The Opposition has finally found a potent poll issue to deflate the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva, which is aimed at consolidating the non-Muslim population of the country.
The strong demand for a caste census emerged from the two northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and now, all the 28 constituents of INDIA (Indian Democratic Inclusive Alliance), barring a few like the Trinamool Congress, are on the same page. And in their endeavour to appease the marginalised castes in the
The Opposition has finally found a potent poll issue to deflate the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva, which is aimed at consolidating the non-Muslim population of the country.
The strong demand for a caste census emerged from the two northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and now, all the 28 constituents of INDIA (Indian Democratic Inclusive Alliance), barring a few like the Trinamool Congress, are on the same page. And in their endeavour to appease the marginalised castes in the name of social justice, they are willing to forgo the support of the upper castes whose clear loyalties lie with the BJP. It is generally believed that besides religion, caste will be the other major issue of the 2024 general elections.
Karnataka was the first state to conduct a caste census in 2002. Twenty years later the state backward caste federation has threatened to start an agitation if the report is not released.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s move to release caste census data was hailed by one and all as a political masterstroke. The state, under his leadership, took the lead in not only conducting and releasing the caste survey report but also in passing a bill that hikes the quota to 65%. A handful of other states violate the reservation limit of 50% set by the Supreme Court, including Maharashtra, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. It’s likely that more states may follow suit ahead of the 2024 general elections.
UP’s Samajwadi Party leader, Akhilesh Yadav, like his late father Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Mandal hero of the 1990s, has been at the forefront of the country’s backward politics with his consistent demand for the caste census and its inclusion in the manifesto for the general elections. The Congress has also shed its one-time reservation over caste census and has promised countrywide surveys. Rahul Gandhi’s strong OBC pitch in the ongoing assembly elections in five states may have taken his own party by surprise.
Akhilesh Yadav has also given an interesting twist to backward politics by adding the PDA (Pichra, Dalit, Adivasi, Alpasankhyak) formula to the caste census campaign to puncture the consistent efforts of the Sangh Parivar to penetrate the OBC and SC vote banks. He launched the social justice yatra across UP. However, Akhilesh later added upper caste and women in the PDA category after realising the complex ground realities. Earlier, Mayawati had tried to woo Brahmins to supplement her vote bank of Dalits-Muslims-Backwards.
It was Kanshi Ram who had first raised the slogan of ‘Jitni Jiski Sankhya Bhaari, Uski Uski Hissedari’ (the share of a caste in power is according to its population) in the late 1980s. It is now the most popular catchphrase in the political domain.
Around the same time, the late prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh had announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission report which recommended a 27% quota to the OBCs, thus triggering large-scale violent protests across the country. The committee submitted its report in 1980, the VP Singh government accepted it in 1990 and the recommendations were finally implemented in 1992 after the Supreme Court had upheld the government's order.
Mulayam Singh Yadav was one of the proponents of the Mandal move. Around the same time, the Sangh Parivar launched an aggressive emotional campaign demanding liberation of Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya leading to the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992. The Mandal-Kamandal row stemmed the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as it lost the 1993 assembly elections to the SP-BSP combine in the state. Since then, though the BJP managed to form the government twice, it was only in 2017 that it mustered a clear-cut majority in the Vidhan Sabha.
Now that the caste census is becoming a major poll issue across the country with INDIA promising its inclusion in the national manifesto, the BJP leaders are in a dilemma.
The deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya is perhaps the only leader in the state to openly support the demand for a caste census. However, he debunks the opposition’s legitimate right to raise the demand and asks, “Why did they shy away from caste census when they were in power?” BJP MLA Rajeshwar Singh says, ‘The issue will fail to divide women, who are fond of chief minister Yogi Adityanath as well as the first-time voters in UP. Maybe it will influence the politics of Bihar.”
While passing the bill enhancing the quota to 65%, Nitish Kumar appealed to the Centre to follow Bihar and conduct a caste census across the country as it would actually benefit the poor.
The Centre has been dithering on the contentious issue and has left it to the states to take a call. The BJP leadership knows it will open a pandora’s box and upset the interests of upper castes.
The last caste census was done in 1931 primarily to map inequalities and re-evaluate the deprived caste groups so that policymakers could develop and tweak their policies to help marginalised sections. But today, the Opposition is attempting caste mobilisation in the same way as the BJP is using welfare schemes to penetrate these sections. As to the marginalised sections, a caste census without a promise of quota in jobs sounds hollow.
In fact, Nitish Kumar had earlier come out with a formula of quota within quota (for extremely backward castes in OBCs) to tackle the problem of unequal in the same caste groups. It was earlier touted and followed by the Rajnath Singh government in Uttar Pradesh in 2002.
Singh formed a social justice committee headed by the then parliamentary affairs minister Hukum Singh. He submitted a report that found the politically influential Yadavs and Kurmis amongst OBCs, and Jatavs and the Pasis in SCs, as major beneficiaries of the quota system.
It had suited the BJP at the time, as the Yadavs and the Jatavs had well-defined loyalties — they were primarily Mulayam and Mayawati’s supporters — while the Kurmis and the Pasis were divided between various parties. The most backward castes account for 38% of the state's population.
The committee had quoted previous reports in this connection like the Kaka Kelkar report which, in September 1956, had advocated separate reservations for 837 most backward castes in the country. The report was not discussed in the Parliament and the government declared in 1961 that no all-India categorisation of castes as 'most backward castes' can be done.
Today, neither Nitish Kumar nor Tejaswi Yadav are talking about quota within quota in Bihar, nor Rajnath Singh, the tall leader from UP can mention it as Narendra Modi’s welfare schemes target all.
Caste census a double-edged sword
The census narrative links automatically to quotas in jobs and educational institutions. The self-immolation by upper caste youths protesting against quotas for OBCs had left the streets of Delhi red during the Mandal days.
Politicians have gained little by pushing merit aside. Both former PM VP Singh and former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh — self-styled champions of social justice — paid a heavy price for their decisions on quota in the early 1990s and early 2000, respectively. The prime concern of the two Rajput leaders hailing from UP was their party’s fluctuating fortunes, which the non-BJP parties are facing today.
VP Singh had to counter the BJP, which drew its strength from Ayodhya in UP. Despite his call for ‘vyavyastha parivartan’ (change in social system), he stayed forgotten till his death in 2008. Janata Dal, his party, suffered several splits and disappeared from the political scene. For those who have not kept track of UP politics, Janata Dal’s Lok Sabha seats in UP fell from 54 in 1989 to 22 in 1991 (the post-Mandal scenario).
Rajnath, on the other hand, had to prove his charisma in the state where BJP was on a steady decline. His quota within quota promise, touted as BJP’s trump card, also boomeranged before getting stuck in the courts. The party failed to derive any political mileage as the promise did not divide the Opposition’s precious vote banks of OBCs and Dalits. The BJP ended with less than 100 seats in the Vidhan Sabha of 403 in the 2002 assembly elections. The opposition may have found their winning formula in the caste census, but the history tells a different tale.
From her perch in Lucknow, HT’s senior journalist Sunita Aron highlights important issues related to Uttar Pradesh
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