Poll win on sprawling social base, BJP walks tightrope on caste

Even as Union minister JP Nadda and UP Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak cordially engaged anti-reservation agitators Harsh Dubey, Ran Bahadur Singh Chauhan and Mrityunjay Pathak, ministers and senior leaders of the BJP and NDA from reserved categories made it clear that reservation was inviolate.

Any demand for its removal is divisive, said Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale. Speaking to The Indian Express, The RPI (Athawale) leader, an NDA ally of the BJP, said that he was open to each caste getting its share of reservation as per its population when the data of the ongoing Census enumerating caste is out.

“They should convey what they want, and not demand that others lose what they deserve in a caste-ridden society,” Athawale said of the protesters. He added that there should be talk of ending the caste system rather than ending reservation – which was something that the constitution has provided for.

Athawale isn’t alone. There is clarity among leaders from the reserved categories within the BJP that reservation should continue – something that the government and the RSS have also said repeatedly over the years.

Asked about the anti-reservation movement, Uttar Pradesh OBC Welfare Minister Narendra Kashyap, who was also the BJP’s state OBC Morcha president, told The Indian Express: “The movement is not in sync with the constitutional boundaries (sanvaidhanik paridhi)”.

Kashyap, who has also been UP OBC morcha president said that OBCs got reservation after a delay of 40 years, and two commissions of enquiry were set up for it to become a reality.

“Ye koi achanak mil jaane waala prasaad nahin tha (These were not sweets that were suddenly offered to them),” he said, adding that reservation was not a poverty alleviation measure. “As for the fear that the rich may benefit from it, there is creamy layer exclusion among OBCs. As a minister, I hold a constitutional post and my children cannot get reservation,” Kashyap said, adding that the agitators were either unaware of this or were looking for ways to disturb the Narendra Modi government when they were talking of quotas on economic grounds.

“It is their constitutional right to express what they wish to, but they should realise that the well-off OBCs do not get reservation anyway,” he underlined. Kashyap added that Jawaharlal Nehru as PM should have given reservation as early as 1952, but it came after much delay.

Talking to The Indian Express, former BJP OBC Morcha president K Laxman said, “Till disparity prevails, both social and financial, reservation will have to stay.”

BJP’s long arc on caste

The discourse on caste within the BJP comes when the party, once derisively called a “Bania-Brahmin party”, has over the last few decades imprinted itself on a much larger, sprawling social base. The experiment began when KN Govindacharya started an outreach into non-Yadav groups in north India once the BJP became a player in politics. Some castes like the Lodhs and the Kurmis began veering towards the BJP.

However, the floodgates were opened with the rise of Narendra Modi, himself an OBC, when the party made a massive symbolic outreach to OBCs, SCs and STs. After the BJP lost Bihar in 2015 when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat suggested a review of reservation, the entire Sangh Parivar began to repeatedly underline the sanctity of quotas.

The opposition latched on to caste just before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, saying that BJP wanted a tally of “400-paar” (400-plus seats) to end reservation and change the constitution. Party leaders interpreted the loss of 63 seats in the election – with significant dents in Maharashtra and UP – as a consequence of the campaign making an impact during the polls.

After this the Modi government 3.0 announced that caste would be enumerated in the coming census – this was demanded by the Congress before the Lok Sabha polls – and brought the UGC equity regulations.

At the 100th year function of the RSS in Nagpur, former President Ram Nath Kovind said that Atal Bihari Vajpayee had as Prime Minister underlined that his government would work on the basis of Dr Ambedkar’s constitution, and thus the BJP could be called “Ambedkarwadi”. He added that Vajpayee had averred that the Bhimsmriti (constitution) rather than the Manu Smriti was the “guide” for the government.

However, with the UGC equity regulation leading to a backlash and a Supreme Court stay, the government became cautious, lest the BJP should alienate the “upper castes” – its most committed voters north of the Vindhyas since about 1990. The Bankipur assembly election loss in a constituency with a significant “upper caste” population has made the party more cautious.

Poll-bound UP, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats and a 20% “upper caste” population, has also been a hub of the Mandal movement, with many non-Yadav OBC castes with the BJP or the NDA over the last decade.

The “upper castes” have till now seen the BJP as their party, preferring it over the Congress for a decade-and-a-half, but there are signs of wariness. Reservation Hatao Andolan leader Harsh Dubey told The Indian Express that Brajesh Pathak had assured them that he would make them meet one among PM Modi, Amit Shah and JP Nadda within two working days, adding that they had two meetings on consecutive days with Nadda, one lasting three hours and the other two hours.

Dubey added that Nadda assured them that some significant measures would be announced on September 7 and that they would have a joint presser for the same.

Two other BJP leaders from the reserved category – Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying and Panchayati Raj SP Singh Baghhel and former national spokesperson Bijay Sonkar Shastri – were less forthcoming when contacted.

“Policy makers will make their views clear on this issue,” Baghel said. Shastri on his part said, “We have freedom of speech. People are expressing their views. Whatever will happen will happen constitutionally alone.”