The key force driving the increasing communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh is the scramble for Dalit votes in an attempt to weaken the Bahujan Samaj Party and deter Muslims from rallying behind it.
This strategy was evolved, and implemented, during the last Lok Sabha elections. But the competition to woo Dalits has gathered momentum ahead of bypolls to 12 assembly seats, five of which are in the western section of the state, which is often billed as the “wild west” of the Hindi heartland.
As the Indian Express reported, more than 600 incidents of communal violence have taken place in the state since May.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s stake in the bypolls, which have yet to be scheduled, is enormous. Eleven of the 12 constituencies here had BJP MLAs, all of whom were elected to the Lok Sabha, as was the party’s ally, Apna Dal leader Anupriya Patel. The results will help measure the durability of the Modi wave, and its possible impact on the UP assembly elections in early 2017. The verdict from UP could well determine the chances of Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning a second successive term in the 2019 polls.
The need to cobble together an electoral majority is driving political parties to resort to communal mobilisation. Local disputes over land, civic amenities, and exploitative gender relations have been given a communal hue and magnified to portray a monolith Hindu community arrayed against the Muslims.
Moradabad dispute
An example of this was the decision of local BJP leaders to unilaterally abrogate the agreement local Dalit and Muslim leaders had hammered out over the installation of a loudspeaker at a temple in Nyaygaon Akbarpur village, in Moradabad’s Kanth town last month. Had it adhered to the agreement, the BJP would have had to cancel the Mahapanchayat it convened on July 4, which was one of the points the disputants had agreed upon. Among the signatories to the agreement was the BJP MP of Moradabad, Kunwar Servesh Kumar.
Yet, in a seemingly inexplicable about-turn, the agreement was subsequently declared unacceptable, as reported by Scroll.in. The BJP insisted on holding the Mahapanchayat, triggering skirmishes between its activists and the police and enveloping Kanth town in tension. The events in Kanth are likely to have an impact on the adjoining assembly constituencies of Thakurdwara and Bijnor, both of which will have bypolls.
This traditional strategy of deploying Hindutva to paper over caste and class contradictions was very visible in Nayagaon Akbarpur. The Sant Ravidas temple patronised by Dalits there has been turned into a Shiv temple by a new mahant. (Read Scroll.in’s ground report here). It was a subtle attempt to bring the Dailts into the Hindutva fold, and pit them against the Muslims, who numerically and economically dominate Nayagaon Akbarpur village.
The BJP and its allies have supplemented the traditional method of Hindutva mobilisation with new strategies. Months before Muzaffarnagar erupted last year, Hindutva activists had been harping on the alleged menace of “love-jihad”, a seemingly devious Muslim ploy to woo and marry Hindu girls after converting them to Islam.
Amit Shah's speech
This was obvious during the Lok Sabha campaign. At a rally in Bijnor, BJP leader Amit Shah launched salvos against Mayawati, pointing to his audience that the BSP had given the same number of tickets to Dalits as the BJP had. He glossed over the fact that the BJP had no option but to field Dalits in constituencies that are reserved for them. Shah then went on to criticise Mayawati for giving two more tickets to a certain community than she had to Dalits, a community whose members were prone to violating the honour of sisters and daughters of the audience. It was obvious to the audience that the BJP had not fielded any Muslims in the fray.
“Mark my word, disputes over temples will be swept aside in west UP,” said Dr Satish Prakash, an associate professor at Meerut College and a prominent Dalit activist. “Every incident involving Muslims eve-teasing or abducting and raping Dalits, or even genuine love relationship between them, will now be given a communal colour. This has a greater potency than religious issues.”
In the hierarchical caste order of rural India, the religious identity of Dalits often gets subsumed. The BJP’s strategy of targeting Muslims for crimes against women, whether true or trumped up, sidesteps these caste-class contradictions by implying that Muslims torment Dalits only because Dalits are Hindu.
Demographic experiment
West UP has been particularly earmarked for this experiment because of the demographic composition of the region. Dalits comprise nearly 25% of the electorate in the 21 constituencies of west UP, if its frontier is extended to Aligarh. They are relatively more educated, prosperous and politically conscious than most parts of UP and India.
Muslims, too, are numerous, at around 25%-28%. Theoretically, an alliance of Muslims and Dalits is electorally unbeatable, a project to which the BSP has devoted itself. It achieved partial success in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, bagging seven seats from here.
However, there is a gap between theory and practice. Unlike most parts of rural India, Muslims in western UP own land. Many of them are Hindu converts who haven’t forget their caste origins, even though Islam is supposed to be egalitarian. Thus, on conversion, Jats became Muley Jats, Rajputs were christened Rajghars, and Tyagis were known as Mahesra or Musalman Taga. In fact, the Jat-Muslim alliance that former Prime Minister Charan Singh cobbled in the 1960s was essentially a Jat-Muley Jat formation. The two social groups came together because they encountered the same problems as landowning peasants.
The attitude of Muslim castes towards Dalits matches that of their Hindu brethren: oppressive, exploitative and supercilious. This is precisely the obstacle the BSP faces in attempting a Muslim-Dalit consolidation.
Though caste and religious identities overlap for Muslims too, the latter has acquired greater salience because of the BJP’s resurgence. Inclined to voting strategically to vanquish the BJP, the primacy the Muslims began to accord to religious identity provided scope to the BSP to configure the Muslim-Dalit social alliance. This was particularly so as the Dalits, particularly the Jatavs, were welded to the BSP.
But this incipient social alliance was torn apart by the Muzaffarnagar riots last year, in which a section of Dalits participated. Even BSP activists claim at least 10%-12% of their non-Jatav voters switched allegiance to the BJP during the Lok Sabha election, creating confusion among the Muslims about whether Dalits were still solidly behind Mayawati. The Muslim vote was consequently divided between the BSP and the Samajwadi Party, to the BJP’s advantage.
Hindutva bait
The BJP’s Hindutva bait to lure the Dalits suits the SP well, since it counts the Muslim peasant castes among its strongest supporters. As a result of the weakening of the BSP, Muslims are unlikely to desert the SP in large numbers, since they are inclined to vote for the party perceived to be best placed to defeat the BJP.
Considering the BJP is concertedly courting the Dalit vote, it is surprising that the BSP isn’t contesting the 12 assembly byelections. Some feel Mayawati fears that the polls will be rigged and a poor performance would adversely affect the morale of her cadres. However, many activists think that in the absence of BSP, Dalits will vote for the BJP, not the SP, whose OBC supporters are even more ruthless in their oppression than the upper castes. As a result, people like Dr Satish fear that Dalits could become accustomed to voting for the BJP.
The BSP, as also the SP, needs to rework its agenda and strategy to counter the BJP’s Hindutva politics. Otherwise, it could well be a spell in oblivion for them.
Ajaz Ashraf is the author of The Hour Before Dawn, HarperCollins India, to be released in September.
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This strategy was evolved, and implemented, during the last Lok Sabha elections. But the competition to woo Dalits has gathered momentum ahead of bypolls to 12 assembly seats, five of which are in the western section of the state, which is often billed as the “wild west” of the Hindi heartland.
As the Indian Express reported, more than 600 incidents of communal violence have taken place in the state since May.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s stake in the bypolls, which have yet to be scheduled, is enormous. Eleven of the 12 constituencies here had BJP MLAs, all of whom were elected to the Lok Sabha, as was the party’s ally, Apna Dal leader Anupriya Patel. The results will help measure the durability of the Modi wave, and its possible impact on the UP assembly elections in early 2017. The verdict from UP could well determine the chances of Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning a second successive term in the 2019 polls.
The need to cobble together an electoral majority is driving political parties to resort to communal mobilisation. Local disputes over land, civic amenities, and exploitative gender relations have been given a communal hue and magnified to portray a monolith Hindu community arrayed against the Muslims.
Moradabad dispute
An example of this was the decision of local BJP leaders to unilaterally abrogate the agreement local Dalit and Muslim leaders had hammered out over the installation of a loudspeaker at a temple in Nyaygaon Akbarpur village, in Moradabad’s Kanth town last month. Had it adhered to the agreement, the BJP would have had to cancel the Mahapanchayat it convened on July 4, which was one of the points the disputants had agreed upon. Among the signatories to the agreement was the BJP MP of Moradabad, Kunwar Servesh Kumar.
Yet, in a seemingly inexplicable about-turn, the agreement was subsequently declared unacceptable, as reported by Scroll.in. The BJP insisted on holding the Mahapanchayat, triggering skirmishes between its activists and the police and enveloping Kanth town in tension. The events in Kanth are likely to have an impact on the adjoining assembly constituencies of Thakurdwara and Bijnor, both of which will have bypolls.
This traditional strategy of deploying Hindutva to paper over caste and class contradictions was very visible in Nayagaon Akbarpur. The Sant Ravidas temple patronised by Dalits there has been turned into a Shiv temple by a new mahant. (Read Scroll.in’s ground report here). It was a subtle attempt to bring the Dailts into the Hindutva fold, and pit them against the Muslims, who numerically and economically dominate Nayagaon Akbarpur village.
The BJP and its allies have supplemented the traditional method of Hindutva mobilisation with new strategies. Months before Muzaffarnagar erupted last year, Hindutva activists had been harping on the alleged menace of “love-jihad”, a seemingly devious Muslim ploy to woo and marry Hindu girls after converting them to Islam.
Amit Shah's speech
This was obvious during the Lok Sabha campaign. At a rally in Bijnor, BJP leader Amit Shah launched salvos against Mayawati, pointing to his audience that the BSP had given the same number of tickets to Dalits as the BJP had. He glossed over the fact that the BJP had no option but to field Dalits in constituencies that are reserved for them. Shah then went on to criticise Mayawati for giving two more tickets to a certain community than she had to Dalits, a community whose members were prone to violating the honour of sisters and daughters of the audience. It was obvious to the audience that the BJP had not fielded any Muslims in the fray.
“Mark my word, disputes over temples will be swept aside in west UP,” said Dr Satish Prakash, an associate professor at Meerut College and a prominent Dalit activist. “Every incident involving Muslims eve-teasing or abducting and raping Dalits, or even genuine love relationship between them, will now be given a communal colour. This has a greater potency than religious issues.”
In the hierarchical caste order of rural India, the religious identity of Dalits often gets subsumed. The BJP’s strategy of targeting Muslims for crimes against women, whether true or trumped up, sidesteps these caste-class contradictions by implying that Muslims torment Dalits only because Dalits are Hindu.
Demographic experiment
West UP has been particularly earmarked for this experiment because of the demographic composition of the region. Dalits comprise nearly 25% of the electorate in the 21 constituencies of west UP, if its frontier is extended to Aligarh. They are relatively more educated, prosperous and politically conscious than most parts of UP and India.
Muslims, too, are numerous, at around 25%-28%. Theoretically, an alliance of Muslims and Dalits is electorally unbeatable, a project to which the BSP has devoted itself. It achieved partial success in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, bagging seven seats from here.
However, there is a gap between theory and practice. Unlike most parts of rural India, Muslims in western UP own land. Many of them are Hindu converts who haven’t forget their caste origins, even though Islam is supposed to be egalitarian. Thus, on conversion, Jats became Muley Jats, Rajputs were christened Rajghars, and Tyagis were known as Mahesra or Musalman Taga. In fact, the Jat-Muslim alliance that former Prime Minister Charan Singh cobbled in the 1960s was essentially a Jat-Muley Jat formation. The two social groups came together because they encountered the same problems as landowning peasants.
The attitude of Muslim castes towards Dalits matches that of their Hindu brethren: oppressive, exploitative and supercilious. This is precisely the obstacle the BSP faces in attempting a Muslim-Dalit consolidation.
Though caste and religious identities overlap for Muslims too, the latter has acquired greater salience because of the BJP’s resurgence. Inclined to voting strategically to vanquish the BJP, the primacy the Muslims began to accord to religious identity provided scope to the BSP to configure the Muslim-Dalit social alliance. This was particularly so as the Dalits, particularly the Jatavs, were welded to the BSP.
But this incipient social alliance was torn apart by the Muzaffarnagar riots last year, in which a section of Dalits participated. Even BSP activists claim at least 10%-12% of their non-Jatav voters switched allegiance to the BJP during the Lok Sabha election, creating confusion among the Muslims about whether Dalits were still solidly behind Mayawati. The Muslim vote was consequently divided between the BSP and the Samajwadi Party, to the BJP’s advantage.
Hindutva bait
The BJP’s Hindutva bait to lure the Dalits suits the SP well, since it counts the Muslim peasant castes among its strongest supporters. As a result of the weakening of the BSP, Muslims are unlikely to desert the SP in large numbers, since they are inclined to vote for the party perceived to be best placed to defeat the BJP.
Considering the BJP is concertedly courting the Dalit vote, it is surprising that the BSP isn’t contesting the 12 assembly byelections. Some feel Mayawati fears that the polls will be rigged and a poor performance would adversely affect the morale of her cadres. However, many activists think that in the absence of BSP, Dalits will vote for the BJP, not the SP, whose OBC supporters are even more ruthless in their oppression than the upper castes. As a result, people like Dr Satish fear that Dalits could become accustomed to voting for the BJP.
The BSP, as also the SP, needs to rework its agenda and strategy to counter the BJP’s Hindutva politics. Otherwise, it could well be a spell in oblivion for them.
Ajaz Ashraf is the author of The Hour Before Dawn, HarperCollins India, to be released in September.