E-Paper
Social justice to development: Tracing shift in Dalit politics
A new volume edited by three leading scholars of India — Dalits in the New Millennium — examines these changes, interrogates their impacts on Dalit lives.
Over the last several decades, there have been monumental changes in the social, economic, and political lives of Dalits, who have historically been one of the most oppressed groups in all of South Asia. A new volume edited by three leading scholars of India—Dalits in the New Millennium—examines these changes, interrogates their impacts on Dalit lives, and traces the shift in Dalit politics from a focus on social justice to a focus on development and socio-economic mobility.
Read here: PM Modi biggest champion of Dalit cause: Nadda in Agra
One of the co-editors of this volume, D. Shyam Babu, expanded on this subject on last week’s episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Shyam Babu, who along with Sudhai Pai and Rahul Verma, is one of the co-editors of this new book also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. For years, he has researched the political, social, and economic realities of Dalits across India, collaborating with well-known India scholar Devesh Kapur and Dalit writer-activist Chandra Bhan Prasad.
On the show, Shyam Babu told host Milan Vaishnav that a reexamination of Dalit lives was needed in light of the dramatic rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and what looks like the terminal decline of Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
On the BJP’s growing appeal among Dalits, Shyam Babu said it was always incorrect to think of Dalit politics as antithetical to Hindutva politics. “A predominant number of Dalits still remain as Hindus. So, when you appeal to the Hindu religion, [Dalits] find some resonance there,” he explained. “Dalits tend to identify with not only the Hindu religion and co-religionists, but they also tend to see Muslims as the ‘other.’ It’s a sad fact, but it’s a fact. So, the idea that Dalit politics was somehow not in tune with Hindutva politics, I would say it is completely misplaced. That’s what we’re seeing now.”
On the question of how the BJP has navigated a large and diverse Dalit community, Shyam Babu emphasized the party’s efforts to exploit internal divisions among Dalits. Among many caste groups, including Other Backward Classes (OBCs), he said that numerically significant subcastes are not big supporters of the BJP. “Take Andhra Pradesh, the Reddys and Kammas—they have their own political parties. Ditto in Tamil Nadu. In Karnataka, it’s a bipolar order, [dominant castes] play the BJP to their own advantage. Take Uttar Pradesh, Yadavs, Kurmis, Jats—all of these larger castes are not 100% with the BJP,” he explained. According to him, the BJP’s success has been in reaching out numerically very insignificant castes across a range of states. “It’s like a chit fund,” he said. “[The BJP] gathers votes here and there and makes it work.”
Read here: Increased OBC, Dalit and ally representation in Yogi 2.0 ministry
Asked about the critique that the BJP has branded itself as the party of Dalits and yet Dalits are not adequately represented in the party leadership, the veteran scholar said this is nothing new. “That was true of Congress also. In 1977, after Babu Jagjivan Ram left the party, the party never had a Dalit face. There were ministers of course, you get some kind of quota system there. But they were all insignificant.”
