Ahead of the third meet of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – INDIA – at Mumbai on August 31 and September 1, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has said that the caste survey in Bihar has been completed.
“Its data is being compiled. It will be published soon,” Nitish said.
His remarks coincided with the Narendra Modi government filing two successive affidavits in the Supreme Court with regard to its stand about the caste survey in Bihar. The Union government, in paragraph five of its first affidavit on Monday, August 28, said, “Only the Centre can conduct a census or any action akin to census”.
Hours later, it purged this remark in another affidavit, saying that the paragraph had “inadvertently crept in” and, as such it had no objection against the caste survey in Bihar.
The Union government’s action has sparked a massive row with INDIA leaders – mainly those of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United) – hitting out at Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The opposition leaders accused the government of continuously conspiring against the interests of Dalits and backward classes of the country.
“The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-BJP represents the forces that have perpetrated atrocities on the poor for centuries and are still doing it. The poor people have understood Modi’s machinations now. They are determined to drive Modi out of power in 2024”, the RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav told this writer ahead of leaving for Mumbai.
“The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is playing every trick in its bag to impede the caste survey in Bihar. I appeal to him to correct his anti-poor mindset”, the RJD’s national spokesman Manoj Jha said.
Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav said, “The BJP’s conspiracy has been exposed. It’s utterly scared now”.
Also read: Congress’s Push for Caste Census Is a Step Towards Ideological Unity in Opposition Ranks
BJP’s worries
Apart from Hindutva and its continuous hate campaign against minorities, what has benefitted the BJP at the elections most, particularly 2014 onwards, is the shift of the major chunk of the backward classes and Dalits votes to it in the Hindi heartland comprising Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar.
The implementation of the Mandal Commission report in the 1990s led the regional parties – Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and Janata Dal in Bihar – to have complete sway over the Other Backward Classes or OBC voters who broadly constituted about 60% of the votes in these regions.
However, these regional parties in Bihar and UP suffered multiple splits and the BJP eventually got many of these splinter groups in its fold. The Hindutva party’s work was relatively easy in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan because these states did not have strong regional parties and the BJP was locked in direct contest with the Congress, which did not play OBC politics.
In addition to that, the RSS cadres worked meticulously at the ground level to incorporate the non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the Hindutva fold. In Bihar, RSS’s comparative lack of success notwithstanding, the BJP was indirectly benefited by the extremely backward classes (EBCs) and Dalits voting for the JD(U), with which it was in an alliance.
The statistics gathered by a CSDS survey suggests that only 17 % of OBCs had voted for BJP in 1996 Lok Sabha elections. The figures largely remained the same in the 2004 and 2009 elections. However, the BJP got 43% of the OBC votes in the 2014 elections. The Hindutva party’s OBCs vote share further swelled with 48% of them voting for it in 2019 polls.
In fact, perhaps recognising the importance of OBCs votes for his party, the PM announced the Vishwakarma Yojna in his Independence Day address, his last ahead of the 2024 polls. The scheme involves giving financial and technological help to ironsmiths, wood workers, goldsmiths and others engaged in leather and aluminium-related occupations in rural India.
Also read: The Point Is That There Is Not Enough Social Justice, Not That There Is Too Much
Caste survey
In such a backdrop, the caste survey acts as a tool for Nitish Kumar to take on the BJP’s clout among OBCs and bring them back to the fold of the regional parties in the Hindi heartland.
“The caste survey in Bihar is going to prove a watershed in the history of India. All the states must adopt it. The Centre should have carried out the caste census in 2021 itself, but it delayed it. Now the time has lapsed,” the Bihar CM said ahead of the INDIA meet at Mumbai.
Nitish’s dumping of the BJP and joining the grand alliance in August 2022 paved the way for the caste survey in the state with the RJD and his deputy Tejashwi supporting it. The survey is also putting pressure on the Union government to carry out caste census at the national level. It has also led to Nitish cementing his proximity with the Samajwadi Party under Akhilesh Yadav. Yadav has suffered heavily on account of losing his non-Yadav OBC votes to the BJP in his state.
The RSS-BJP is known to have caste Hindus – Brahmins and Banias (business communities) – at the core of its socio-political base. The RSS invariably has had Chitpavans – a sub-caste of the Brahmins – heading it ever since its formation in 1925. The upper crust of the BJP too is layered with caste Hindus.
“The BJP’s work for the backwards and marginalised sections is only peripheral and cosmetic in nature. The Samajwadi Party is highly appreciative of the caste survey in Bihar and has continuously been demanding the Union government conduct a caste census at the national level too,” the senior Samajwadi Party leader and professor at Lucknow University, Sudhir Panwar, said.
The BJP, ostensibly, had supported Nitish when he had moved the resolution for the caste survey in the Bihar legislature. The party also supported the alliance parties’ representatives in their meeting with the PM to demand a caste census early last year.
But the party got jittery when the Nitish government set in motion the process. Outwardly, BJP leaders kept speaking in favour of the caste survey but the saffron cadres led a covert operation to ensure it did not happen.
The Hindu Sena, Akhilesh Kumar and others were among seven groups and individuals – all directly or indirectly associated with the RSS – who challenged the caste survey in the Patna high court on the ground that it would “imperil the unity and integrity” of India. The Patna HC initially put an interim stay on the survey but later allowed it.
These RSS cadres and sympathisers then challenged the HC’s order in the Supreme Court. The PMO was, apparently, exposed when the Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta questioned the caste survey in Bihar on August 21 and said that the government would file an affidavit to that effect in the SC.
The government did file the affidavit but dithered on it. Clearly, the BJP is in a state of confusion on a sensitive issue that might dominate the discourse of 2024 elections.
Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author, media educator and independent researcher in folklore.