Opinion Express View on new government in Haryana: The change within

The BJP has replaced the old BJP government in Haryana by a new BJP government, with an election still to happen in election year at the Centre and in the state. In one sense, the swift and sudden Haryana change of guard, orchestrated from above, isn’t surprising. It could even be said to be part of a now-familiar BJP playbook — as, in recent years, in Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Gujarat. It speaks of the BJP’s will to be seen as a change agent even where it is the incumbent, and its unflagging efforts to sidestep and beat back anti-incumbency, often by its high command springing a surprise not just on the people but also on the BJP’s own. Manoeuvres such as the overnight replacement of Manohar Lal Khattar by Nayab Singh Saini as Haryana Chief Minister showcase a party at work and on the move, one that does not let victory blunt its appetite for victory. After all, alongside the accomplishments in Khattar’s almost 10-year tenure, were several protests and agitations — be it the Jat reservation stir in 2016, the farmers’ pushback in 2020-21, or the wrestlers’ protests in 2023, a year that also saw communal violence flare in Nuh. The BJP evidently calculates that a change of chief minister can help it project a new leaf before the Lok Sabha and assembly polls. But that may not be all there is to it.

Ever since the BJP’s winning spree began in 2014, it has tried to rearrange the conventional caste calculus in politics-so-far. In Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana, the party gambled on a chief minister from the non-dominant caste. This was as much a hard-headed strategy to consolidate the anti-dominant caste vote in its own favour, as it has been an ideological claim of the supremacy of Hindutva over caste. In a party with a high command more powerful than ever before, it could also be read as an overriding of the tyranny of the caste imperative by the prerogative of the leader. So it was that when the BJP won Haryana in 2014, Khattar, a Punjabi Khatri, a caste that falls under the upper caste umbrella, became the first non-Jat chief minister of the state in nearly two decades — it was seen as an upset, like the swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis, a Brahmin, in Maharashtra and of Raghubar Das, a non-tribal, in Jharkhand.

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The replacement of Khattar now by an OBC leader may be an acknowledgement that the experiment did not deliver as the BJP expected it to — incidentally, the same experiment was also seen to flounder for the party in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. This recognition in Haryana has not led the BJP to abandon its anti-dominant caste consolidation strategy, but to a recalibration of its tactic by putting forward an OBC face. This can be seen as a step towards addressing the traditional caste logic that the party has made a point of shunning so far. It is also a direct counter to the political opponent it disdains — Congress is talking up the OBC cause, and the need for the caste census, in its own Lok Sabha campaign. And, in between all these lines, another message, with Khattar getting a Lok Sabha ticket from Karnal. Clearly, the party has a plan for its former chief minister.