Once a Raja

The leaders of the Indian National Congress,they hasten to assure us,stand for a politics that transcends the divides of caste and religion that have been so central to elections and electioneering in north India for two decades now. That narrative is pushed in Uttar Pradesh in particular,as the Congress struggles to rebuild there. So why is it that the readers of this newspaper were privileged to feast their eyes on a photograph of another Congress general secretary,former Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijay Singh,resplendent in a saffron turban at the second All India Kshatriya Federation conference in Mumbai on Sunday? Many other Congressmen followed Singhs lead there,including Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan.

Indeed,this is a major part of Singhs political calculations: he has painstakingly built for himself a caste-based network of support. Follow the headlines: recently he has flown to Andhra to inaugurate a Kshatriya Kalyanamandapam; spoken on Rana Prataps birthday to a crowd of Kshatriyas in Lucknow; and listened as Shivraj Singh Chouhan,now CM of MP,reminded a similar crowd in Bhopal of favours done when he had been out of power,and Singh in.

Singh would explain,no doubt,as he did to one of these crowds that a Raja is not born from the womb of the mother but from the ballot box. Yet it seems clear that in this,too,Singh has chosen to defy the currents of change. In much of India,caste mobilisation has served to democratise our politics. But there is something disquieting in seeing it used for exactly the opposite: to maintain the networks of obvious and hidden power which were supposed to be dissolved by that mobilisation. Singhs involvement in this is long-term,and goes beyond merely joyfully embracing community. Like Amar Singhs,his attempt to create a backward-looking political constituency should not be embraced.