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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Mandal vs Kamandal Redux? Caste Is Back as a Major Variable in UP Elections -Gilles Verniers and Christophe Jaffrelot

Mandal vs Kamandal Redux? Caste Is Back as a Major Variable in UP Elections -Gilles Verniers and Christophe Jaffrelot

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published Published on Feb 15, 2022   modified Modified on Feb 16, 2022

-TheWire.in

BJP has now realised that Hindutva and identity politics by themselves are not enough to win.

In post-Mandal India, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempt to build electoral alliances tying upper castes and non-dominant OBCs is not new. This is a strategy the party used in the mid-1990s across North India to resist the consolidation of pro-Mandal parties and prevent the formation of large coalitions of “backwards”. Mid-1990s onwards, the BJP distributed more tickets to non-Yadav OBC candidates in Bihar to counter the Janata Dal and, subsequently, Rashtriya Janata Dal.

In Uttar Pradesh, it also prompted Kalyan Singh as a Backward Classes figure – a Lodhi – to expand BJP’s vote base among non-Yadav OBCs. In Madhya Pradesh too, the party also promoted Lodhs (notably Uma Bharti) and Kirars (notably Shivraj Singh Chauhan). BJP also symmetrically co-opted leaders of non-dominant Dalit jatis – including Valmikis – who resented the way Jatavs had cornered reservations and the rise to power of the “Jatav party” that the Bahujan Samaj Party had become.

But this caste arithmetic did not fundamentally alter the high representation of upper castes within the BJP across the Hindi belt. In Madhya Pradesh, they make up 45% of the BJP MLAs elected in 2018 (against 18.3% of OBCs). In Bihar, they make up 42% of all BJP MLAs elected in 2020 (against 36.5% of OBCs). And in Uttar Pradesh, 47.4% of the BJP MLAs elected in 2017 belonged to upper castes (against 24% of OBC MLAs). In state governments, too, upper-caste ministers continue to be over-represented and control the most important portfolios.

These numbers are broadly consistent with past trends, contradicting the idea that the ‘new BJP’ has somehow become an OBC party in the Hindi belt. As BJP won many seats in recent elections in these states, it drove up the overall representation of upper castes.

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TheWire.in, 15 February, 2022, https://thewire.in/politics/uttar-pradesh-elections-caste-bjp
 

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