Why BJP is afraid of caste census

A caste census might reveal that after nine years of the BJP in power at the Centre, the upper castes still disproportionately wield power, position, and property.

A month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocked the Congress for demanding a caste census, Home Minister Amit Shah, addressing a press conference on November 3 in poll-bound Chhattisgarh, said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had never opposed the caste census, even though he added that a decision on it would be taken only after giving it proper thought.

A long-time RSS-watcher, who subscribes to its ideology, explained: “This is symptomatic of the confusion in the BJP (on the caste issue). In the early 1990s, the Congress fell between two stools on the Ramjanmabhoomi issue; today, the BJP is in danger of doing the same on the caste issue.”

Evidently, the Congress’ campaign for a caste census has shaken the BJP, even though it was early to climb onto the caste bandwagon, shortly after the Mandal report was accepted in 1991; today, the party nationally wins 44 per cent of the Other Backward Class (OBC) vote.

The Congress, in sharp contrast, has taken over three decades to understand not just the Mandal report’s social import but its electoral possibilities: it currently controls just 15 per cent of the OBC vote. Having gradually lost its hold over the Brahmin, the Dalit and the Muslim vote — its mainstay since the 1950s — the Congress had not just fallen to second place behind the BJP nationally, but shrunk beyond recognition. Hence, its change in strategy, or a change of heart.

For the BJP, which understood Mandal’s electoral significance early on, it has always been a case of electoral expediency rather than a matter of social justice.

Breaching the caste citadel

In the early 1990s, powered by the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh under Kalyan Singh, an OBC leader and Hindu Hriday Samrat (Emperor of Hindu hearts). But before the decade ended, the power struggle between the OBCs led by Kalyan Singh and the upper caste Rajput-Brahmin-Banias combination, who saw themselves as the natural inheritors of power, saw the BJP edifice in UP come crashing down. Hindu communalism found it hard at that time to breach the caste citadel.

Kalyan Singh was first replaced by Ram Prakash Gupta, an Bania, and then by Rajnath Singh, a Rajput. By 2002, Rajnath Singh — currently the Defence Minister — too bowed out, and the BJP found itself cast aside by the voters of UP. This was till Modi appeared on the national scene in 2014, when the BJP won most of the Lok Sabha seats in the state. Three years later — after a gap of 15 years — in 2017, a BJP Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath (incidentally a Rajput) returned to office.

A 360-dgeree turn

In those years in the wilderness, the BJP worked assiduously not just to strengthen Hindutva but to divide the OBCs — the Yadavs versus the rest. UP’s OBCs, even the more educated among the Yadavs, began to see themselves as Hindus first, and members of their caste after that. Obscure icons were pulled out of the pages of mythology, and members of these marginal castes sought and given positions in the BJP.

In 2015, the BJP was once again given a warning by Bihar’s OBC voters that they could not be taken for granted. Ahead of the assembly elections, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat spoke of the need to review the reservation policy (a statement he reversed only earlier this year). The Janata Dal-United (JDU) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) — among the original Mandal parties and who were contesting the 2015 elections in alliance with the Congress — used Bhagwat’s statement to tell voters that the BJP wanted to end reservation. The BJP was wiped out in those elections held less than a year after its spectacular 2014 victory.

In the early 1990s, when the BJP had apparently taken caste on board, its then organising general secretary K N Govindacharya coined the phrase ‘social engineering’ to combat the Mandal parties. It meant, he said at the time, the empowerment of the OBCs in “satta, sampatti, and samman” (power, property, and respect) to bring about social justice. This, he hoped would replace the RSS’ clarion call of ‘samajik samrasta’ (social harmony), a society in which every caste understood its place, and, therefore, led to harmonious relations. “We can’t have social harmony, “ Govindacharya told this author, “without social justice.”

A can of worms

Three decades on, the BJP fears a caste census that will provide not just the population of each caste but also the socio-economic profiles of its members. It might reveal that after nine years of the BJP in power in New Delhi, the upper castes still disproportionately wield power, position, and property — and this will open a can of worms.

Indeed, an RSS insider summed up the situation most starkly: “The BJP has been changing gradually: earlier it was a Bania party, now it has representation of all castes. A caste census will only reveal the dominance of the upper castes in society. What use is that? Do you recall when caste politics was at its height in Bihar and the Bhoomihars (upper caste, powerful landowning caste who still wear a sacred thread) had to raise armies (known as senas) to take on the Yadavs? Do you want blood on the streets again?”

(Smita Gupta is a Delhi-based journalist. X: @g_smita.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.