The 2024 Congress election manifesto has forced the Bhartiya Janata Party leaders, mainly Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to start a defensive campaign on the entire reservation system.
The Congress manifesto has guaranteed a Samajik Nyay (social justice) pillar by saying that if it comes to power a caste census will be conducted nationwide and the 50% reservation cap imposed by the Supreme Court on caste-based reservation regime will be removed. This is causing jitters in the BJP camp.
The main force that demanded a caste census across the country is the historically oppressed majority, Shudras. This category, later, was made the Other Backward Classes (OBC) for implementation of reservations. Since the 1990 Mandal movement days, the Dwija castes were against granting reservations to the Shudras as they would have changed the Dwija hegemony in the education and employment sectors. The two national parties, the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, were also opposed to OBC reservation in 1990. By then they had somewhat reconciled with reservation for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes reservation, though it was hardly getting implemented. But the idea of Shudra or OBCs getting reservation was a fearsome issue for them.
But later, after the V.P. Singh government implemented 27% reservations for the OBCs, the Congress and BJP slowly reconciled themselves to the concept. The Shudras/OBCs constituted the largest vote share in the country. Some Shudra/OBC regional parties also emerged. This gradual change weakened the Congress. However, in the process the BJP picked up this segment, using the Hindutva and anti-Muslim card. The Shudra/OBCs became its anti-Muslim muscle power.
In 2014, the BJP tactfully promoted Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. He was from a listed OBC caste. For the last 10 years this OBC background of Modi’s has helped BJP remain in power with a comfortable majority. However, during these last 10 years, the BJP government headed by an OBC PM has done nothing for the OBC masses. The OBC masses are the main agrarian producers. In the education and employment sectors, OBC presence has weakened because of massive privatisation of both these sectors.
Also read: Congress Manifesto’s Commitment to Social Justice Will Put Other Parties on the Defensive
Across the country, OBCs began to realise this new method of marginalisation through the means of privatisation.
The Hindutva economists – all most all of them come from Dwija backgrounds – have been advocating for the ‘de-statisation’ of all sectors of economy including industrial, business, health, education and also cultural. The massively increasing wealth of monopoly houses, and the ‘upper’-caste, upper-middle classes has created a huge gap between the OBC/Dalit/Adivasis and Dwija ‘upper’ castes, particularly those who live with the RSS-BJP political ideology.
The OBC PM systematically implemented an anti-OBC privatisation agenda because that was his core ideology.
Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi, presumably in the course of his Bharat Jodo Yatra and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, realised that the OBC demand for caste census was justified. Once the OBC population data comes out, the Supreme Court cap of 50% reservation will have to be reviewed.
His party succeeded in framing a manifesto that promised the same. The manifesto also promised to protect the state institutions from privatisation and job creation in the public sector economy.
Did Modi, who is once again being projected as the strongest leader of the RSS-BJP combine, convince his party’s Dwija leadership to come up with a pro-poor or transformative manifesto in every election? Elections for him are little more than rhetorical speeches. The Dwija intellectuals knew that he would ultimately play their game and not that of the Shudra/OBCs. Their “Modi ki guarantee” manifesto has nothing to offer to the poor or to the nation. Hence they do not even refer to their own manifesto in the campaign but constantly attack the Congress manifesto.
Also read: Why Congress Mustn’t Go Back on Rahul Gandhi’s Caste Census, Social Justice Promise
Crisis in the BJP vote bank
The Congress manifesto has created a crisis in the BJP’s OBC vote bank. Added to this, the Congress manifesto also talked about expanding the welfare regime for all the poor, which obviously consists of SCs, STs and OBCs. This will also impact the massively built-up contract economy and crony industrialism with a specific Hindutva spiritual ideology.
The organisational wealth of RSS-BJP structures has increased several-fold, thanks to these crony capitalists and private monopolies, which were planning to take over the agrarian sector. The goal is to weaken the Shudra agrarian forces so that the classical varna dharma or caste order is brought back. Since the Congress had no clear stand on the OBC question for a long time, they did not know how to face the OBC vote bank that the BJP had newly acquired. They did know how to fight the pro-OBC image of the BJP after the 2014 elections. The OBCs also got communalised, in the process, and developed a constructed consciousness of the alleged danger that the Muslims posed. This time, the pro-OBC manifesto of the Congress addresses this context.
Since the BJP has nothing to offer the OBCs since the Congress manifesto came out, it is trying to retain its OBC base by dangling the ‘danger’ of Muslim reservation and repeating the same again and again. But the OBCs, SCs and STs know that the real danger to reservations is not from Muslims, but the Hindutva privatisation agenda. Realising this is possible only by de-statising all industries, businesses, educational institutions and cultural institutions. They want to push the Shudra/OBCs completely into the agrarian labour market and hand over the entire economy to Gujarati-Mumbai Hindutva capitalists.
Also read: Narendra Modi Is Right, Adani-Ambani Should Be an Important Poll Issue
The BJP on the other hand brought out its so-called manifesto and called it ‘Modi ki guarantee’, leaving out the party identity and making the election ‘Modi versus Congress’. There is no welfare or developmental direction in the Modi manifesto.
In this situation, the Congress manifesto began to attract poor village and urban voters, more particularly OBC, SC and ST voters. Modi and his team resorted to talking about how the Congress was bent on removing all the reservations of OBCs, SCs and STs and giving to Muslims. Is it Muslim capital exploiting the OBCs, SCs and STs or is it the Gujarati-Mumbai capitalists?
Changing the constitution
Of course, the Congress campaign has also focused on the idea of changing the constitution if the RSS/BJP get 400 seats. This is a more dangerous idea that the RSS/BJP ideologues have been carefully putting across the country by allowing select Dwija leaders to talk about it. This idea has its roots in RSS’s ideological formulations.
Rahul Gandhi started talking about protecting the constitution by holding a copy of the constitution in every public meeting across the country. For the first time in the history of Congress, a top leader of the party began to foreground his arguments with reference to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, saying that the constitution he wrote along with Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel is in danger.
The OBCs, SCs and STs have much bigger stakes in the constitution. In their history of thousands of years of existence they never knew anything about equality till this constitution was adopted in 1950. A deep fear began to shake them regarding their children’s future when they heard about the BJP’s plans to change the constitution. To overcome this problem, the BJP leaders, more particularly Modi, now repeatedly talk about Muslims, “people with more children”, and Pakistan’s alleged intervention in the electoral process.
But OBCs, SCs, and STs should know that the Muslim reservation percentage is small and that it is also based on their caste identity. For example, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, it is just 4%. In no other state does it go beyond 3-4%. The question of caste census has nothing to do with the question of reservation for Muslims.
The OBCs of India are surprised to learn from an OBC PM that he is against a caste census. Instead of addressing the question in its essence, why is he diverting the issue to Muslim reservation as if the OBCs have demanded its removal for Muslims? The issue is that the OBC PM and his government are killing the reservation system through privatisation.
Reservation, per se, cannot be given based on class or religion. During the Congress and other regimes, some lower caste people converted to Islam and took caste certificates so they could be allowed to get a small percentage of reservation. What the BJP leadership is presenting is the claim that all Muslims – like all Dalits or all tribals or all Other Backward Classes – are getting reservations. This is wrong.
But the 10% Economically Weaker Section reservation that the Modi government brought was purely class-based. In fact, all SCs, STs, and OBCs opposed this reservation as it was meant for ‘upper’ castes who already have huge social capital as their heritage. The campaign of Modi – that if Congress comes to power they will take away the properties of the poor Hindus, including the mangalsutra of women – is a dangerous and destructive one.
Even the industrialists, the rich and the middle classes that support the BJP should oppose such propaganda about a democratic party because democracy needs multiple parties.
Modi also dubbed the Congress manifesto as an Urban Naxal manifesto. If a PM who ruled the nation for 10 years speaks this kind of language about the national opposition party, democracy gets into deeper trouble.
The fact is that the Dwija left-liberals also did not own the Congress manifesto, as perhaps, they think that on OBC question the Congress took a stand that they did not expect or did not want. All of them go with SC/ST reservation on grounds of so-called empathy but they have been very uncomfortable with OBC reservation. A time has come the Shudra/OBCs must be treated as the backbone of wealth and they must get their share in every asset of the nation.
The 2024 elections thus are a turning point for those who are fighting for weakening the caste system.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures (Productive Masses Vs Hindutva-Mullah Conflicting Ethics).
