Caste equation throws up challenges in Punjab

Till a few decades ago, an alliance between the landlords and the landless in Punjab would have seemed either an impossibility or hara-kiri but then, in an electoral democracy, the rationale of vote dividends may, at times, overrule such socio-economic principles.

So Punjab, with the country’s highest share of Scheduled Caste votes, witnessed a rather peculiar experiment: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a party borne out of the freedom struggle and Sikh aspirations but reduced to a representative of the larger farming class, forged an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

That was in 1996. And the alliance resulted in the perceived messiah of India’s Dalits, Kanshi Ram, walking into Parliament. He was elected from Hoshiarpur, 12 years after having founded his party in the ominous year of 1984. Having been earlier defeated by Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, this was a watershed moment for Kanshi Ram and the BSP.

Going by pure arithmetic, Punjab held a significant promise for the BSP. The state had some 31 per cent SC vote share, the largest in any Indian province, and Kanshi Ram hailed from this region. Compared to this, the Jat Sikh population is just 20 per cent. But most political pundits failed to understand that over centuries, the SC versus upper-caste equation in Punjab had not played out in the same way as it did in northern India’s hinterlands. The BSP’s laudable performance in the past when it won seats and sizable vote share, ironically remained a one-off feat in a state cockeyed by caste inequality. The SAD soon decided that it would be better off with an alliance with the party of the larger urban Hindu trader-business-commerce section, and hence forged the SAD-BJP equation.

As for the SCs, they had remained a strong vote base for the Congress but the BSP had over the period wooed the Ad-dharmis (untouchables within Dalits). The Valmikis, however, preferred to stick to the Congress. While Kanshi Ram experimented with alliances in Punjab — with Simranjit Singh Mann faction in 1989 and SAD in 1996 — his protégé Mayawati kept aloof, a strategy that has failed to reap a benefit in the electoral arena.

Also read: Power play in Punjab politics ahead of elections

The BSP fought some 115 of the 117 seats in 2007, garnering a mere 4.13 per cent votes, and remained stagnant in 2012 when 109 of its 117 candidates lost deposit and the party got 4.29 per cent vote. A more charitable view could have been that at least its share was not eroding, but the 2014 Lok Sabha contest sent this figure plunging to 1.9 per cent.

The two major SC communities, Ravidasias and Valmikis, simply do not gel socially and hence politically, while Jat Sikhs are the largest single caste in Punjab. Modern Punjab has always had a Jat Sikh chief minister, with the sole exception of Giani Zail Singh who belonged to the Ramgarhia caste.

The BSP has failed to find a way to coagulate the SC vote in Punjab and the wide rift between Valmikis and Ad-dharmis/Ravidasias remains. Valmikis see themselves largely as Hindus while the Mazhabi community sees itself as Sikh.

The centralised Dalit leadership of Mayawati has failed to wrestle with these faultlines within the targeted vote bank, a major reason why Punjab’s Dalits have not resonated with BSP. That watershed 90s era for the BSP juxtaposed with the party’s nadir existence today underlines how the party completely lost the plot in Punjab which has the highest population density of SCs.

In that context, the latest SAD-BSP alliance has attracted the attention of poll pundits. Despite the numbers and synergies, it can command in electoral politics, SCs have remained socially and politically marginalised in this border state. The falling stock of the BSP, which is once again hoping to rise like a phoenix having forged an alliance with the Akali Dal ahead of the Assembly elections less than seven months away, remains an enigma for many.

Migration of SCs

Migration of SCs in significant numbers from Punjab’s Doaba, the land swathe between a region that largely falls between the Beas and the Sutlej rivers, and boasts of its sizable NRI headcount, has economically empowered them but hasn’t been able to sustain any traction for the BSP to stay afloat. The subtleties between then and now have altered for political parties of all hues, including for the mainstream ruling Congress and the SAD.

The caste equation in Punjab throws up challenges of sizable magnitude, sometimes hard to fathom. BSP’s yearning to show up as a worthy political entity is loaded with past baggage of burden and misgivings. Modern Punjab has never had a Dalit CM. SCs in Punjab aren’t a homogenous lot and their indulgence as stakeholders in the state politics has been largely inhibited in the face of an omitted community consolidation. The BSP in Punjab, for lack of a strong leadership now for years, has failed to do what it has been best at — to effect a strong SC political identity that would translate into votes. The party’s gains during the era of Kanshi Ram have all been dribbled away by opponents, which is perhaps why the new alliance between the SAD and the BSP is unlikely to create any sizable undercurrent even though the churning is made to appear like old wine in a new bottle.

The Akali Dal has announced a deputy CM post for an SC leader if the party comes to power. The BJP, left to fend for it after being ejected by the SAD from its 25-year-old alliance, is redrawing its strategy pondering over giving the coveted post of the chief minister to an SC leader.

Punjab’s Malwa region, which lies northward from the banks of river Beas, accounts for a majority of 69 seats out of the total 117 Assembly segments in Punjab. Malwa remains a game-changer in politics of this state, not that the other two regions — Majha and Doaba (44 per cent Dalit population) — haven’t shown up their condescending discernments to tilt the balance of power.

The BSP in Punjab has failed to take ownership to square the circle when it comes to caste prejudices galore. With nearly 32 per cent of the state electorate, the SC community remain politically subjugated to upper caste Jats and Brahmins. Punjab is a Sikh dominated state with 57.69 per cent Sikh population and 38.49 per cent Hindus. Of the three main regions in Punjab, Majha region scaled up the Congress numbers in the 2017 Assembly poll. Amarinder’s estranged ties with Sidhu notwithstanding, Sidhu then walked away with much of the credit for reviving Congress fortunes after a decade of Akali rule under Parkash Singh Badal as CM.

The saffron party in Punjab for decades played second fiddle to the SAD under the garb of alliance dharma. The BJP unwittingly relinquished its political gains and now stares at an uncertain future.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Chandigarh)