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
