Is BJP going pro-Mandal?

The Bharatiya Janata Party is in a crisis. Its old guard, whose glorious days began with the demolition of the Babri Masjid, is being retired prematurely. BJP president Rajnath Singh and the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who shared a love-hate relationship when the Mandal movement was at its peak, have emerged as the party’s new social force and are galvanising the Other Backward Classes.

The BJP, essentially an anti-reservationist party, has become OBC-friendly now. Is this change only to grab power in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, or is it for the socio-economic transformation of India? If it is for the latter, what are the specifics of the BJP’s agenda? Does the party stand for reservation in the private sector (as the Congress has once again promised in its manifesto) and legislative bodies? The-se two have been the OBCs’ longstanding demands. Many upper caste leaders in the BJP have serious worries about the reservation agenda. The Congress has made its position clear, yet it is not clear about reservations for OBCs in legislative bodies.

Recall what happened in 1989-90 in the wake of the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report by the V.P. Singh government. Protests by upper caste youths were witnessed in many cities, even as they were countered by pro-Mandal rallies. The OBCs realised that if they do not defend reservations, they would remain backward forever.

While the BJP opposed the implementation of the Mandal report on the pretext that it would deepen the social divide between various communities, the Congress, under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, remained neutral — the Congress was already facing flak as the report submitted by B.P. Mandal in 1980 had been kept in cold storage first by Indira Gandhi and then by Rajiv Gandhi.

The pro-social justice forces around Janata Party — particularly Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan — pushed this agenda to its logical end and V.P. Singh took up the mantle of providing social justice upon himself.

At that time Mr Modi was a loyal L.K. Advani follower along with Pramod Mahajan. Though Mr Modi took a lead role in organising Mr Advani’s Rath Yatra, it was Mahajan who was projected as the young, dynamic leader. He was a Brahminic manipulator committed to anti-reservation and anti-Mandalism. Mr Advani and Mahajan’s team juxtaposed the Mandir movement against the Mandal movement to divert the nation’s attention. Arun Shourie, who is nowhere in picture now, was their ideological adviser.

At that time I along with others was deeply involved in organising pro-Mandal protests and we were watching the Congress and the BJP very closely. We were unanimous in our hatred for Mr Shourie, Mr Advani and Mahajan.

Mr Modi was not a well-known leader at that time. The only person who associated with the pro-Mandal forces from the BJP was Uma Bharti.
Though Kalyan Singh was an OBC chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, at that time and he too was forced to follow Mr Advani’s anti-reservation line.

Subsequently, the BJP realised that the OBCs mostly followed Hindu rituals  and that if they too moved away (the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were already moving away), Hinduism would be in danger. Against this backdrop the Sangh Parivar allowed Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiya), a non-Brahmin, to become Sarsangchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

During his tenure (1994 to 2000) several OBC youth were promoted within the party and a massive recruitment drive of OBC youth was undertaken. During this period  Bangaru Laxman (a dalit), Mr Modi, Ms Bharti (OBCs both), Rajnath Singh, Shiv-raj Singh Chouhan, Raman Singh (all kshatriyas) and Venkaiah Naidu (shudra upper caste) were assigned prominent slots. Rajnath Singh became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh when Rajju Bhaiya was in control of the RSS.

This team has come to take control of the party now. Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley (brahmins, both), who occupy key positions in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, were also anti-reservationists at that time. Now Mr Jaitley is with Mr Modi, mostly because he would like to get a key position in the government. Ms Swaraj’s ambition to become the Prime Minister is well-known. The current RSS leadership has compromised given the Modi drive, and because that is the only course that is likely to keep the OBC flock with the Sangh Parivar and possibly become their votebank.

However, changing social relations, institutionalised under the Hindu Varna system — the core ideology of Hinduism — will create problems in the future. If Mr  Modi becomes the Prime Minister and transforms the BJP into the party’s Gujarat model, there will be more rebellions. In Gujarat, Mr Modi undermined all organisational structures and made the party a one-man army.

One has to wait and see how the core ideological elements within the Sangh Parivar will see the change that is taking place. India, however, is not Gujarat. Brahminic forces are much more organised at the all-India level. The OBCs who are getting galvanised around Mr Modi’s campaign are now pitching their hopes very high.

Mr Modi’s brother, Somabhai Modi, is also going round the country and addressing meetings of backward class leaders, telling them that his brother will change their status. The Congress, on the other hand, has changed its track on the OBC reservations. Though Jawaharlal Nehru did not implement the Kaka Kalelkar Report and Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi remained indifferent to the Mandal Commission Report, in 2007 under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi it took the bold step of extending 27 per cent reservation to the OBCs in educational institutions. In fact, the Congress also asked for reservations in the private sector in the same year.

This lead to the second phase of the anti-reservation movement of upper caste youth in all major cities. By then the pro-reservationists were too strong and the Congress got their full support. However, it did not succeed in pushing the reservation principle into the private sector.

Quite surprisingly, Mr  Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat remained silent in 2007. Even now nobody knows what his position on reservations in the private sector is.

Arvind Kejriwal, who is now claiming to be the supporter of the aam aadmi, was a strong anti-reservationist. Nobody knows what his position is now. When a party such as the BJP is trying to pocket votes by using Mr Modi’s caste background, it is the party’s moral responsibility to tell the voters how it plans to transform the OBCs’ socio-economic status.