesn’t want to be seen as standing in the way. The many appeals from within the party too, which don’t seem to have received censure, imply that it may be calculating a way forward.
Read full article: The Political Fix - Scrollin
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