CAPITAL LETTER. Setback to BJP’ social inclusion project

The BJP’s social inclusion project that led to a vast number of Dalits gravitating towards the party in the 2014 elections has been severely damaged by a series of recent incidents -- with a body blow having just been delivered by UP leader Dayashankar Singh who compared Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati to a prostitute.

“Even a prostitute, when she enters into a contract with a man, sticks to the contract. But former UP CM Mayawati does not follow any such rules when she sells her party tickets. If she has sold it for ₹ 1 crore and she gets another contender who is ready to pay ₹2 crore, she would give it to him,” said Dayashankar Singh, a Vice- President of the BJP.

The BJP has since reacted with alacrity, rushing to expel the UP leader while an ashen-faced finance minister Arun Jaitley tendered an apology to a visibly upset Mayawati in the Rajya Sabha.

But the damage has been done.

The repercussions of an obnoxious personal attack on Mayawati, who is not just a highly-skilled politician but is a sort of a metaphor for Dalit emancipation, are already being felt in battleground UP, a State going to polls early next year.

A day after politicians of all hues vied with each other to stand in solidarity with Mayawati, outraged BSP cadre in Lucknow’s busiest business district, Hazratganj, protested alongside the Congress against the BJP’s “anti-woman”, “anti-Dalit” agenda. The BSP’s campaign has suddenly picked up after seeming dormant, in the wake of an aggressive BJP and party President Amit Shah who has been energetically travelling across the state to prepare the party organisation for the polls.

The Congress and the BSP’s political manoeuvres are aimed at establishing that Dayashankar Singh’s description of Mayawati is not an aberration.

These parties argue that Dayashankar Singh’s assertions vis-a-vis Mayawati are merely a chance exposure of what the majority in the BJP actually believe. That the core of the BJP is essentially coloured by an upper caste, male and anti-Dalit mindset.

Events elsewhere in the country only serve to support these claims. In Gujarat, the BJP Government is struggling to quell widespread unrest triggered by the shocking impunity with which some self-styled gau-rakshaks (cow-protectors) beat up four partially-stripped Dalit youths at Una town in Gir-Somnath district on July 11. These young men were reportedly in the business of skinning dead animals for leather-processing units.

A video of this outrageous incident has since gone viral, leading to angry Dalit protestors defiantly dumping animal carcasses in front of government offices in Gondal and Surendranagar.

Dalit activists have declared that their community will stop lifting dead cows and let the Shiv Sainiks and self-proclaimed cow-protectors handle this work that they have been traditionally and culturally forced to undertake.

Around the same time, spontaneous protests erupted in Mumbai over the demolition of Ambedkar Bhawan where BR Ambedkar used to run a printing press. Once again, a number of political parties, including the BJP’s ally Shiv Sena, participated in a massive protest march in Mumbai on July 19 against the demolition of the historic building associated with Ambedkar.

The Dalit unrest felt across Maharashtra, Gujarat and now Uttar Pradesh throws a spanner in the works of generations of the BJP and RSS strategists who have been working towards attracting the Bahujan Samaj towards the Hindutva fold.

The BJP, the political wing of the RSS, successfully transited from the socially restrictive category of a Brahmin-Bania party in the 1990s to accommodate a number of OBC groups who were attracted by the Hindutva appeal of leaders such as Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharati, Vinay Katiyar, et al . All of these leaders represented OBC caste groups besides being Hindutva icons during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

But for the large part of the 1990s as well as the first decade of this millennium, the Bahujans, a term coined for the Dalits by the iconic founder of the BSP Kanshiram, largely supported the BSP and the Congress in the northern parts of the country.

However, according to Jyoti Mishra, et al of Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), the BJP emerged as a major recipient of Dalit votes in 2014 with its vote share among the community increasing by as many as 12 percentage points.

The Congress’ share declined by eight percentage points. Even the BSP, which has consistently cornered around one-fifth of the Dalit vote, showed a decline of six percentage points in 2014 as compared to 2009 general elections.

Of the total 84 parliamentary constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes, the BJP won 40 seats which was 28 more than the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The BSP failed to secure a single seat in these reserved constituencies.

The BJP has since continued its efforts to replace the Congress by attempting to acquire a more socially inclusive organisational shape. In the recent Cabinet reshuffle, for instance, five of the total 19 new entrants were from different Dalit communities.

Five new ministers inducted into the Cabinet are Dalit while three more are from different categories of OBCs, there is a Tribal entrant and a Muslim in the number of new inductees.

But social expansion is bound to be obstructed if the BJP allows its cadre to mistake its parliamentary majority for a license to impose ideological purity.

It is time that the ruling party understands that not everyone in India is averse to consuming beef and that there are women, like Mayawati, who will not conform to the Sangh Parivar’s vision of the Bharatiya Naari .

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