Lessons of 1998

The same can be said about the BJP’s principal opponents. The failure of the erstwhile United Front’s constituents to stem the BJP tide in their respective fiefdoms in North India proves caste alone cannot bring power.

Caste has always played a role in Indian politics and the political assertion of lower caste groups against Brahminical hegemony had started in the South with the Dravidian movement at the beginning of this century. In the Indo-Gangetic plains, the mobilisation ofagrarian castes started only in the mid-’70s.

The politics of Mandal and Kamandal (Hindutva) during the early ’90s represented the growth of horizontal soldarity between castes. By mid-’90s limitations of both community and caste-based political mobilisations were becoming obvious. The Mandal forces started disintegrating because an exclusive emphasis on castes without a concomitant socio-economic agenda could not keep all aspirants of power happy and together.

The break-up of the Janata Dal in Uttar Pradesh, with Mulayam Singh Yadav branching off to float his Samajwadi Party was the beginning. The break-up of the SP-BSP coalition in Uttar Pradesh and the birth of the Samata Party in Bihar followed.

Whatever remained of the Janata Dal started withering away after 1996 first in Karnataka with the expulsion of Ramakrishna Hegde and then with the split between the followers of Laloo Yadav and Sharad Yadav in Bihar. The JD split in Orissa was a logical sequel.

Parallel to this, signs of confusionsurfaced among the Hindutva forces, though much less in magnitude. Shankersinh Vaghela split the BJP in Gujarat. In UP the party almost came to a split when the followers of current Chief Minister Kalyan Singh opposed the central leadership’s policy of appeasing BSP leader Mayawati. Dissidence within the disciplined Hindutva party raised its head in others States such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

This was not unexpected. For communalism, like casteism, is not the reflection of underlying ethnic structures. Rather, it is generated within a competitive socio-economic context as the instrument of political intervention aimed at a vertical multi-class solidarity as a safe substitute for horizontal class solidarity. Its political project is to subordinate emerging lower class consciousness by continuous upper class rule. So rebellion among neglected sections within is just natural.

At a time when the rigidity of the ideology was creating problems within, dawned the realisation that power does notcome by religion alone. This resulted in the search for seemingly incongruous, but politically possible, alliances. The alliance between the AIADMK, one of the heirs to the legacy of Pariyar’s Self-Respect Movement legacy and the BJP, a party of Aryan nationalism is a case in point. The BJP’s two short-lived marriages with Kanshi Ram’s Bahujan Samaj Party in UP and the bonhomie between "committed"socialists like George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar of the Samata Party and the BJP are the result of this realisation.

On the face of it, the 1998 verdict may appear to favour the BJP and its allies. But the BJP on its own has bagged only 177 seats in Lok Sabha and the rest being made up by the AIADMK alliance (27), Samata Party (12), Shiromani Akali Dal (8), Trinamool Congress (seven) and others. The result, therefore, cannot be taken as a success of the BJP’s communal mobilisation even though the party has broken new ground in the South and the East.

Equally significant, the BJP has not been able to hold on toits past gains in States like Rajasthan and Maharashtra which are ruled by it. In Bihar its marginal gains are primarily because of the division among anti-BJP votes after Laloo Yadav broke away from the United Front to launch his own Rashtriya Janata Dal. If and when the social justice forces regroup, the BJP would be back to square one.

In Uttar Pradesh it has increased its tally from 54 to 57 and its vote share has, for the first time, crossed the 35 per cent barrier. But the BJP’s electoral advantage there rests on the continued fight between the leaders of the SP and the BSP. The SP, too, increased its seats and vote share in UP this time. And a slight shift in the alignment of forces could upset the BJP applecart.

This points to the fact that politicians can’t live by one religion — or caste — alone. So they are forced to seek support outside to survive. The message is ally or perish. Nothing illustrates this more than the BSP’s performance in UP this time.

In the two bastions of pro-Mandalconsolidation, power has already slipped out of Mulayam’s hands in UP and Laloo is waging a battle for survival in Bihar. And there’s an inherent problem in whichever alliance they form.

While communalism has mostly remained an upper caste phenomenon and the BJP is replacing the Congress as the party of ruling establishment, the architects of caste mobilisation are finding it difficult to keep their houses in order.

The increasing awareness of their bargaining power will make their coalitions more fragile because each group would insist on its share of the cake and threaten to walk out if the demands are not conceded. This has happened in Uttar Pradesh where the Dalits under the BSP are at loggerheads with both Mulayam Singh Yadav’s MY (Muslim Yadav coalition) and the BJP.

The Kurmis and Koeries in Bihar joined hands with the BJP in Bihar primarily against excessive Yadavisation of administration by Laloo Prasad. In Uttar Pradesh, too, a good slice of Kurmis and non-Yadav OBCs are gravitating towardsthe BJP for want of an alternative.

This has forced the so-called champions of downtrodden castes to lean towards the sections of the upper castes. Both Mulayam and Laloo have been wooing the socially and politically influential Rajputs to compensate for the damage done to them by the fragmentation of their OBC and Dalit supporters.

While Election ’98 have proved that the route to power is widening the base through alliances though it means a lot of compromises. The BJP has done it nationally, and the Congress locally in Maharashtra. The signal is clear for others as well.