As the next Lok Sabha election draws close, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have ramped up their efforts to maximise their reach and expand their sphere of influence. However, this competition has also brought to the fore the inherent contradictions in attempting to please all.
Both the BJP and the Congress will have to do a fine balancing act as they seek to retain the loyalty of their core voters while adding new groups to their list of supporters.
In this process, the BJP finds itself in the firing line of its time-tested loyal supporters – the upper castes – who are upset with the saffron party’s outreach to the backward classes and the Scheduled Castes. The Congress, on the other hand, is making a conscious effort to shed the tag of being a “Muslim party” by making overtures to both the upper castes and the Dalits, who once constituted its core support base.
In both cases, there is an inherent assumption that the two parties can afford to overlook their traditional supporters who will not desert them for lack of options. For instance, the Congress has not actively pursued the minorities in recent months as it believes they have no choice but to back it or the anti-BJP regional parties to keep the saffron party at bay. Similarly, the strenuous efforts made by the BJP to win over the Dalits and backward classes is also based on the belief that that despite their anger and unhappiness, the upper castes will not desert it.
Congress’s dilemma
If the BJP is caught in a bind over the protests by upper castes, the Congress is also being forced to tread carefully. On one hand, it has been consistently speaking up for Dalits and, on the other hand, it is also reaching out to the upper castes in a bid to reconstruct its traditional support base of Brahmins, Dalits, and minorities.
The party’s dilemma was evident from Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi’s carefully crafted response when questioned about the ongoing protests by upper castes against reservations in promotions and the Narendra Modi government’s decision to overturn the Supreme Court’s order, from March, in which it diluted the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
While glossing over the party’s stand on the issues raised by the protesting upper castes, Singhvi instead blamed their agitation on the Modi government’s failed policies. Singhvi said that it is not just the upper castes but every segment of society, including the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, backward classes and the poor, that is seething with anger at being let down by Modi’s promise of development with all and for all.
Singhvi said: “If there is a huge amount of anger, huge amount of feeling of trust deficit, of being insulted on account of an absolutely failed economic system, one of the most shocking levels of unemployment, a distorted and badly applied GST [Goods and Services Tax], scams like Rafale, SMEs tottering under unbearable weight etc then I think an egotistic dictatorial ‘Modi sarkar’ has a lot to answer from every segment of society including each of the above categories.”
It is clear that the Congress does not want to be seen to be taking sides here. In fact, it would possibly like to use this opportunity to wean away the upper castes from the BJP just as it is seeking to take advantage of the building resentment among Dalits following a series of attacks on them in BJP-ruled states. As part of this ongoing effort to woo upper castes, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has been making highly publicised visits to Hindu temples – he is currently on the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage – and has declared himself to be a devotee of Shiva to reclaim his Hindu identity. Last year, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala had gone as far as to describe Gandhi as a “janaeu dhari Brahmin.”
Further playing the Hindu card, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath has announced that the party will open gaushalas in every district if it is voted to power, while party spokesperson Manish Tewari defended this announcement saying that it was the Congress that had enacted laws banning cow slaughter in the several states in the first place.
At the same time, Surjewala told a Brahmin seminar in Kurukshetra, Haryana, on Wednesday that the “Indian National Congress is that party in whose blood Brahmin Samaj’s DNA is present”. He promised that the Congress would set up a Brahmin Kalyan Board to provide loans and scholarships to “needy Brahmin youths” and provide 10% quota for the poor members of the community.
BJP’s dilemma
Like the Congress, the BJP is also struggling.
Known as a “Brahmin-baniya” party, the BJP has, over the years, resorted to social engineering to expand its base by co-opting the other backward classes. Initiated in the nineties, the experiment helped the BJP to increase its tally substantially, especially in Uttar Pradesh.
However, the BJP frittered away this advantage as the upper castes retained control of the party till Narendra Modi, a backward class leader, arrived on the national scene. Since then, the BJP has run an aggressive campaign to consolidate the support of the backward classes in its favour, especially the non-Yadav backwards, and the Scheduled Castes.
The BJP made its intent clear soon after it came to power in 2014 when it appropriated Babasaheb Ambedkar’s legacy by organising a series of programmes in his memory. The party stepped up these efforts when it found itself on the back foot following a series of attacks on Dalits in BJP-ruled states. When it recently faced angry protests by Dalit groups over the Supreme Court’s order diluting the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in March, the Modi government rushed to mollify them by bringing in a Constitution amendment bill, in August, to restore the original provisions.
The upshot of these measures is growing anger among the upper castes who feel they are being neglected by the BJP despite their enduring loyalty to the party. Although simmering for some time now, it is now out in the open as upper caste groups have taken to the streets.
There have been several agitations in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh over the past few days. On Thursday, the state government imposed prohibitory orders in four districts after several organisations called for a shutdown. The protestors are demanding that the Supreme Court order on the Atrocities Act be restored and that the policy of reservation in promotions be done away with.
Predictably, these developments have worried the BJP top leadership but there has been no word, so far, on how it plans to placate its angry upper caste supporters without alienating the Scheduled Castes. The party is hoping that the elaborate asthi Kalash yatras for the immersion of the ashes of the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and other events being organised in his memory, will tone down the anger among the upper castes, especially the Brahmins.
However, there is a sizeable number of sceptics in the Congress and the BJP who are not convinced that the steps being undertaken by their respective parties will make an impact. They believe these measures are, at best, mere tokenism and that the upper castes can only be appeased if they are accommodated in positions of power at all levels by the two parties.
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