New Delhi: The larger takeaway from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that opposition forces have divided India along caste lines and continue to “commit that sin” was not lost on anybody.
He, thus, tacitly, declared his opposition to the demand for a caste census on the day when the Bihar government released the results of its recently-concluded caste census, comprehensively outlining data on the caste make-up of the state.
However, should one consider the prime minister’s statement as the BJP’s official position on caste census?
It will be difficult to assume so because a range of senior BJP leaders have pedalled different views on it. Senior leader and Union minister Giriraj Singh has said that the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was trying to mislead people through a caste census, while the state’s senior-most saffron leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi has said that the process of counting caste groups in Bihar was actually BJP’s doing when the party was Nitish Kumar’s ally in the state government.
BJP’s Bihar unit president Samrat Choudhary, meanwhile, exercised some restraint and said that the party will take a position only after studying the “methodology” of the census process.
In light of such contradictory remarks coming out of the saffron camp, it is safe to assume that the BJP hasn’t been able to formulate a clear position on the issue of a pan-India caste census, the demand for which the opposition parties have been consistently raising.
It is clear to see that BJP is in a catch 22 situation. Modi’s campaign since 2014 has made it a point to reach out to non-dominant Other Backward Class and Dalit communities and bring them into the Hindutva tent. Occasional representatives belonging to these communities were nominated for top posts, in an attempt to gain their communities’ confidence. At the same time, the BJP also canvassed against agrarian caste groups like Yadavs, Marathas, and Jats and pitched them against non-dominant communities.
In the process, the BJP was fairly successful in fragmenting OBC and Dalit communities as separate political groups. For instance, the non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav Dalits of Uttar Pradesh were told by the BJP that most gains from Mandal-based affirmative action had been cornered by Yadavs. In Bihar, too, the BJP was partially successful in mobilising small caste-based communities like Kalwar, Dhobi, Sonar, Bania and others against Yadavs. The saffron party allied with single-caste parties, largely led by one or other non-dominant OBC groups which advocated greater political power for their communities. These parties, like Om Prakash Rajbhar Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, Sanjay Nishad’s NISHAD party, Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insaan Party, or Anupriya Patel’s Apna Dal – even when they have been in the BJP-led NDA – have been strongly supporting the demand for a caste census or policies which may increase their share in political power.
Also read: Bihar’s Caste Census Is a Bold Move Sure to Have Implications Beyond the State
The consolidation of such groups by the BJP was also combined with a parallel process of alienating these groups from Muslims through a shrill communal rhetoric.
The non-dominant communities were given to understand that it was not only dominant OBCs and Dalits like Yadavs and Jatavs who were responsible for their under-representation but also Muslims whose tactical support was necessary for social justice parties like the Samajwadi Party or Rashtriya Janata Dal to come to power. As a result, the Muslim-Yadav combination, the mainstay of parties like SP and RJD which are also the most vocal opponents of the BJP in the Hindi heartland, disintegrated under the expansive Hindutva umbrella. While BJP registered successive victories in northern India by riding on the newly-found support of under-represented OBC and Dalit groups, the Mandal-based parties faced one loss after another.
BJP could successfully exploit the chink in the armour of social justice parties which in the 1990s and early 2000s had stemmed the saffron party’s growth. By doubling down on this political strategy, Modi and senior BJP leaders did not miss even a single chance to break apart the Mandal parties that had until now carried social justice political rhetoric on their shoulders. If the Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government constituted a social justice commission to acknowledge the presence of non-dominant groups, the Modi-led Union government formed the Justice G. Rohini Commission to explore the possibility of sub-categorisation of OBC groups. However, none of these reports have been released.
But such moves were clearly drawn from the social justice template – taking a leaf out of Nitish Kumar’s tactical decisions earlier to create EBC and Mahadalit categories in Bihar which helped him combat the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s formidable Yadav-Muslim social coalition in the first decade of the millennium.
The reluctance to implement the recommendations of these committees allowed the social justice parties to send a message that these commissions were formed as a ploy – to alienate agrarian caste groups further and weaken social justice politics – rather than to give the non-dominant OBC and Dalits groups their due share in power. Emboldening Hindutva, BJP’s critics said, was Modi’s primary goal, not social justice because of which many OBC and Dalit groups have veered towards the saffron party.
Socialist parties like the RJD, the SP and the Janata Dal (United) subsequently saw a window to intensify the rhetoric of social justice in such circumstances, and made the caste census their political plank. They argued that welfare measures could be better streamlined if the government knew the population and socio-economic indices of different communities in India. By demanding a caste census, the social justice parties acknowledged their past mistakes of prioritising dominant OBC groups over others. But the caste census also allowed them to see a democratic future for Lohiaite politics based on principles of equality and proportional representation of under-privileged communities.
Also read: Why the BJP Is Afraid of a Caste Census
The wishy-washy approach towards a caste census shows the Modi government’s confusion. First, it opposed a caste census in the Supreme Court in 2021, citing administrative and logistical reasons. More recently, the Centre argued in the apex court that only the Centre itself could conduct a caste census as it was a “Union subject”, in an attempt to prevent states like Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand from conducting their own caste census. However, it withdrew the affidavit almost immediately, citing that the line of argument was inadvertently introduced in it.
At the same time, the Union government introduced the Economically Weaker Section reservation, which effectively gives a 10% quota to only ‘upper’ caste individuals whose annual income is less than Rs 8 lakhs. It meant that ‘upper’ caste groups which are a minority in the population, as the Bihar caste census clearly reveals, get a disproportionately higher share in the reservation system.
The move further muddied the waters. For instance, ‘upper’ caste groups in states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, or even Andhra Pradesh, where they constitute less than 5% of the total population, are entitled to a 10% reservation. Even in states like Bihar where they form a little over 15%, the EWS reservation allows them to get a 10% quota. In contrast, the OBC groups put together in Bihar form over 63% of the total population but can have only 27% reservation in government institutions.
Now, the PM has made a direct political statement, tacitly opposing caste census, but overlooking the multiple attempts by his own and other BJP-led state governments to devise ways for a caste count through various committees and policies.
Significantly, the demand for a caste census was propelled by the BJP’s efforts to fragment social justice parties for electoral gains. And, now that such politicking has allowed the opposition to give it an ideological shape and direction, the BJP finds itself scratching its head. Mandal politics successfully prevented Hindutva ideology from taking deep roots in India earlier. It took an OBC leader, Narendra Modi, to assimilate aspects of that ideology to give Hindutva a subaltern colour in the last decade. The demand for a pan-India caste census is a concrete attempt by social justice parties to reclaim their roots in Indian politics.
Mandal politics began in the 1980s with a demand for OBC quota but is now claiming proportional representation in power corridors, something that the social justice parties have been calling “hissedari”, based on the famous Kanshi Ram’s slogan, “Jinki jitni sankhya bhaari, utni unki hissedari.” Translated, it means, the greater a community’s numbers, the greater its political representation.
This caste census is truly a historic turn in the social justice movement of India. A Mandal 2.0 moment.
