Elections are shaped by caste ties, social combines

To avoid the caste crossfire that the BJP finds itself in, the Congress should style itself as a party that’s for all

Are the parties opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) again missing the wood for the trees? Could the upcoming assembly polls or the 2019 elections be a replay of Uttar Pradesh where the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) got carried away by the tagline with portraits of Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav: “UP ko ye saath pasand hai. (Uttar Pradesh likes this partnership).”

The hard truth of politics in our country is that no party or front can be relevant without finely crafted grassroots social alliances. The BJP tripped its youthful rivals in the UP assembly elections by quietly weaving and then pulling from under their feet an intricate rug of social identities.

The caste coverlet the BJP spread to wrap up electoral victories is now showing signs of fraying. Large sections of its social allies such as the Brahmins (in Madhya Pradesh), Patidars (in Gujarat) and Marathas (in Maharashtra) have turned testy. It’s hard to tell the electoral implications of the BhimaKoregaon confrontation between the Dalits and Marathas. But the prognosis isn’t encouraging.

The party is apparently aware of it and is seeking to mend fences with alienated groups, proof of it being its recent candidatures to gubernatorial offices and the Upper House. Even the freshly minted “Ajay Bharat, Atal BJP” slogan is so worded as to lure the Brahmins.

By invoking memories of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the party hopes to reconnect with the community angered by the legislative rollback of the Supreme Court judgment diluting /balancing (depending on your point of view) the law to check atrocities against the Dalits. That makes it the second case, after Bhima-Koregaon, of intercaste friction involving the scheduled castes.

In the prevailing flux, a formidable social combine can indeed be stitched together by the Opposition at the BJP’s expense. That is, if the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP)-Congress entente becomes a reality in UP where the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. The other states where caste alliances are possible through party pacts are Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Competing ambitions can make seat sharing difficult, as is evident from the glitches in the Congress-BSP talks in MP and Chhattisgarh. The answer to that is the spirit of give and take the SP’s Akhilesh Yadav has advocated in UP.

For its part, the Congress lacks in UP a social alliance to match the Jatav and Yadav support of the BSP and SP. Its effort apparently is to lure a section of the Brahmins besides gaining from — and adding value to — Muslim consolidation around the proposed state-level alliance. The Congress legitimately sees for itself an opening in the forward caste rebellion against the reversal of the SC verdict balancing the enforcement of the pro-Dalit law. But the party needs to approach gingerly the issue on which the Brahmin-Rajput and Dalit sentiments are at sharp variance.

An expression of that was the Bharat Bandh by forward communities while Rahul Gandhi was on a pilgrimage to Mansarovar. The contretemps accentuated by the BJP’s jibing at Rahul’s yatra had Congress spokesman, Randeep Surjewala, turn euphoric. He told a gathering in Haryana that his party’s DNA was of the Brahmin Samaj: “Even today, Shiv-bhakt, your son, Congress chief and our leader, Rahul Gandhi, is on his way to Bhole Shankar’s Yatra….(and) the leaders of BJP are trying to foil his trip.”

Surjewala could have been subtler in cognisance of the sharpened social fault lines. The Congress once was the chosen party of the Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins.

A host of factors, including quota regimes have altered the earlier caste alliances in the rush for social justice sops. An extension of that scrimmage is the forward caste blowback against the restoration of the Dalit law to status quo ante. The changes haven’t gone down well with the pro-BJP forward castes.

To avoid getting trapped in the caste crossfire in which the saffron party finds itself, the Congress could be better off styling itself as a party that stands for all.

Its founding principles were bequeathed by a line of learned helmsmen (Pandits) across caste identities. They had the erudition and the vision to stay the course of social inclusivity.

Given the party’s decline, the claim would have been debatable, yet arguable.

QUOTA REGIMES HAVE ALTERED CASTE ALLIANCES IN THE RUSH FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE SOPS. ITS EXTENSION IS THE FORWARD CASTE BLOWBACK AGAINST THE RESTORATION OF THE DALIT LAW TO STATUS QUO ANTE