Political hypocrisy vs social idealism

Rajesh Ramachandran

JITNI abadi utna haq is the Congress’ new war cry. Why this sudden change of mind? Why this new slogan for a party that historically distorted the concept of representational politics by offering maximum seats at the high table to the upper castes, particularly Brahmins? Surely, it has to be granted that after nine years, the Opposition is getting its act together by first forming the INDIA bloc and then unveiling its grand idea. The Opposition that has been floundering with just the anti-Modi tirade and accusations of crony capitalism favouring Adani as its staple has now found a magnificent mojo — caste census.

The caste survey will work as a political tool only if on its basis Nitish resigns and hands over the reins of his government to a member of an extremely backward caste or a Yadav.

The headline-stealing raids and arrests of journalists, a news portal promoter, an Opposition MP and others are all alleged to be signs of desperation of the Union Government that is buying time to respond to the Bihar caste survey, whose findings were released on Gandhi Jayanti. Whether the government is jittery or not, the survey is definitely a new attempt by the Opposition to grab the political initiative and set an agenda for the 2024 polls, forcing the BJP to either acquiesce or respond. But will it work? Is it enough to stop the Modi juggernaut and defeat him?

The old Bihari prescription of the identity drug to treat electoral deficiencies worked 30 years ago because the feudal edifices in the Gangetic plains were still intact and the Congress leadership was a mere extension of this feudal overlordship. It was a historical necessity to break the feudal order that had destroyed the socio-economic potential of the largest number of Indian citizens, reducing them to subhuman poverty and making them pedal rickshaws in Delhi or toil in Punjab’s fields or Gujarat’s factories. But that was 30 years ago. Brahmins have stopped ruling the Gangetic plains since then.

And it was a mere extrapolation of a social change that had already occurred in South India: the transfer of power from the empowered to the less privileged but dominant castes. The major difference in the southern and northern experiments has been the emergence of the numerically superior Yadav caste as the primary beneficiary of social change in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In the South, a party or an organisation became the vehicle of the social change empowering numerically dominant castes, but also allowing those from marginal castes to ride the anti-upper caste or, to be more specific, anti-Brahmin wave. Now, in Tamil Nadu, the anti-Brahmin rant helps the first family of Dravidian politics hold on to positions of power without actually representing a numerically superior group.

The caste wheel, obviously, cannot be reinvented minus honest spokes of representation. In fact, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s grand idea will fail in Bihar itself on the touchstone of representation. According to his own survey, Nitish’s caste Kurmi is just 2.87 per cent of the state’s population. So, if one goes by the jitni abadi utna haq principle, only a Yadav should be the CM of Bihar, for Yadavs account for the largest slice of 14.26 per cent of the population. So, Tejashwi Yadav should immediately be promoted to CM and Nitish does not even qualify to be Deputy CM because other castes have a greater share in the population. Now, if the electorate is divided not just among jatis, which could be fractious, but along caste groups — like general category, backward caste, extremely backward caste, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe — Nitish again does not qualify because he does not belong to the largest group: extremely backward caste.

Political hypocrisy cannot prop up social idealism. The caste survey will work as a political tool only if on its basis Nitish resigns and hands over the reins of his government to a member of an extremely backward caste or a Yadav. You cannot simply commission a caste survey and then not act on it while in power. This dilemma will haunt every single backward-caste leader in India who is crying hoarse for a national caste census. For instance, Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin will have to abdicate in favour of a Vanniyar or a Thevar or a Gounder or any other numerically strong group for his caste push to sound credible. If your own community is as numerically insignificant as Brahmins, the caste census won’t be an effective anti-Brahminical propaganda tool.

Purely on the relative strength of the caste of birth, Nitish’s right to become CM of Bihar is less than that of a Brahmin (3.65 per cent) or a Rajput (3.45 per cent). And this gets worse in the case of the Congress. If the Congress seeks to pursue the abadi-haq slogan, it will have to first abandon the Gandhi family, which really does not represent any caste other than cosmopolitan India. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is from a scheduled caste and not from the numerically more superior OBC grouping. The most visible face of the party, Jairam Ramesh, is a Brahmin and hence disqualified, and so are all the important general secretaries and the treasurer of the party.

Backward caste politics can have two objectives — to grab power for the single largest caste group, or to attack the BJP as a symbol of Brahminical hegemony of the old feudal order. And both have run their course. For one, the OBC politics has become family enterprises in Bihar, UP, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere and is no longer considered emancipatory; and more importantly, the Sangh Parivar has owned up social engineering as an electoral ploy more assiduously than the Congress or the Left, crafting its own OBC leadership with Modi as a better example than anything that the Opposition can offer. Modi’s community, the oil-pressing Teli, is almost as big as Nitish’s own caste even in Bihar.

Those who conjured up the moth-eaten Bihari formula should at least have remembered the Punjab experiment that failed. Charanjit Singh Channi represented the single largest caste grouping and yet lost the elections from both seats he contested; for, the people wanted change and not caste. When served with dollops of double standards, identity politics reeks of regressive opportunism.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.

#Bihar #Congress #Nitish Kumar