The Obituary of Caste Politics

By: Mihir Bholey

The only other election in Bihar which may be somewhat comparable in terms of the overwhelming mandate was the 1977 elections in which the Janata Party making a wave won 214 out of the 324 assembly seats. It was 66.04 % of the total assembly seats. But that was the first assembly election of the post-emergency era and the Janata wave was conspicuous due to the nation-wide appeal of late Jai Prakash Narayan. The 2010 assembly elections in Bihar were not riding on any such wave. Still the NDA figure of 206 in a house of 243 was an unprecedented 84%. But surely there was a sharp undercurrent drifting the popular sentiment towards development which the NDA government had brought to centrality. The undercurrent was sharp like one of Bihar’s unpredictable rivers Boodhi Gandak known for silently eroding its bank. Apparently, this time the undercurrent of development seems to have eroded the terra firma of caste-centric social justice in Bihar. Has this unprecedented mandate written the obituary of caste politics in the state with the ink of development?

Notwithstanding the unexpected majority, those watching the socio-political developments in Bihar ever since the Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi led NDA government was voted to power find their observation being vindicated with this mandate. The reason is simple; the agenda of development in a development starved state could not have been ignored for long more so in the era of intense and real-time connectivity with the rest of the world. The issues of Sadak-Suraksha-Bijli-Pani (Road-Security-Electricity-Water) have become metaphors of development politics in India of late. However, in Bihar, both the political class and people took time to realize the importance of development oriented ‘inclusive politics’.

Does this mandate vindicate pro-incumbency for a pro-development agenda or just an outright rejection of ‘caste exclusive’ politics of Laloo Yadav? Can we see it as a mandate for evolving a new model of development devoid of caste and communal politics? Some political analysts even suggested that as a result of its alliance with JDU, the BJP should now contemplate to promote the Bihar model of ‘soft Hindutva’ and development as against the Gujarat model of ‘aggressive Hindutva’ and development, should it want to repeat its Bihar performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. A considerable percentage of Muslim votes which BJP bagged in the minority dominated districts of Bihar were attributed to the appeal of Nitish Kumar among minorities by some political analysts rather than BJP’s matured and measured stance on the Ayodhya verdict.

Like other political alliances the DNA of NDA too is not completely free from caste molecules. In fact no political outfit can be free from it. It will be naïve to imagine that BJP and JDU were not setting their caste and communal equations right. But perhaps unlike RJD they disdained from giving sixty-five percent tickets to Yadavs and Muslims and tried to present what they call a rainbow spectrum of castes. That was NDA’s caste pragmatism as against RJD’s caste-centricism. The NDA in Bihar is a strange combination of dichotomous ideologies. One stands opposed to pseudo-secularism, another to pseudo-social justice. Both have different and even conflicting constituencies to address. But after joining hands, one was compelled to adopt a secular plank another ‘inclusive politics’ providing space to people belonging to all caste categories in politics and governance not by courtesy, but rightfully. Perhaps nothing could have worked as a better cohesive factor than the agenda of development. To counter the formidable caste polarization of RJD-LJP combine, the agenda of development was also a well thought of tactical retreat for NDA and it worked.

Does this mandate mean that caste will now cease to play a decisive role in Bihar’s politics henceforth? The fact remains that Bihar since at least a decade has been a witness of the rise of OBC assertion and politics. The biggest contribution of Laloo Yadav was to organize them as a consolidated vote bank along with the SCs and minorities. But Nitish Kumar’s social engineering succeeded in creating yet another axis of OBC politics with a much less shrill caste overtone and an expression of willingness to do ‘inclusive politics’ with scope for every caste group. A strong Congress could have made a dent in the BJP Forward caste vote bank. But it did not succeed. The RJD-LJP combine also tried to consolidate its votes on caste and religion equation of OBCs, SCs and minorities in the state, but JDU countered this with its Ati-Pichhada and Maha-Dalit equation.

Has this mandate written off the era of caste politics in the state? Perhaps it will be too early to endorse this notion. Development is a genuine concern of the people, but it may be a temporary euphoria as well. Caste is a deep rooted socio-political reality of the state’s politics even today and the first constituency for any political party or leader which they don’t want to ignore. Castes and communities which were branded as ‘vote banks’ of a certain political party due to their consolidated voting pattern, broke off their ‘vote bank’ identity and voted differently. This fact can’t be ignored. The result of this election may have written the foreword of development politics, but the obituary of caste politics can only be written when Bihar will truly adopt the imperative of ‘inclusive politics’ both in rhetoric and action

Mihir Bholey is a Senior Faculty at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Views expressed are personal. bholey.mihir@gmail.com