Mandal and Mosque…

The early 1990s were politically significant in mainly two respects –

1. the emergence of caste politics.

2. the emergence of the BJP.

Theoretically speaking, the emergence of one should have been the end of the other. After all, one seeks to construct a solid block of voters who vote solely in the name of religious hooliganism while the others seek to profit off the fractured social structure. One seeks to unify, the other’s strength lies in the division. But as is the case with almost everything in India, these too had managed to co-exist and even flourish, at least until the Congress tsunami in 2009. The BJP emerged as the strongest alternative to the Congress since Independence, formed the Government three times in less than two decades. The main beneficiaries of casteist politics – Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Yadav and Mayawati too have enjoyed frequent stints as Chief Ministers of their respective states and even conjured up clout at the national level.

These political trends owe their emergence to two significant events in the 1990s. The Mandal Commission advocating reservations of jobs in the public sector fractured the society into upper castes and the lower castes, the latter making up the dedicated vote banks of the triumvirate of Mayawati, Lalu and Mulayam. The second event was the assertion of the Hindu right wing which would eventually lead to the destruction of the Babri Masjid.

One would imagine that these two events were responsible for the emergence of caste and religion on the political landscape respectively. In my opinion, these two events actually complimented one another. The implementation of Mandal Commission’s recommendations by VP Singh’s government alienated the upper caste Hindus. So what was before an extremely caste driven society became less casteist, it was divided into upper castes and lower castes or the one who’ll get the reservations and those who wouldn’t. Somehow nobody sees the irony in this. The uniting factor of this coalition of upper castes became religion. With the rampant appeasement of Muslims by the Congress reaching the tipping point with the Shah Bano case, the upper castes rallied around their common Hindu faith which would lead to the meteoric rise of the BJP. The rise of the BJP stoked the Muslim apprehensions and they lent their support en masse to the caste politics of Lalu and co. To this day, the upper caste middle class Hindus form the core strength of the BJP and the backward classes + Muslims are the backbone of Lalu and Co.

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