Every now and then, India witnesses a politically momentous event arising from the internal compulsions of the ruling establishment. Often masked in utilitarian jargon, suggesting that these decisions are meant for the greatest good of the greatest number, the cynicism at the root is unmistakable.
Demonetisation was announced in November 2016, before the Uttar Pradesh polls. The run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election was marked by the criminalisation of ‘triple talaq’, the reading down of Article 370, amendments to the Citizenship Act, and air strikes on Balakot inside Pakistan—all of which whipped up the poll season’s volatility.
Six months hence, Bihar, an electorally significant heartland state, will elect its next legislature. Until last week, it seemed that the dominant issue would be the Centre’s anticipated retaliatory punch on Pakistan to avenge the Pahalgam carnage. Narendra Modi’s red-blooded personality embedded in the larger theme of the BJP genre of nationalism was believed to shape the overriding narrative.
Indeed, when the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) met on April 30, as it did in 2019 before the Balakot air raids, an announcement of a counter-assault by India was expected. To the surprise of many, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnav, the official spokesperson, informed that the government would include caste enumeration of all groupings, including the other backward classes (OBCs), in the impending census that was deferred because of the pandemic. However, no timeline was given, stoking the opposition’s charge that this decision would be in limbo, like the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam.
The BJP claimed that the decision was a “super surgical strike” on the opposition, not realising that the move was riddled with problems for the party in Bihar. In one fell swoop, it concluded that the Congress—which spearheaded the demand for a caste census under Rahul Gandhi, who flagged the issue in his Bharat Jodo Yatra—and the splinters from the socialist bloc surviving on Mandalised politics in Bihar and UP had been deprived of their bragging rights. The BJP ushered in Mandal 2.0, which it claimed would fortify its own OBC politics for time to come.
It was apparent that most of the PM’s ministerial colleagues were clueless about the caste census. Modi met RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohanrao Bhagwat a day before the CCPA meeting and got the go-ahead. The Sangh had always taken a nuanced position on caste enumeration, bordering on ambiguity.
Until now, the BJP had rejected the idea outright. On the other hand, the RSS’s stated position was a caste census was acceptable as long as it was not used as a “political tool” and was deployed to deliver targeted welfare schemes to the disadvantaged. The Sangh was silent on increasing the reservation quota beyond the legally mandated cap of 50 percent in educational institutions and government jobs.
In a press briefing on April 30, Rahul Gandhi recalled that as recent as the Jharkhand polls, Modi’s line was there were only four castes in India—women, youth, farmers and the poor. In September 2021, the Centre told the Supreme Court, “Caste-wise enumeration in the census was given up as a matter of policy from 1951 onwards.” On July 20, 2021, Union minister of state Nityanand Rai, an MP from Bihar, told parliament that the government would only count the scheduled castes and tribes in the census.
A day before the decision was unveiled, senior minister Nitin Gadkari, a CCPA member, derided the caste census at a book launch in Delhi, saying it was against “Hindutva’s core ideology”. BJP lore has it that Gadkari, a former BJP president, is very close to Bhagwat and the Sangh. Clearly, he was kept out of the loop, as were the other CCPA members, barring Amit Shah, the home minister and a Modi confidant. As with other consequential decisions, the PM did not risk holding wider internal consultations in which the most obvious question possibly would have been, how do we explain our volte face? To pander to OBCs and extremely backward classes (EBCs)?
It’s not as though Bihar was below the BJP’s radar. It was prioritised in the last Union budget; leaders in Patna sang hosannas on Modi’s “commitment” to the state’s development. From setting up a new Makhana Board for fox nut cultivation and a new airport to more aid for the Western Koshi Canal project and IT expansion, the budget had a lot to offer the state.
Several factors prompted the compulsion behind the census move. Rahul’s emphasis and his ‘Save the Constitution’ march could not be scoffed at; that time was gone. The Lok Sabha outcome in Maharashtra and UP was a reflection of the BJP’s disdain, although it escaped that fate in Bihar. The JD(U) under Nitish Kumar had done a caste survey in 2023 when the RJD and the Congress were allies. The survey revealed that 63 percent of the population comprised OBCs and EBCs, the latter being an important constituent of the BJP-led NDA coalition.
The BJP’s advantage lies in communicating the significance of its action. To the Congress’s insistence that it had the first-mover advantage because its governments in Karnataka and Telangana had already conducted caste surveys, the BJP’s answer was that these exercises were not censuses but objects used as “political tools”. Under the Constitution, the census is a Union subject.
Where the Congress inherited a dubious legacy on implementing the Mandal Commission’s recommendation for a 27 percent OBC quota by dithering for ages, the BJP demonstrated political agility by embracing the far-reaching suggestion and disproved the belief that it pandered largely to the upper castes.
There’s no doubt that since 1989, the upper castes of north India have sworn allegiance to the BJP, with occasional departures, as in UP. With the caste census as its new mascot, the BJP can fulfil its OBC agenda only if it exponentially increases the number of tickets given to the BCs, especially EBCs, who make up 36 percent of Bihar’s population, per Nitish Kumar’s survey.
In the last election, 47.3 percent of the BJP’s tickets went to the upper castes. Can a reordering of priorities upset the apple cart this time? The BJP will also have to contend with the possibility that the census move might not pass legal scrutiny with the Supreme Court’s stipulated ceiling on reservation.
(Views are personal)
Radhika Ramaseshan
Columnist and political commentator
(ramaseshan.radhika@gmail.com)