IMAGINE a society where 10% of the people are self-appointed Brokers of God – who thus occupy the top social slot. Another 10% are held to be born-to-rule, who do little else for a living except to appropriate for themselves the right to rule, all the time decorously holding the ornate sword and enjoying the exclusive right to ride the white horse, but never fight themselves – as Brokers of War, they employ ‘other backward castes’ to be their fighting foot-soldiers. Yet another 10% just buy and sell, traders sitting on their backside to make money out of worker’s sweat.

Add to the above, two sets of 40% and 30% respectively, the working backbone of old Indian society – who however have been historically at loggerheads with each other. The first set of 40% are the hardy farmers who hold the plough – but who also become either respectable foot-soldiers of state power or goonish lathaits of feudal landlord power.

The other are the bottom 30%, who as artisans are the original working class of India, the tillers of land, cobblers, blacksmiths, silversmiths, goldsmiths, ironsmiths, potters, weavers, carpenters, barbers, sweepers, and so on – the whole gamut of human working activity. Without this working class, the remaining 70% simply cannot live.

But this working class of artisans was kept outside the pale of society – ritually ‘untouchable’ (even though their women were liable to be ‘touched’ by the glad-eyed amongst ‘upper’ caste men). Whenever these Scheduled Castes happened to defy oppression, the Brokers of both God and War kept them in place by a complicated set of nonviolent rituals (designed by Brahmins) or by elemental violence (executed by lathaits).

Imagine, hence, a society where these community positions are kept humanly inflexible, though presented as ordained by God – viz. the holy Manusmriti. (Isn’t it noteworthy that all social exploitation claims a holy sanction?)

And then comes the twist of the 20th century. After centuries of social placidity, we are suddenly exposed to the modern inputs of education, urbanization and democracy, and all in one heap. Education teaches us why all human beings are, or at least should be, equal. Urbanization wipes out untouchability. And democracy helps to operationalize equality. This is where India stood in 1947. But equal opportunity never comes by mere signature or even statement of intent – it has to be institutionalized. That is why B.R. Ambedkar fought for separate electorates (in voting) and separate posts (in jobs) for the former untouchables. Gandhiji christened them Children of God (Harijans, a term that the modern-day dalit detests), but failed to realize that they needed the human institution of constitutional protectionism.

So, both sociologically and constitutionally, our Scheduled Caste communities have historically been kept separate to aid oppression, and now for protection.

 

Politically, as long as the Indian National Congress professed (and indeed also managed) to represent all castes and communities, the SCs (via iconic leaders like Babu Jagjivan Ram) were with the Congress in regions where the left had no presence (which was most of India). But by the mid-sixties, the Congress umbrella had begun to leak, ultimately copiously – with each exit of a vote bank punching in a hole beyond repair.

Land reforms inaugurated in 1956 did weaken the feudal classes that had opposed the freedom struggle and, after 1950, found shelter in the retrogressive but powerful Swatantra Party. But implementation of land reform rules did not empower the land-tilling poor peasantry (largely SCs and STs); it only benefited the plough-holding middle peasantry, the feared ‘other backward castes’, once disparaged as kulaks (who as lathaits violently opposed the SCs at the paid behest of the feudalistic landlords). This new economic arrangement mobilized the OBCs and gave them increasing political power, as also respectability by rechristening them as ‘secular’ (since their ritualistic antagonists, Brahmins and Thakurs, were largely with the ‘sectarian’ Jana Sangh/BJP). Led by an iconic DMK in Tamil Nadu, the TDP’s Kammas in Andhra Pradesh, by Chaudhary Charan Singh in North India, their political rise signalled the exit of OBCs from the Congress fold. Meanwhile, the Punjabi Suba agitation in Punjab succeeded by the mid-sixties in dividing the Sikhs between Congress and the Akali Party.

Family planning excesses in North India during the Emergency years of 1975-77 further crystallized the exit of the Muslim vote bank from the Congress in the Hindi belt, best symbolized by the stranglehold of the Shahi Imam on this vote bank, and his repetitive, but negotiated (or haggled?) periodic jumps across various political formations.

 

The sequential exit of each of these vote banks from the Congress not only left gaping, leaking holes in the Congress umbrella, the process also fuelled their subterranean movement (by piecemeal negotiation) across various political formations. The brokers of these vote banks negotiated different quid pro quo with the ‘secular’ Congress, the ‘sectarian’ BJP, and the ‘progressive’ leftists – all in an open and transparent pursuit of electoral power.

The point to note is that barring the leftists and their touching faith in progressive politics to transcend community identity, all other political formations have in practice persisted with, if not relied on, communitarian politics. The Congress may have tried to represent all communities and the BJP all Hindu castes, but in electoral practice their choice of candidates has invariably been governed by community considerations, not ideology.

This is no different from the age-old practice of buying up the village elder or the community leader to influence an entire village or community during election time. In this arrangement the leader usually assumes a ‘victim status’ – that is, ‘buy me, please me, pander to my whims, enrich my (extended) family – because I am the symbol of historic oppression, I have the right to enrich myself in the name of my caste/community/region.’

 

Imagine, herein, the Indian political scenario after Independence. The Congress, as the harbinger of our freedom struggle, swept the general elections of 1952, 1957 and 1962 – being the umbrella that sheltered all castes and communities. But the rise of the Akalis in Punjab, the OBCs all over the country, and the exit of the North Indian Muslim vote bank, coupled with tribal alienation (and the rise of Naxalites) left the Congress umbrella so badly leaking that it soon began to embrace the same Raja elements it had earlier opposed during the freedom struggle and taunted during the post-1947 integration of ‘princely’ states.

Barring the leftists, all other political parties too have always adopted castes/communities as vote banks to seek political power. And the three modern inputs of education, urbanization and democracy have helped open the eyes of our hitherto submissive working class – the SC communities – to grasp the political tenet that self-inclusive integration is the first essential step towards political power.

The rise of an assertive Dalit politics needs to be read in this context. From the integrationist stance of Babu Jagjivan Ram and the Congress, to the aggressive but self-contained behaviour of Kanshi Ram and the BSP – both in fact creations of B.R. Ambedkar’s constitutional reservations, the Dalits have been organized politically to match their constitutionally ordained ‘separate’ status.

The Dalit rise has coincided with the progressive dismantling of the all-pervasive Congress breaking into various caste/community based political parties. Significantly, this has also been accompanied by rising corruption in politics, bureaucracy and judiciary.

 

In this churning of the Indian political scenario, the Congress umbrella seems to have been torn beyond repair (25 years have passed, but the great ‘national’ party has not been anywhere near a majority in the Lok Sabha); the OBCs are moving back and forth across the political landscape; many disparate forces are forever trying to convert the Muslims into a packaged vote bank; and institutional values of propriety are getting eroded everywhere.

Such a decline in public practices has undeniably been affected by the politics of ‘upper caste’ power. In the melee, the BSP, with its firm grip on the huge SC vote bank, and open exhortation to its supporters to adopt such ‘upper caste’ malpractices to grab electoral power, has seen a steady rise. With its solid vote bank, it has the ability to play a spoiler given its three to nine per cent share of votes polled in multiparty contests. Unsurprisingly it is wooed by all.

In the UP elections of 2007, the BSP to everyone’s surprise openly tied up with the Brahmins. Having already won the support of poor Muslims, it became the first party in two decades to obtain a full majority in the UP Vidhan Sabha. This is the age-old Congress winning formula of the 1952, 1957 and 1962 elections. To the consternation of all, the BSP now boasts that this combination will also take it to victory in the Lok Sabha.

 

The question is, will such a consequent dilution of its aggressive SC posture (by joining hands with Brahmins) but without any remedial ideology to help the poor, diminish the appeal of the BSP? Starkly put, can such ideology-less politics ever prove lasting for a party that claims to be egalitarian?

Again, do such electoral consolidations (the ultimate raison d’etre of a political party to win democratic power) have a bearing on both governance and its own core character?

The BSP rose on such chilling slogans as Tilak taraaju aur talwar, inko maaro joote char, audacious in content and yet tactically helpful in enabling the SC communities to substantially discard their fear of the ‘upper castes’ such that they can now think of raining blows on their historical oppressors. Again, ‘Vote hamara, raj tumhara, nahin chalega, nahin chalega’ opened their eyes to the unfairness of their votes serving to help consolidate the power of their historical oppressors. The party’s politics was best summed up by the pithy slogan ‘Vote se lenge PM/CM, arakshan se lenge SP/DM’ – the ultimate contribution of Baba Saheb B.R. Ambedkar.

But by 2002, it was clear that while exclusivist SC politics makes BSP a major player, it would not give it majority power. Hence by 2007, they openly cobbled up a multi-caste coalition – ‘Jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni bhagidaari’, i.e., the share in power should be in direct proportion to vote bank strength.

 

In essence, the BSP is doing nothing different from what the Congress has tried to do all through – represent most if not all. So, while a dilution of its aggressive SC sloganeering gives it the appearance of increased appeal across the board, an analysis of its last two years of governance suggests that it has not dropped any of its SC programmes.

Hence, to compare it with the Congress, the BSP will be as egalitarian or corrupt as that party has been, even though different in style. If the ‘social movement’ aspect of the BSP is increasingly degenerating into power-hungry politics, it is only mimicking the ‘national movement’ of the Congress which degenerated into ‘India is Indira’ and pioneered the trend of dynastic succession which has since infected all political formations except the Left and the BJP.

On the other hand, Congress enjoyed the advantage of a sober national consensus as its basis. The BSP, in contrast, began on an aggressive anti-caste mode. The ‘Thakur, Brahmin, Bania chor, baki sab hain DS4’, (The three upper castes are robbers; the rest are with us) soon progressed to the audacious ‘Tilak, taraazu aur talwar, inko maaro joote char’ (Shower kicks on the three upper castes).

But post-2007, the BSP has made up with the upper castes to herald a ‘bhaichara’ (fellow feeling) way to grab power, of course, decorated with criminal chieftains from all castes and communities to make the electoral contests more manageable.

Will this tendency destroy the egalitarian beginnings of the BSP? Moreover, will it then take even less time than the Congress to begin unravelling?