Back to identity issues in UP

Radhika Ramaseshan

Senior journalist

Uttar Pradesh is in a political churn a little over a year before it votes. The social hierarchy that evolved in the post-Mandal, post-Ayodhya phases has become shaky. While the order that was built and re-built since the ’90s by the principal political players — the BJP, the SP and the BSP — is still not seriously challenged, the early tremors leading to a long-term transmutation are palpable. The BJP, SP and BSP, that took caste allegiances for granted and crafted their strategies to get the electoral math correct, may have to revisit their algorithms before 2022. For long, it was a given that the Yadavs, the biggest beneficiary of the empowerment agendas set out for the OBCS, went to the SP as their natural habitat; the Dalits and especially the better off Jatavs, rooted for the BSP. The BJP’s social engineering tactics, honed to near-perfection by KN Govindacharya, a former general secretary, eventually led to the regrouping of the non-Yadav, non-Jatav OBC and Dalit sub-castes in its favour. However, the notion of the OBCs and Dalits being homogeneous blocks is a myth. These groupings are riddled with historical, fictional and real contradictions that worked against their broader unity.

The BJP, SP and BSP that took caste allegiances for granted, may have to revisit their algorithms before 2022.

The creation of a large coalition of the neglected, excluded and undocumented backward castes and Dalits is the new element in the prelude to the UP elections. Christened the ‘Bhagidaari Sankalp Morcha’, the name embodies the spirit and intent of the alliance of eight parties in which Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) is the newest entrant. Bhagidaari and hissedari are the words that encapsulate the venture regarded as UP’s first developed ‘third front’ cemented by a resolve to get for the castes they represent their share of power in politics, administration, education and the police, provided they hang together as the BJP, SP and BSP are likely to poach on their social bases. “Jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni bhagyadari” is the coalition’s dominant slogan, borrowed from the BSP when it came into being. The BSP that began as a party of the subaltern, has since morphed into an abode of the better-off Dalits and reduced its founder Kanshi Ram’s rallying cry to a travesty.

The journey of the architect of the new morcha embodies the political trajectory of the deprived OBCs. Om Prakash Rajbhar, who is from the Rajbhar caste, started his politics in the BSP. Apparently fed up with Mayawati’s alleged propensity to favour the moneyed with tickets and posts, he floated his own party, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), before the 2017 UP polls. Rajbhar named it after Suheldev, an eleventh century ruler of Shravasti, near the present-day Bahraich, who purportedly vanquished an invader, Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud. To Rajbhar, Suheldev was a valorous warlord, an inspiration for the community. To the BJP, that extolled him in a booklet brought out before the UP elections, he was the Raja who defeated a Badshah, and hence the epitome of ‘Hindu nationalism’. When he was the BJP president, Amit Shah, quickly figured out the symbolic value of Suheldev, both to the backward castes as well as Hindus in general and adopted him as an icon. Suheldev’s co-option was a signal to Rajbhar to have an alliance. Rajbhar agreed and the partnership enabled the BJP to enlarge the circumference of its influence in eastern UP beyond Varanasi and Gorakhpur.

The friendship was short-lived. Rajbhar, who was a minister in the Yogi cabinet, resigned before the last Lok Sabha polls, citing the government’s unwillingness to carry out the proposals of the “Implementation of OBC Social Justice Committee”. The panel, set up in 2018 by Akhilesh Yadav, reviewed the classification of the backward castes under the chairmanship of a former judge, Raghavendra Kumar.

The report is a hot potato. Any government would have its task cut out if the recommendations were to be fulfilled. It categorised the backward castes into three groups: Other Backward Classes (OBCs), More Backward Classes (MBCs) and Most Backward Classes and suggested that the 27 per cent reservation quota should be divided into 7 per cent for the OBCs, 11 per cent for the MBCs and 9 per cent for the most backward classes. The proposal was a tangential way of squaring off the rights and benefits of reservation that were largely cornered by the OBCs and level the playing field for the deprived MBCs.

Indeed, the constituents in Rajbhar’s front represent the castes for whom reservation remains a mirage. For example, Babu Ram Pal, who heads the Rashtriya Uday Party, belongs to the Gadariya caste that traditionally rears sheep. Premchand Prajapati, president of the Rashtriya Apekshit Samaj Party, is from the Kumhar caste that makes pottery while Ram Sagar Bind of the Bharat Mata Party is from the fishing community.

Where does the AIMIM fit into this mould? Owaisi eyes UP as fertile soil after the limited breakthrough he achieved in Bihar. The Yogi government made no bones about its agenda to overtly target the Muslims from day one. From closing down slaughterhouses and virtually banning the sale of meat (that hurt the Hindus as much as the Muslims) to cracking down on the protesters opposing the amended citizenship law and unleashing terror in the guise of a law prohibiting inter-faith marriages, the minorities never had it so bad under the previous BJP regimes as the present one. Yet UP’s Opposition parties are largely silent, afraid that their dissent might upset the Hindu voters. Perhaps, PM Modi’s address at the Aligarh Muslim University’s centenary celebrations and his laudatory reference to the AMU’s heritage and diversity were intended to soften the harsh edges. Owaisi spotted the cracks in the political landscape and hopes to slip through and articulate the feelings of Muslims without getting defensive.

It’s an uneasy balance that the front might have to keep because the castes it contains are as easily swayed by the Hindutva-nationalist rhetoric as the upper castes.

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