The Bihar Assembly election has been framed as an epic battle between the seemingly conflicting ideas of development and Other Backward Classes politics, which its votaries describe as social justice. As is always the case in India, the contest between the two ideas in Bihar has been personified. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been portrayed as the face of development, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav are seen primarily as OBC leaders.
The twin personifications in the popular discourse exclude the possibility of even a partial overlap of the two ideas, of some strands of one being knitted with a few of the other. This projection is not only flawed but also ironic, not least because all three leaders – Modi, Kumar and Yadav – are OBCs, their caste identity well known to all.
Role reversal
It’s wrong to claim, as some do, that Modi doesn’t use his OBC status in his appeal to the electorate, citing his silence on caste in the 12 years he ruled over Gujarat to bolster their argument. However, in last year’s Lok Sabha election, Modi did talk of belonging to “neechli jaat”, or lower caste, during his campaign in east UP and Bihar. His self-identification as an OBC did have a magnetic pull.
Conversely, until the middle of 2013, Kumar too was perceived as Mr. Development. But this narrative changed as soon as he snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party – he was projected as playing to the Muslim vote-bank. Then, once he and Yadav stitched up an alliance, he was overnight given the sobriquet of Mr. OBC and derided in the popular discourse for indulging in caste politics.
You could justify it by saying Kumar is, after all, now in the company of Yadav, who consciously, and unabashedly, stamps caste (or social justice) on his politics. But then, the yardstick of branding a politician on the basis of the company he keeps should also be applied to Modi. Glance at the non-BJP leaders in the NDA stable – from Ram Vilas Paswan to Jitan Ram Manjhi to Upendra Kushwaha, all of whom qualify for the label of caste leaders.
Why is it then that Modi, unlike Kumar or Yadav, is neither projected as an OBC leader nor criticised for purveying caste politics?
Crucial difference
One crucial difference lies in the contrasting language Kumar and Modi employ to articulate the idea of development. In Modi’s conception, development signifies rapid economic growth, the benefits of which are bound to accrue to everyone, regardless of the class to which he or she belongs. This, Modi and the BJP believe, would also socially and politically empower the poor – and, over time, lead to the rolling back of the welfare measures the state undertakes.
By contrast, OBC politicians favour the philosophy of social justice, which buys into what the wise professor said, “Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.” This view perceives rapid growth without undertaking specific policy measures to distribute its gains as inimical to the largest segment of the population. Since the Indian society has caste as the basis of stratification, the leaders espousing social justice want to see development go hand-in-hand with the distribution of wealth, power and social-cultural capital among the non-upper castes (or lower castes) equitably.
Pursuit of power
However, political ideas are often invoked to cloak the pursuit of power, to capture which requires a majority. The upper castes think they can recover their earlier hegemony by speaking of development, identifying it as the key to removal of poverty and bridging the gap of socio-economic inequalities. Thus, in their view, undue salience cannot be accorded to the idea of social justice or OBC politics, which, in the first place, shattered the hegemony of the upper castes. But to get the electoral majority it must accommodate sections of lower castes. Bargaining and alliances are consequently necessary.
On the other hand, the rising OBC groups, such as Bihar’s Yadavs and Kurmis, which have become prosperous over time, wish to translate their growing economic clout into political and bureaucratic power. It is only then they can dominate the administrative structures of block, bank, thana (police stations), the tripod on which rural India depends – and which was the preserve of the upper castes for a good four-five decades post-Independence. Thus, social justice becomes the radical slogan to rally non-upper castes, despite them being diverse.
Politics of reservation
This contest between the upper castes and OBCs was sharpened with the decision to implement the Mandal report, leading to solidarity among the lower castes in Bihar because of the fury of the resistance to reservation. In this tussle, Yadav and Kumar became the champions of Mandal or social justice. The two, particularly Yadav, spearheaded the Janata Dal-led alliance to win as many as 49 out of the 54 seats in the undivided Bihar in the first post-Mandal Lok Sabha election of 1991.
Modi, who like Kumar and Yadav won his political spurs in the anti-Emergency movement of Jayaprakash Narain, trudged a different path, albeit anonymously. This may have been because of his conviction, but other factors too would have played a role in his political choices.
For one, the politics of reservation in Gujarat predated Mandal by nearly a decade. Then Congress Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki had harnessed the affirmative action favouring the OBCs to create the social alliance of Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim, or KHAMs, to snatch the levers of power from the Brahmin-Bania-Patel, known as BBP.
In reaction, the BJP rallied the Brahmin-Bania-Patel against reservation, imparted to it a communal twist, and unseated Solanki as chief minister. BJP’s Hindutva became the counterfoil to reservation as well as a tool for counter-mobilisation against the Congress. Modi wasn’t in electoral politics then. Yet, as an RSS pracharak, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to oppose his organisation’s anti-reservation stance.
The question of caste
This would have been because his own social group of Modh Ghanchi, though placed low in the caste pyramid, was not in the state and central OBC lists in the initial years after 1990, which was when the Mandal report granting reservation to the OBCs was implemented. It would have been also because the Modh Ghanchis are minuscule in Gujarat. It is difficult for any politician to harness caste for electoral politics in case his or her social group is not numerous.
The Modh Ghanchis were added to the state list of OBCs in 1994, and to the central list as late as 1999. Some say Modi was behind the campaign for their inclusion, in the hope of using the caste card to break the stranglehold of then Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel over Gujarat and the BJP. But these claims are unsubstantiated, perhaps retrospectively thought of to undercut the wide appeal he acquired.
Nevertheless, any possibility of Modi using the OBC card became irrelevant as Gujarat erupted into communal rioting in 2002. From thereon, he became the Hindutva mascot, the ideology providing him ample scope to bridge the caste divide for two successive Assembly elections. To this he added the development slogan to sweep the state election for the third time, pole-vaulting to become the front-runner in the race to become Prime Minister in 2014.
But Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are not Gujarat. He and his protégé, Amit Shah, felt the necessity of weaning away the OBC and other lower caste groups from regional leaders into the BJP’s fold. This political compulsion prompted Modi to refer to his OBC status, which was neatly dovetailed into the fact that he had sold tea from his father’s chai shop. The impact was telling.
The Modi persona
Modi’s persona has three principal elements – development, Hindutva, and OBC status. His strategy has been to remain silent on the Hindutva issues which the Sangh periodically raises, and focus his rhetoric on development. But his idea of development doesn’t include overcoming the inherent inequality of the caste system, which determines unequal access to, and gains from, growth.
This is why the OBC facet of his persona can’t be said to represent social justice. It is, in reality, an electoral card the BJP and Modi play deftly to cobble together a majority. For instance, in July, Amit Shah erroneously referred to Modi as India’s first OBC Prime Minister, inviting a riposte from HD Deve Gowda, who rightly claimed the honour for himself. That the caste identity of Modi helps in mobilisation is apparent from his photos at the functions the Telis (who, like the Modh Ghanchis, are oil pressers and OBC) have been holding to mobilise their caste brethren.
The BJP’s allusion to Modi’s OBC status minus the idea of social justice suits the interests of the upper castes, which hope to snatch the lever from Kumar and Yadav to make theirs after a gap of 25 years. For, to talk of social justice, long projected as being synonymous with caste politics, would risk alienating sections of the upper caste. Yet references to Modi’s OBC status, subtly or brazenly, could deter numerous OBC castes from consolidating behind the Janata Parivar.
All this has created a confusion of categories, enabling a crafting of the discourse in which Modi is projected, unlike Kumar and Yadav, as being above caste politics. The truth is that both the BJP and Modi are not averse to playing the caste card. Yet it isn’t seen as one because the upper castes, which dominate the popular discourse, too are using it to grab power.
This confusion of categories surfaced in the Times of India’s frontpage story of September 10: “Ranged on one side are OBC stalwarts Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad, along with Congress, and on the other, the NDA, led by Modi and supported by alliance partners Ramvilas Paswan, JD (U) rebel politician Jiten Manjhi and OBC politician Upendra Kushwaha. The essentially bi-polar contest will test Bihar’s caste and political equations against Modi’s mega development.”
If only life and politics could be so simple, so black and white.
(Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.)
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
The twin personifications in the popular discourse exclude the possibility of even a partial overlap of the two ideas, of some strands of one being knitted with a few of the other. This projection is not only flawed but also ironic, not least because all three leaders – Modi, Kumar and Yadav – are OBCs, their caste identity well known to all.
Role reversal
It’s wrong to claim, as some do, that Modi doesn’t use his OBC status in his appeal to the electorate, citing his silence on caste in the 12 years he ruled over Gujarat to bolster their argument. However, in last year’s Lok Sabha election, Modi did talk of belonging to “neechli jaat”, or lower caste, during his campaign in east UP and Bihar. His self-identification as an OBC did have a magnetic pull.
Conversely, until the middle of 2013, Kumar too was perceived as Mr. Development. But this narrative changed as soon as he snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party – he was projected as playing to the Muslim vote-bank. Then, once he and Yadav stitched up an alliance, he was overnight given the sobriquet of Mr. OBC and derided in the popular discourse for indulging in caste politics.
You could justify it by saying Kumar is, after all, now in the company of Yadav, who consciously, and unabashedly, stamps caste (or social justice) on his politics. But then, the yardstick of branding a politician on the basis of the company he keeps should also be applied to Modi. Glance at the non-BJP leaders in the NDA stable – from Ram Vilas Paswan to Jitan Ram Manjhi to Upendra Kushwaha, all of whom qualify for the label of caste leaders.
Why is it then that Modi, unlike Kumar or Yadav, is neither projected as an OBC leader nor criticised for purveying caste politics?
Crucial difference
One crucial difference lies in the contrasting language Kumar and Modi employ to articulate the idea of development. In Modi’s conception, development signifies rapid economic growth, the benefits of which are bound to accrue to everyone, regardless of the class to which he or she belongs. This, Modi and the BJP believe, would also socially and politically empower the poor – and, over time, lead to the rolling back of the welfare measures the state undertakes.
By contrast, OBC politicians favour the philosophy of social justice, which buys into what the wise professor said, “Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.” This view perceives rapid growth without undertaking specific policy measures to distribute its gains as inimical to the largest segment of the population. Since the Indian society has caste as the basis of stratification, the leaders espousing social justice want to see development go hand-in-hand with the distribution of wealth, power and social-cultural capital among the non-upper castes (or lower castes) equitably.
Pursuit of power
However, political ideas are often invoked to cloak the pursuit of power, to capture which requires a majority. The upper castes think they can recover their earlier hegemony by speaking of development, identifying it as the key to removal of poverty and bridging the gap of socio-economic inequalities. Thus, in their view, undue salience cannot be accorded to the idea of social justice or OBC politics, which, in the first place, shattered the hegemony of the upper castes. But to get the electoral majority it must accommodate sections of lower castes. Bargaining and alliances are consequently necessary.
On the other hand, the rising OBC groups, such as Bihar’s Yadavs and Kurmis, which have become prosperous over time, wish to translate their growing economic clout into political and bureaucratic power. It is only then they can dominate the administrative structures of block, bank, thana (police stations), the tripod on which rural India depends – and which was the preserve of the upper castes for a good four-five decades post-Independence. Thus, social justice becomes the radical slogan to rally non-upper castes, despite them being diverse.
Politics of reservation
This contest between the upper castes and OBCs was sharpened with the decision to implement the Mandal report, leading to solidarity among the lower castes in Bihar because of the fury of the resistance to reservation. In this tussle, Yadav and Kumar became the champions of Mandal or social justice. The two, particularly Yadav, spearheaded the Janata Dal-led alliance to win as many as 49 out of the 54 seats in the undivided Bihar in the first post-Mandal Lok Sabha election of 1991.
Modi, who like Kumar and Yadav won his political spurs in the anti-Emergency movement of Jayaprakash Narain, trudged a different path, albeit anonymously. This may have been because of his conviction, but other factors too would have played a role in his political choices.
For one, the politics of reservation in Gujarat predated Mandal by nearly a decade. Then Congress Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki had harnessed the affirmative action favouring the OBCs to create the social alliance of Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim, or KHAMs, to snatch the levers of power from the Brahmin-Bania-Patel, known as BBP.
In reaction, the BJP rallied the Brahmin-Bania-Patel against reservation, imparted to it a communal twist, and unseated Solanki as chief minister. BJP’s Hindutva became the counterfoil to reservation as well as a tool for counter-mobilisation against the Congress. Modi wasn’t in electoral politics then. Yet, as an RSS pracharak, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to oppose his organisation’s anti-reservation stance.
The question of caste
This would have been because his own social group of Modh Ghanchi, though placed low in the caste pyramid, was not in the state and central OBC lists in the initial years after 1990, which was when the Mandal report granting reservation to the OBCs was implemented. It would have been also because the Modh Ghanchis are minuscule in Gujarat. It is difficult for any politician to harness caste for electoral politics in case his or her social group is not numerous.
The Modh Ghanchis were added to the state list of OBCs in 1994, and to the central list as late as 1999. Some say Modi was behind the campaign for their inclusion, in the hope of using the caste card to break the stranglehold of then Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel over Gujarat and the BJP. But these claims are unsubstantiated, perhaps retrospectively thought of to undercut the wide appeal he acquired.
Nevertheless, any possibility of Modi using the OBC card became irrelevant as Gujarat erupted into communal rioting in 2002. From thereon, he became the Hindutva mascot, the ideology providing him ample scope to bridge the caste divide for two successive Assembly elections. To this he added the development slogan to sweep the state election for the third time, pole-vaulting to become the front-runner in the race to become Prime Minister in 2014.
But Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are not Gujarat. He and his protégé, Amit Shah, felt the necessity of weaning away the OBC and other lower caste groups from regional leaders into the BJP’s fold. This political compulsion prompted Modi to refer to his OBC status, which was neatly dovetailed into the fact that he had sold tea from his father’s chai shop. The impact was telling.
The Modi persona
Modi’s persona has three principal elements – development, Hindutva, and OBC status. His strategy has been to remain silent on the Hindutva issues which the Sangh periodically raises, and focus his rhetoric on development. But his idea of development doesn’t include overcoming the inherent inequality of the caste system, which determines unequal access to, and gains from, growth.
This is why the OBC facet of his persona can’t be said to represent social justice. It is, in reality, an electoral card the BJP and Modi play deftly to cobble together a majority. For instance, in July, Amit Shah erroneously referred to Modi as India’s first OBC Prime Minister, inviting a riposte from HD Deve Gowda, who rightly claimed the honour for himself. That the caste identity of Modi helps in mobilisation is apparent from his photos at the functions the Telis (who, like the Modh Ghanchis, are oil pressers and OBC) have been holding to mobilise their caste brethren.
The BJP’s allusion to Modi’s OBC status minus the idea of social justice suits the interests of the upper castes, which hope to snatch the lever from Kumar and Yadav to make theirs after a gap of 25 years. For, to talk of social justice, long projected as being synonymous with caste politics, would risk alienating sections of the upper caste. Yet references to Modi’s OBC status, subtly or brazenly, could deter numerous OBC castes from consolidating behind the Janata Parivar.
All this has created a confusion of categories, enabling a crafting of the discourse in which Modi is projected, unlike Kumar and Yadav, as being above caste politics. The truth is that both the BJP and Modi are not averse to playing the caste card. Yet it isn’t seen as one because the upper castes, which dominate the popular discourse, too are using it to grab power.
This confusion of categories surfaced in the Times of India’s frontpage story of September 10: “Ranged on one side are OBC stalwarts Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad, along with Congress, and on the other, the NDA, led by Modi and supported by alliance partners Ramvilas Paswan, JD (U) rebel politician Jiten Manjhi and OBC politician Upendra Kushwaha. The essentially bi-polar contest will test Bihar’s caste and political equations against Modi’s mega development.”
If only life and politics could be so simple, so black and white.
(Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.)
