BJP thumbs-up only politically correct

8220;The BJP supported the Constitutional amendment to provide reservations in higher educational institutions. But any attempt at divisiveness must be avoided. Social fabric of the society must not be damaged.8221;

Rajnath Singh, BJP president, May 2006 at party national executive

8220;The exclusion of institutions run by religious and linguistic minorities has created a situation where the burden of reservation would be borne only by the Government and non-minority bodies. This will defeat the purpose of making new quota provisions and put the minority institutions at a different pedestal.8221;

Murli Manohar Joshi, BJP leader, April 9, 2006

8220;Those who want to play politics in the name of reservation have neither gained public support nor been able to uplift the poor. Politicians should not divide the country in the name of social uplift.8221;

Navjot Singh Sidhu, BJP8217;s star campaigner and MP, May 19, 2006 after addressing protesting AIIMS students against OBC quotas in institutes of higher learning

8220;We can understand the feelings of the medical students and will try our best to get them justice.8221;

Sushma Swaraj, BJP leader, May 19, 2006

THE BJP8217;s social charter has always been a subtext, don8217;t compromise with upper caste interests. When BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad was 8220;reiterating the party8217;s commitment to equity8221; by welcoming the Supreme Court8217;s verdict on Thursday, he was only being politically correct. As a top leader later explained, the five-Bench verdict was a logical corollary of the nine-Bench verdict in the Indra Sahni case, mandating OBC quotas in government jobs.

The BJP didn8217;t take much time to formulate its response to the SC verdict. 8220;What else could we have done? The Congress had already welcomed the verdict. Will the upper castes go to OBC parties only because we8217;ve welcomed this? We had to be careful and nothing else,8221; a top BJP leader said. The party also raised issues like minority-run institutes to embarrass the Congress.

The party8217;s discomfiture on the issue is only understandable. For instance, MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra, who along with Sushma Swaraj and Navjot Sidhu had visited the agitating Youth for Equality students at AIIMS during the 2006 anti-quota agitation, couldn8217;t find a convincing reason, when asked to explain his visit. 8220;We were there to inquire about their well-being. It was my constituency. I agree with the spokesman8217;s views,8221; Malhotra said. Sidhu was then chided for 8220;crossing the line8221; when he expressed his solidarity with the anti-quota students.

For a party that produced the likes of Uma Bharati, Kalyan Singh, Vinay Katiyar during the Ayodhya agitation, the BJP has always displayed an upper caste bias. The party8217;s new poster boy, Narendra Modi, a Ghanchi Teli in North India rarely refers to his caste identity, preferring to let it melt into the larger 8220;Hindu identity8221;.

This has often led to intra-party tensions too. On women8217;s reservation Bill, for instance, Kalyan Singh, Santosh Gangwar, and earlier Uma Bharati, openly advocated a 8220;quota within quota philosophy,8221; only to be snubbed by a predominantly upper caste leadership.

No wonder then that Vinay Katiyar, an OBC Hindutva mascot, while welcoming the verdict, said there was a need to rethink the reservation policy in its present form. 8220;We must redraw the parameters. The poor among the upper castes too must be included.8221;