“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are”. These words of German poet Bertolt Brecht have always struck me as a socio-political analyst. In the context of the recent Uttar Pradesh assembly election results, they become more relevant. Why did a larger section of Dalits vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? This question seems to trouble many political observers and a section of the public. It surprised a section of the metropolitan intelligentsia, who want to see reflections of their ideology and aspirations in the marginalised.
The UP election campaign can be considered as a text to explore this question. While caste, religion, women, youth appeared as overt categories of mobilisation by various political parties, an agenda for the poor did not come up in the political discourse. It is interesting to observe that the BJP emphasised the welfare of the poor (“garib kalyan”) as one of the important components of its electoral campaigning strategy. The BJP’s UP election in-charge, Dharmendra Pradhan, emphasised this agenda from his earliest meetings. When Narendra Modi started his rallies, his core argument was that BJP had delivered on development with special emphasis on social welfare schemes such as Ujjwala Yojana, PM Awas Yojana, free ration, etc. So, Dalits and marginals appeared in their discourse in two ways, as labharthi (beneficiaries) and in the campaign around the poor. The BJP tried to see Dalits and marginal communities not through caste but with the tinge of economic class. They successfully drew a bigger circle through the politics of governance and development, unlike political parties that approached these communities through ideas of identity politics.
Interestingly, the welfare of the poor, the core of the liberal and socialist discourse in Indian electoral politics, is being incorporated by the BJP in its language of developmental politics through ideas of garib kalyan and labharthi. Through its connection with these beneficiaries, the BJP tried to create a new identity, that of a development-aspirant community, named recently as vikas yoddha by PM Narendra Modi. The process of this shift became quite clear when Modi said in one of his interviews that if showing concern for the poor and marginals may be called as socialist concern, “I am a socialist in that sense”.
It must be mentioned here that whatever shifts we observe among Dalits and marginals’ political choice is not the outcome of election campaigns alone, but a result of the long-term developmental strategies adopted and delivered by the BJP to include these communities in their electoral base. The calculated social engineering-based representation worked in BJP’s favour, but the new social chemistry formed by the party through its governance strategies dented various identity-based mobilisations too.
BJP’s Hindutva politics has tried to approach vulnerable communities not only through the state-led developmental initiatives. It has benefited from the ground prepared by the Sangh Parivar and its organisations. Since many decades, the Sangh has been working among Dalits and marginal communities by imparting education, opening hospitals, organising health camps, strengthening entrepreneurship. In the Vidya Bharti-inspired chain of schools, the students from the Dalit and marginal communities are growing day by day. The Sangh is also present among these communities through its various chains of seva hospitals. Hindutva politics has approached these communities in symbolic as well as in substantial ways — by providing dignity in the Hindutva framework and also by effective delivery of various social welfare schemes.
It is true that humans can’t be free from identities but sometimes new, broader identities become more effective than conventional ones. In this election, the Hindutva identity and the labharthi identity worked together to cultivate a shift in the political choice of Dalits and marginals. How the social projects initiated by the state or by the social movements work in mobilising people in an electoral democracy becomes clear from the statement of a youth from a marginal community: “Jo hamari madad karega, hum uski madad karenge (Whoever will help us, we will help them)”. That sums up a new shift in our electoral democracy. It also shows the growing agency of the marginal.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2022 under the title ‘Drawing a bigger circle’. The writer is professor at the G B Pant Social Science Institute
