The emancipatory power of caste politics

👉It has to be recognised for bridging the gaps between various sections of society👈

With a few days left before Karnataka goes to the polls, there is feverish campaigning in the State, with the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party racing to what seems like a close finish, with the Janata Dal (Secular) hoping to play kingmaker in the event of a fractured mandate. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah says he is confident that the Congress will win. The BJP has left its star campaigner, the Prime Minister himself, to take care of the final leg of campaigning, and hopes to make inroads into the south through this election. The JD(S) is very strong in some districts, and is hoping the vote there will revive its relevance.

The name of this game is ‘horizontal mobilisation’, as the sociologists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolf called it. Since voting in India largely takes place on the basis of collective loyalties such as caste, the trick is to get the endorsement of a numerically large caste or a group of smaller castes to win an election.

👉Karnataka over the years

The first few Chief Ministers of Karnataka belonged to the “dominant castes”, as delineated by the sociologist M.N. Srinivas. Devaraj Urs, who served as Chief Minister for two terms, changed the game and brought in new possibilities. Breaking the hold of the previously dominant Lingayat and Vokkaliga castes, he successfully united all the backward castes and minorities into a formidable front. After Urs, who belonged to the Congress, the Vokkaligas and Lingayats united to bring back the old order of the dominant castes, but the game had changed forever. Mr. Siddaramaiah revived Urs’ strategy by uniting the Dalits, Other Backward Classes and the minorities under the Kannada acronym of AHINDA. Mr. Siddaramaiah, who belongs to the third largest community in Karnataka, the Kurubas, also came to power under the Congress banner.

The BJP was not to be left behind. Its leader B.S. Yeddyurappa is the architect of Lingayat unity in the State. But the BJP is not resting on its Lingayat laurels which the Congress has anyway tried to wrest by giving the community the status of a separate religion, thus differentiating them from the Veerashaivas. The BJP is also eager to cast off its image as an upper caste party and reach out to the lower castes, especially the Dalits who constitute roughly 17% of the population. With this in mind, in a bid at ‘dinner diplomacy’, Mr. Modi asked all the party’s top-ranking elected representatives to eat a meal in a Dalit household and stay a night there.

👉A game of one-upmanship

In essence, this is the game of identity politics that the Indian voter has been playing for years. While many, especially the urban elite, may exhort the voter to look at the merits of individual candidates before voting, this game is a game of one-upmanship which, if played successfully, can thrust a caste or group of castes upwards, while successfully dislodging castes which had earlier enjoyed a superordinate place in government and business. This happened successfully with the Self-Respect movement in Tamil Nadu, wherein the Brahmins were dislodged from their exalted position in government occupations. The Dravidian movement has enabled entry of the lower castes into government jobs.

In Bihar, Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal united the large Yadav caste into a formidable political entity. Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United) then went on to unite the castes below the Yadavs and give them a political voice.

This democratic process of reaching down deeper and deeper into the body politic to bring up newer castes into the upper socio-economic and political echelons is a stupendous achievement of Indian democracy. The so-called identity politics that we have been witness to all these decades has to be recognised as a serious effort by the thus-far marginalised sections of society to bridge the gap between themselves and others, bringing in greater inclusion and equality. It is a major mobilising force in Indian politics. The Indian voter is adept at playing the game to his advantage.

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