Mandal Commission Report

Backstory: If You Don’t Count Them, How Will You Report Them? Media Has Failed the OBCs

A fortnightly column from The Wire’s ombudsperson.

The Indian media has consistently failed at least 75% of the country’s population covered by the acronyms SCs, STs and OBCs. For proof of this, consider the wholly inadequate media coverage given to the political contestation over the need to enumerate Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the 2021 census operations. The controversy has in no way prodded journalists to go back to documents like the ‘Report of the Backward Classes Commission, 1980’, more popularly known as the Mandal Commission Report; or pursue landmark court judgments on the issue; or attempt to understand the sheer anthropological diversity of the OBC community that cuts across religious lines.

There is in just the Mandal Commission Report, which begins with the quote, “There is equality only among equals. To equate unequals is to perpetuate inequality”, a wealth of stories waiting to be discovered, even though two decades have passed since it was formally handed over to then-president Neelam Sanjiva Reddy. In his letter to the president on the occasion, chair of the Commission B.P. Mandal complained about the huge hurdles it had faced in the absence of caste enumeration figures after the 1931 Census… and suggested a reconsideration of the policy of discontinuing such enumeration. After all, as he observed in his introduction, “in traditional Indian society social backwardness was a direct consequence of caste status and, further, that various types of backwardness flowed directly from this crippling handicap”. A recent articlein The Wire, ‘Why a Caste Census Is the Need of the Hour’ (September 5), provides a more recent backdrop to this argument.

Questions arise over the lack of media interest in OBCs who comprise at least 52% India’s numbers. Lack of curiosity is not a failing that should, generally speaking, be laid at the media’s door. Look at the enormous curiosity provoked by Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide a year ago, which had led to an avalanche of “investigations” and went far beyond the film star himself to even unearth rampant drug use in Bollywood. This leads to two further questions: given this, just what are the issues that excite the curiosity of Indian journalists and editors? And are these tropes linked to their own caste-class locations?

An excellent exposition of the problem was The Wire piece that came out a year ago (‘Alienated, Discriminated Against and Few in Number: The Bahujan in the Indian Newsroom’, August 11, 2020). The writer, after conducting an impromptu survey of the Indian newsroom, established not just the very well-noted phenomenon that it is a space dominated utterly by the upper castes, but that it is also emphatically an unequal space where experiences of those outside the dominant locations invariably fail to make their presence felt.

“The newsroom floor is dominated by journalists from English-speaking schools who come from well-off families… The topics of conversation may also seem foreign to Bahujan journalists. The lives of upper caste journalists in these cities revolve around shopping malls, fancy restaurants, coffee shops, bars, clubs, etc. Upper caste journalists also benefit from the cultural capital – in the form of books, art, music, theatre, films, etc – passed down to them from the previous generation.”

All this impacted the stories that finally emerged. One respondent quoted in the piece spoke of his story ideas being rejected; others of how they were left out of important discussions on the news menu of the day.

Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, HAM president Jitan Ram Manjhi and other leaders after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi over caste census in New Delhi, August 23, 2021. Photo: PTI

One can, in light of this, conclude that there are serious structural reasons for the lack of media interest in the story of OBC enumeration. Such epistemic silences are by no means new. Go back to the days when a maelstrom of protests swept through Indian cities after then prime minister, V.P. Singh, announced his government’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission report on August 7, 1990. Journalist and political historian V. Krishna Ananth notes that while Singh’s initial announcement attracted no negative response immediately, the dam burst after the self-immolation of Delhi college student Rajiv Goswami, followed by a spate of copycat suicides in other northern Indian cities and towns.

Did the charged media coverage given to Goswami’s unfortunate death possibly propel the suicides that followed? His burning figure made it to the covers of several prominent magazines. The late social activist and author, Gail Omvedt, made a direct link between the newspaper coverage and the ‘self-immolations’, in a chapter that appeared in an anthology edited by Ghanshyam Shah, ‘The Anti-Caste Movement And The Discourse Of Power’ from Caste and Democratic Politics in India’ (Permanent Black). She wrote: “then a wave of ‘self-immolations’ followed, spurred by tremendous newspaper publicity and intellectual support… There was a chorus in the press against V.P. Singh, talk of the ‘Mandalisation of India’, and respectable social scientists who had made their careers analysing the reality of caste in India now rediscovered the economic factor and threatened a ‘brain drain’ of high-caste talent abroad.”

If you look at the media coverage of those days, there was no ambiguity about which side the media was on. Lines from a report appearing in a contemporary news magazine would indicate this: “…Sharad Yadav continued exhorting the backwards to come out into the streets for a numerical showdown with the anti-reservationists. He must have been dismayed when despite pouring rain an anti-Mandal rally was attended by over 50,000 while rainfall washed out a pro-Mandal rally the next day – a pointer to which way the views of the capital’s citizenry veer.”

There was also close detailing of the methods of protest in those news reports, including the manner in which medical students and doctors in Lucknow took to “polishing shoes and cleaning cars and taking out processions in which they ply rickshaws – to make the point that this is what they are likely to end up doing if the Government reserves more jobs.” These forms of protest, incidentally, had a long lease of life, and were repeated years later when organisations like Youth for Equality and the AIIMS Residents Doctors Association went on anti-quota stirs against the proposal to provide 27% reservations for OBCs in elite educational institutions – a move that was aborted by the Supreme Court. The irony is that such forms of protest only illustrated the disdain towards work done by professionals like rickshaw pullers and cobblers, and an assumption that only the lower castes should do such work and that jobs that command high social capital must necessarily be “reserved” (by implication) for the so-called meritorious upper castes. The irony was patent but no news report called it out.

Economist Ashwini Deshpande, in her short account, ‘Affirmative Action In India’ (Oxford) also notes that “public sympathy was fully with the striking students with no evidence of the usual middle-class disdain for and impatience with agitational activities.”

Media, if committed to the need for more and better data to achieve their much professed demand for evidence-based policy-making, should in fact be arguing in favour of OBC enumeration in the current census operations. After all, if you don’t count them, how will you report them? Reporting blind make for blind reports, without the credibility of adequate data. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the Indian media have chosen to continue siding with power structures defined by caste, class and political parameters and, in the process, persist with their historical role of being force multipliers for those who rule the country today.

Big media and farm protests

An editorial in the Times of India, ‘Jai Which Kisan’ (September 7) indicated the deep sympathy the corporate media has for the Modi government in its efforts to get the three farm loans mainstreamed. The editorial terms the passing of the laws as a “laudable ambition of creating a robust private market for agri produce”. It goes on to paint the protestors as “big farmers”, and advises the government to win over “the small and marginal farmers” so that they realise the benefits of reform. The hypocrisy inherent in this argument is obvious: struggling farmers who comprise a wide spectrum of the farming community have been sitting out in the cold and rain for close over a year are painted as the moneyed villains of the piece, while the real beneficiaries of the farm laws – powerful, globally-networked agribusiness – is never mentioned even in passing.

Meanwhile, television channels adopted all manner of innovative ways to minimise the gargantuan scale of the Muzaffarnagar mahapanchayat gathering of farmers on September 5. This included, in one instance, introducing vertical frames of the visuals from the ground – so that the eye could not register the impressive vastness of the crowd. It is precisely such cheap tactics that have raised the hackles of the protesting farmers when it comes to the “godi media”. There was an instance of the Aaj Tak reporter, Chitra Tripathi, being chased away even as “hai, hai, godi media” chants rang out. Such treatment of individual journalists cannot and must not be condoned. After all, each of these microphone holders are only working at the bidding of those who pay their salaries. What would be more useful, but of course more difficult is to adopt ways to discomfit the corporates who control the media, thus disrupting their business model.

Against this backdrop, the photographs of the event that The Wire put out (‘Will Oust Divisive BJP’: Farmers Stand Firm at Muzaffarnagar Mahapanchayat‘, September 6) were important. They were a reminder that there is great value in slow photography as opposed to the frenetic pace of television cameras, providing the viewer a chance to dwell on the faces and ambience of an event that was by any token a significant political marker. ‘Not Just a Farmers’ Stir But a Democratic Pushback Against Uncaring Rule’ (September 9) notes, this “historic mahapanchayat was not just a farmer-related one…apparent from the diversity of attendance it drew and from the content of the speeches made at the happening.” What was also striking were the numerous young faces captured in the photographs of the participants – indicating that this movement is attracting a new generation in western Uttar Pradesh, not all of whom may be farmers themselves.

The Muzaffarnagar mahapanchayat. Photo: PTI

Such features indicate an attempt to think out of the box, and will go some way to broaden The Wire’s appeal. It has just been recognised by the International Press Institute (IPI) for its journalism. IPI’s executive director, Barbara Trionfi, writes, “The Wire is a leading force in India’s digital news transformation and its commitment to quality, independent journalism is an inspiration to IPI members around the world.” She congratulates its staff for “their tremendous work in the service of critical reporting and press freedom”, and assures them that her organisation “will stand with them in the face of increasing political pressure.”

Thank you Barbara Trionfi and IPI, for such a strengthening thought. Siddharth Varadarajan spoke for the organisation when he said that although The Wire has paid a price for its independence in so many ways, “there is nothing like recognition from our peers in India and around the world to make this journey totally worth it.”

Readers write in…

RSS and Taliban?

Khozema Mansure writes from Toronto suggesting a piece comparing the RSS and the Taliban:

“I hope everyone at The Wire is safe. I am taking the liberty of making the following suggestion as it could be of considerable interest to your readers.

Perhaps one of your staff writers or one of your regular contributors like Avay Shukla, or Badri Raina or Prem Shankar Jha, could develop the following points further. Some of these will surely need additional research/insights and there will be yet others which have been overlooked. Of course there are very wide divergences too between the RSS and the Taliban, but the focus here is on the similarities. Comparisons, as will be evident, are from the standpoint of a ‘very curious social sciences inspired bystander’.

*Command and control, clearly defined hierarchy which does not tolerate internal or external dissent Implicit in their beliefs is a deep and abiding faith in their superiority.

*Both are at crucial turning points in their respective journeys which will significantly impact different sections of vast swathes of humanity in Asia and beyond.

*For good or bad, both are severely riled by their opponents; to the extent that the good work done by both is overlooked/sidestepped on account of the Hindutva and Islamophobia prisms.

*Shorn of all the opprobrium cast on them, the kernel of their basic ideology harkens back to the very sincere and ‘pure spirit’ embodied by the likes of a Mother Teresa or Abdul Sattar Edhi…

*Cutting through the fat, how sobering is the realisation that despite all the noise and din, both organisations (again shorn of their Hindutva and Islamophobia prisms) are essentially about how best society should be organised!

*Both have been misconceived and wrongly branded by the popular media as Hindu and terrorist organisations on account of considerations other than what they actually stand for.

*Both have grassroots, disciplined (RSS perhaps more), ideologically-motivated cadres.

*Both have very clear vision and are bold and daring

I continue to be in the awe of the wonderful work The Wire is doing. Keep it up!”

I don’t know if Khozema Mansure is aware of this development but recently Javed Akhtar, well-known film lyricist and poet, did actually draw a comparison between the RSS and the Taliban, which immediately ignited the ire of Hindutva-leaning organisations and trolls. They demanded that he be jailed for daring to make such a blasphemous comparison.

Javed Akhtar. Photo: Ramesh lalwani/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Irony overload

Leo Levy from Brussels writes appreciatively about the irony inherent in the image used in the piece carried in the Science section, ‘How Do We Address Information Overload in the Scholarly Literature?’ (August 29): “The image chosen to illustrate the paper about information overload comes from a notorious far-right French intellectual, Renaud Camus (his name is credited under the picture). As Wikipedia notes, he is the creator of the conspiracy theory of the ‘Great Replacement’, which claims that a global elite is colluding against the white population of Europe to replace them with non-European non-Christian people.

Although and just because Renaud Camus is as shameful as his best equivalents in India, I thought you would appreciate the irony of the choice of the picture! I seize the opportunity to thank you for your work. I have been reading The Wire for a long time and I know the importance of independent news. I valued highly the function of ombudswoman/man when it started to appear in our papers. But as you know, it has now completely disappeared in the European press.

What is information if it does not develop the capacity of the reader to reflect about information? That’s why I consider myself lucky to be able to still read your column (and A.S. Panneerselvan’s in The Hindu).

Taliban and women

Radhika Coomaraswamy, chairperson, and Roshmi Goswami, co-chairperson, South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) (excerpts): “We are deeply concerned about what Taliban rule will mean in practice, especially for women and girls…The Taliban has given assurances that women would enjoy equal rights within the framework of Islam, including being able to work and receive education. They also gave the impression that they have become more moderate and that they are ready to be more inclusive and protect minority rights. Even though it appears to be an encouraging sign, life under the Taliban remains difficult to predict as they remain vague on rules and restrictions, and how Islamic law will be implemented…

We call on the Taliban leadership to: Assure Afghan citizens, especially women and girls, security and safety and guarantee equality for all citizens; Promote and protect the rights of Afghan women and children and address the needs of victims of sexual and gender-based violence in the conflict; Women must be fully included at all levels of decision making and their voices must be heard; Protect the rights of minorities and the vulnerable in Afghan society; Abide by international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians and facilitate humanitarian access; Ensure safe passage to all Afghans who wish to leave.

Remembering Syed Ali Geelani

Ghulam Nabi Fai, secretary general, Washington-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum writes about Syed Ali Geelani, late chairman of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (excerpt):

Syed Ali Geelani was an intellectual, deep thinker, visionary, a brilliant and articulate scholar and above all an institution in himself. He was a giant in Kashmir’s turbulent history… In 1990 the winds of change blew across the world, destroying dictatorships and occupations, and the people of Kashmir also renewed their struggle for freedom…It was at this crucial juncture that Geelani Sahib emerged to present a much larger aspect of his leadership. He not only rekindled the issue afresh but also gave it a new vigour and meaning. The people of Kashmir will never forget the selfless contributions and tireless efforts of Geelani Sahib.

Finally, this observation from a reader of The Wire, Kalyani Menon-Sen:

The horrors of punctuation, remember ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves”? This headline in today’s Wire — ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Anti-Human Trafficking Initiatives in West Bengal’ (September 8) — is almost as funny. But still good to see trafficking recognised as an anti-human act.

Write to ombudsperson@cms.thewire.in

Krishna Ananth’s Chronicle of Press Freedom Is Essential Reading for Journalists

Ananth delves into the legal and statutory history of the press in India, and thus we have before us a tumultuous journey of freedoms and unfreedoms.

The use of the word “unfreedom” in the title, Between Freedom and Unfreedom: The Press in Independent India, itself gives the reader a clue of what is to come. And yet, it is dangerous to jump to conclusions. What the author, V. Krishna Ananth, has done is to delve into the legal and statutory history of the press in India and thus we have before us a tumultuous journey of freedoms and unfreedoms.

Ananth is currently an academic but has also been a lawyer and a journalist. He wears all three hats in this book. It is therefore a deep dive into the history of the press in India, full of legal references to court cases, judgments, government Acts and the findings of various commissions. Ananth also stays strictly with the press – as in the print media; there are only fleeting references to broadcast and digital media.

However, when it comes to the freedom of the press and its rights within Article 19 of the Constitution, the history is shared by all the media. The extent to which the founders of the Constitution debated aspects of the freedom of the press and the role of the press in a democracy is an eye-opener for anyone who has not investigated our colonial and pre-Independent past. The debates are strong and varied, from the far-reaching freedoms to the need to curtail press freedoms, to discussing how societal norms must also be respected.

Ananth contends that it was perhaps a mistake not to have a separate Constitutional provision for the press rather than include it within Article 19 (1) a, as in the freedom of expression. As we look around us today, it is hard to disagree. Or, as this book reveals, through the course of Independent India’s history, a “Bill of Rights” that specifically mentions the freedom of the press would have been a legal and operational boon for the Indian media.

But as readers will learn, the journey was not just about the freedom of journalists, not least their right to a free wage and the wage commissions set up to force reluctant owners to pay their staff. It was also about the business aspect of the press and how proprietors could use their business interests as well as the scope of their newspapers to influence their brand of journalism. These subjects were also intricately discussed. As our history shows, over the years the proprietors got their way in both wage restrictions and protection of their interests, using legal and other means.

Between Freedom and Unfreedom
V. Krishna Ananth
The Alcove, 2021

What it is important to remember, however, is that we had intent. We had the intent for a free press, with reasonable caveats. We had the intent to give newspaper workers a fair wage. We had the intent to ensure that newspaper owners did not sacrifice journalism for profit. As human history has proved time and again, intent alone is insufficient and can be counterproductive. Look at where the media is now, in all these terms, and the sad picture becomes clear.

From the freedom struggle and the use of the press to spread the word in spite of British laws of sedition, to the writing of the Constitution to setting up a Press Commission, we were full of fervour and intent. But alongside, insidiously, as this book demonstrates, ran that other narrative of control and restriction. The ability to take criticism is weak as people get more powerful, and India’s social conservatism was often used an excuse to control our freedoms.

The buildup to the events of the Emergency therefore provided all the clues for the biggest assault on democracy and on the press in 1975. Or like all journalists, should I amend that to “the then biggest”? Because several ironies will emerge. The declaration of the Emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was on June 25, 1977, when her election was declared null and void by the Allahabad high court. Various civil conspiracies and foreign threats to India’s integrity were alleged. And apart from her political opponents, the press was a big casualty.

Ananth goes into these events in great detail, and any journalist and journalism student should recognise the parallels with life in 2021 and the Narendra Modi administration. Thanks to the enormous effort the Opposition of the time, including ironically Modi himself, his political seniors and colleagues and several other politicians and activists put in to fight the Emergency, the seeds were sowed for how to effectively control criticism and the press.

But I get ahead of myself. Ananth’s own journey details the various ways in which some newspaper owners succumbed, how the few editors who tried to resist were treated by these owners and how a small section of owners stood against. Many of these stories are legend within the community. It was Ramnath Goenka’s Indian Express that stood out here for its resistance.

Interestingly, as Ananth delves into the founders of India’s biggest newspapers, you see how closely entwined politics and business always were in the newspaper industry. This underlines the fears of the early Nehru administration, in trying to find a way to create and nurture a truly free press in India.

You also learn just how the Indian judiciary played a role – positive and negative – in interpreting press freedoms. And how the media stringently questioned the judiciary.

After the Emergency was lifted and Indira Gandhi lost in 1977, the coalition Janata Party government led by Morarji Desai, with L.K. Advani as information and broadcasting minister lost no time in lifting all the censorship laws and press restrictions. The irony deepens.

One gem within this book is the revisit to the Shah Commission which revealed how newspapers were categorised during the Emergency: “positively friendly”, “continuously hostile”, C + and C- – shifting from neutral to positive and neutral to negative. Using today’s language, we see here a perfect toolkit for control and intimidation of the press.

Also read: An Annotated Reading Guide to the Modi Government’s Tool-Kit for Managing the Media

With the lifting of the Emergency comes what was a sort of golden age for the press in India. The 1980s were a heady time, and journalists produced what are now considered classic investigations into criminality, fraud, corruption and social discrimination: The Antulay case, the rights of slum dwellers, the Fairfax investigation, the Bhagalpur blindings and, of course, Bofors. Arun Shourie, N. Ram, Chitra Subramanian, M.J. Akbar, Praful Bidwai, Neerja Chaudhury, Ashwini Sarin… these are the names that filled my own young ears as a student and in my early days in journalism.

Two other cases mentioned in the book are worth repeating: how the press came together against Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra’s ‘Bihar Press Bill’ and later P. Chidambaram’s defamation or press censorship Bill of 1988, during Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership. In both cases, a joint press defeated government attempts to control Constitutional freedoms.

Ananth ends his book here. In his epilogue, he mentions recent changes – television, the contract system which replaced wage boards, how economic liberalisation lead to huge profits for newspaper owners and how information and communication technology changed the media forever.

He will not predict the future in a history book, he says. So we will take the liberty of explaining how current events in the media have taken their cue from the past. I have used the word irony a few times, because many of those who fought the Emergency now use the same methods to control the media today. The recent suggestions by a former journalist, as quoted in a Modi government report on how to influence and control press coverage, to colour-code journalists according to their leanings harks straight back to the Emergency. Many of the big names in journalism dropped their adversarial positions to become part of the BJP or open supporters of the BJP.

Ananth explains this most cogently. It was not just the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, he says. The tipping point was the Mandal commission report of 1990 – additional reservations for other backward castes in Central government jobs – where journalists and media owners alike revolted against its implementation. V.P. Singh’s decision to right a historical wrong even if it was for cynical electoral purposes, exposed exactly that fault line in Indian society which would change the media forever. It was a regressive India which found voice in the media “couched as speaking truth to power”.

We see the debris around us today.

This is not a light, easy read. It requires diligence and attention. But it should be essential reading matter for all journalists, current and aspiring.

Ranjona Banerji is an independent journalist who writes on media and politics. She tweets at @ranjona.

Remembering B.P. Mandal, the Man Behind India’s Silent Revolution

A visionary with a revolutionary zeal, Mandal had an instrumental role in placing India’s marginalised sections in an inclusive picture.

Note: August 25 marks the 100th birth anniversary of B.P. Mandal and 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the implementation of the Mandal Commission report.

During one of my field trips to Madhepura in Bihar, I came across an old, wise man who said that the names Mandela and Mandal were the global revolutionary buzzwords of the 1990s. Both these distinguished activists and thinkers, who fought for ending social discrimination, were coincidently born in the same year – 1918 – and propagated their socially and politically uplifting models in the 1990s.

August 25 marks the 100th birth anniversary of Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal (B.P. Mandal). He was born on this date in 1918 in Varanasi, quite away from his sleepy village, Murho, near Madhepura in Bihar. Mandal has attained a ‘symbolic status’ for social justice movement in India, but surprisingly, not much information is available about his life, which is reflective of a deliberate exclusion of the leadership and the movement seeking emancipation of the marginalised masses in postcolonial India.

For more than a quarter-century, Indian politics has been centred on the binary of Mandal-kamandal mobilisations. On one hand, Mandal’s ideals represented an umbrella coalition of the oppressed Bahujan comprising Shudra, Atishudras, Adivasis and Muslims, symbolising unity of the marginalised social groups. They also formed the majority in terms of their numerical strength fighting for social justice and their due representation in the field of governance. On the other hand, the kamandal belief system displayed the unity of the oppressors contesting against reservation and affirmative-action largely under the rubric of right-wing Hindutva.

Although Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the then prime minister heading the United Front government, implemented the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, which B.P. Mandal chaired, on August 7, 1990, it finally came into effect only in 1993 after the Supreme Court gave a green signal for its implementation with a historic judgement, popularly known as the Indra Sawhney judgement in November 1992. In this regard, 2018 also marks the 25th anniversary of the implementation of the Mandal Commission report. Co-incidentally, on August 2, 2018, the Lok Sabha passed the 123rd constitutional amendment bill providing constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes.

The Mandal Commission report also recognised the caste-based discrimination of certain professions among the Muslims.

Mandal, a visionary with a revolutionary zeal, had an instrumental role in placing India’s marginalised sections in an inclusive picture. The milieu in which he was born was that of colonial India, which was not only undergoing prejudices and subordination under the British rule, but was also facing massive communal, caste and gender biases within its own social fabric. This further alienated the struggle for national unity and communal harmony.

Born in a Shudra family, Mandal first experienced caste discrimination during his higher secondary school years at the Raj High School, Darbhanga, where he, along with other students belonging to the same social section, were given meal only after the savarna students had finished eating. His young, rebellious temperament refused to keep silent and shook the school and hostel administration by raising the issue and ensuring an end to such practices at a fundamental level.

Mandal was a man of strong sense of self-worth, who stood his ground amidst everything unfavourable and chaotic. His hometown, as several other small pockets of India, was stained with social, educational and economic stigmas. However, due to its location near Calcutta, the reforming drizzles of the Bengal Renaissance percolated in the region and sparked further interest in Mandal in his earnest endeavours towards social development.

His skilled rhetoric and rationale soon secured him a place in the Bihar state assembly. He was not only intolerant of any practical execution of discriminatory actions but also rebuked any derogatory remarks made to belittle people belonging to the depressed classes. One such incident was when he retaliated against an upper-caste legislator who used the word gwala in the arena of the assembly to disparage his counterparts. V.P. Verma, the then speaker of the Bihar legislative assembly had to issue a notice condemning the use of the word which was identified as unparliamentary.

His household was that of a politically active and socially vigilant background. He was only 23 when he became an unopposed member of the Bhagalpur district council in 1941. His father, Rasbihari Lal Mandal, was himself a social reformer. One of the founding members of Indian National Congress, he valiantly worked to eradicate the social ignominies associated with the caste system and estrangement on the bases of low social status from the social and political makeup. It was during the first general elections for the state assembly of Bihar in 1952 that B.P. Mandal won the Madhepura assembly seat on a Congress ticket against Bhupendra Narayan Mandal, who represented the Socialist Party. Although Mandal was victorious against Bhupendra Narayan, he considered the latter as influential in formulating socialist notions and converting Madhepura into a breeding ground for socialism and its advances. Ram Manohar Lohia, another parliamentarian who lost against Nehru from the Phulpur constituency (near Allahabad) had high regards for Bhupendra Narayan and kept visiting Madhepura to support the models of socialism advocated by him, which further had an impact on Mandal’s political and social policies.

Mandal made headlines in newspapers all across the nation for his audacious act in the Pama case, when local Rajput landlords of Pama village in Bihar attacked a Kurmi village, leading to police atrocities against backward class citizens. Mandal was pressurised to remove his plea for immediate government action against the police and compensation for the victims during the session of the Bihar assembly. He instantly left the treasury bench and joined the opposition bench to fight for the cause, which further humiliated the inactive ruling party. This action fetched him the post of president of the state parliamentary board of Ram Manohar Lohia’s Samyukta Socialist Party. He later won the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar on the ticket of the Samyukta Socialist Party and was appointed in-charge of the state government’s Ministry of Health.

Later, he left the party due to differences with Lohia. He formed his new party named Shoshit Dal in March 1967. He took oath as the seventh chief minister of the state on February 1, 1968, a historic moment in the north Indian political scenario as Mandal became the first ever Shudra chief minister. Since he was an elected member of the Lower House, in order to take the post of chief minister, he was required to be a member of either house of the Bihar assembly. Satish Singh, an MLA of his party, was made the chief minister for four days before Mandal became a member of the legislative council and took charge as chief minister. It was during his reign that another dramatic picture in the history of north Indian politics took place, wherein his ministry noticeably comprised OBCs in a majority over those belonging to upper castes. The radical shift in the representation paradigm during this short-lived government – it lasted only 47 days – brought a new spirit in Indian politics. Later, Kansiram’s reiteration Jiski jitni sankhiya bhari, uski utni hissedari during the call for the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s report further emphasised the ideals of majority representation and its urgency as opposed to the monopoly of so-called savarna upper castes in the political domain who were a numerical minority.

Mandal resigned as chief minister protesting Congress’s removal of the enquiry commission named ‘Aiyar Commission’, headed by T.L. Venkatarama Aiyar, to cater to the charges of corruption on several senior Congress leaders and ministers. Furthermore, in 1968, he contested and won the by-elections from the Madhepura parliamentary constituency without much challenge and became a Lok Sabha member. Again, in 1974, he joined hands with Jayaprakash Narayan and resigned from the assembly protesting a corrupt Congress administration. He became a Lok Sabha member again in 1977 on a Janata Party ticket from the Madhepura constituency.

File photo. B.P. Mandal submitting copies of the Mandal Commission report to Gyani Zail Singh, former President of India.

Mandal’s longstanding anti-dogmatic stance and support for the depressed classes resulted in the formation of the ‘Mandal Commission’ or the ‘Backward Classes Commission’ under Prime Minister Morarji Desai on December 20, 1978. Chaired by Mandal, the Commission intended to acknowledge and emancipate the socially or educationally backward classes of India and redress the issues of reservation for those facing caste-based discrimination. In 1980, OBCs (other backward classes) was recognised to be emancipated on the grounds of caste, economic and social markers, which further formed a majority of 52% of India’s population. A report of the Commission suggested a 27% reservation of jobs under the Central government and public sector undertakings for OBCs. A total of 49% reservation for SC, ST and OBC was thus conscripted as per the Supreme Court ruling.

The Mandal Report which was submitted on December 31, 1980, to the then President of India Giani Zail Singh, substantiated its position on equality of opportunity with a beautiful lived example:

Mohan comes from a fairly well-off middle class family and both his parents are well educated. He attends one of the good public schools in the city which provides a wide range of extracurricular activities. At home he has a separate room for himself and his assisted in his studies by both his parents. There is a television and radio set in the house and his father subscribes to a number of magazines. In the choice of his studies and finally his career, he is continuously guided by his parents and teachers. Most of his friends are of similar background and he is fully aware of the nature of the highly competitive world in which he will have to carve a suitable place for himself. Some of his relations are fairly influential people and he can bank on the right sort of recommendation or push at the right moment…On the other hand, Lallu is a village boy and his backward parents occupy a low social position in the village caste hierarchy. His father owns a 4 acre plot of agricultural land. Both his parents are illiterate and his family of 8 lives huddled in a two room hut. Whereas a primary school is located in his village, for his high school he had to walk a distance of nearly three kilometres both ways. Keen on pursuing higher studies, he persuaded his parents to send him to an uncle at the Tehsil headquarters. He never received any guidance regarding the course of studies to be followed or the career to be chosen. Most of his friends did not study beyond middle school level. He was never exposed to any stimulating cultural environment and he completed his college education without much encouragement from any quarter. Owing to his rural background, he has a rustic appearance. Despite his college education, his pronunciation is poor, his manners awkward and he lacks self-confidence.

The report thus underscores the need to identify and redress the loopholes in the social, educational and economic structures that are detrimental to a major section of the society. Furthermore, the implementation of the Mandal Commission report enshrined the idea of equal opportunity with fascinating opening lines which read: “There is equality only among equals. To equate unequals is to perpetuate inequality.”

The Mandal Commission recommendation was not merely for reservation as mass media has generally presented. It has instilled in the large Shudra masses a confidence that they are not worthless. It is perhaps this realisation and newly developed consciousness that, despite not having reserved seats for these caste groups in the assemblies and the parliament, the composition of the state assemblies and the central parliament, particularly the lower houses, dramatically changed after the implementation of the recommendation. Perhaps, for this precise reason, Christophe Jaffrelot termed Mandal movement as India’s silent revolution.

Another path-breaking achievement of the Mandal Commission recommendation is the recognition of a section of the Muslim population, primarily those engaged in occupations like blacksmith, barber, washermen and cobbler among others, as OBC. The very categorisation of Muslim caste groups as OBCs punctures dogmatic communal binaries prevalent in India. So much so that the upper castes, while protesting against the Mandal Commission recommendation, made a mockery of these menial jobs and occupations with a broom in hand portraying that reservation in jobs for these caste groups will eventually push them into such menial occupations. Mandal, who took his final breath at the age of 64 in 1982 due to a heart-stroke, therefore had far-reaching consequences for this young nation. William Dalrymple has rightly observed that this movement in the 1990s in India has brought about a stake in power for the shudra castes and made them politically conscious: exactly what the civil rights movement did for the American blacks in 1960s.

Arvind Kumar is an assistant professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Jamia Milia Islamia.

The author acknowledges the humble financial assistance provided by the Indian Council for Social Science Research towards research for this article.