The Dalits no longer want a cameo role
could play on Jatav and non-Jatav identity enacting out inner Dalit tensions. Second, they focused on a whole series of smaller parties consolidating egos and votes. Third there was a realisation that Dalit as a social group can be sectoralised and that the younger generation of Dalits might have a different set of aspirations. Fourth, in a question of electoral mathematics, Dalit was never a singular strategy. It always combined with another group like Muslim to consolidate a vote bank.
Modi and Shah realised they could shuffle combinations, create fluidities where one could whittle away votes from older formations, add new layers, create little political startups of the mind while the Congress and Mayawati froze the script. The little fluidities added up to the numbers BJP needed.
Mayawati looks like yesterday’s newspaper while Modi-Shah look like a tactical primer because they read change in its tributaries rather than playing mainstream scenarios. What we then had was two processes. One was the Dalit tired of being frozen into cameo role imposed by Congress etc. ShahModi read their sociology, did the homework better, hinting to Dalits that success may be outside current rigidities. In teasing this out, they displayed a political acumen that read Dalit across several octaves. The result was the Dalit vote in UP. There is a realisation that Dalit today is a solidarity and a fluid pack. Electoral genius lies in shuffling the pack and that skill Modi’s BJP had.