Democracy demands engagement with larger classes - Mahesh Rangarajan

Business Standard

Q&A: Mahesh Rangarajan, University of Delhi


'Democracy demands engagement with larger classes'

Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi August 07, 2011, 0:33 IST

Mahesh Rangarajan, professor of Modern Indian History, University of Delhi, historian and political analyst tells Aditi Phadnis what the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been looking at in its new identity.

Hindutva has tried to subsume caste, but has failed. Is this a valid proposition?
The BJP has evolved and is not static. There has been willingness to experiment and go beyond the older priestly and mercantile base. This was evident in the rise of a second-rung leadership in north, west and central India in the late eighties. Its results took time to manifest themselves.

But the old guard fought back. This will explain the turmoil in the UP unit, which eventually cost it dear. Where the older social order is less brittle, there has been a shift at the apex, as was in Bhopal or Gandhinagar.

Can you give an instance where caste has dominated the Hindutva appeal?
One of the most damaging defeats sustained by the party was in the winter of 1993. Short-lived as it was, the alliance of Mulayam and Kanshi Ram inflicted severe damage to what had looked an unstoppable project and an invincible force. It never won a majority on its own ever again in UP.

What kind of caste politics has the BJP played ?
The formation had a tough time, since its instincts were against the Mandal process but it could not stand aside from it. And it is no coincidence that most of the leaders from these sections were those who, in Uma Bharati’s words, stood for “both Mandal and Kamandal”. But the balance came unstuck not on these issues, but on how far the party could be a vehicle for ordered social change.

Since the eighties and early nineties, ‘social engineering’ has ceased to hold much appeal. Part of the issue is the age-based hierarchy of the parent body. The Sangh seems oblivious of the larger changes in the body politic. No wonder it has been over taken by Mandal and Dalit-based parties in the Ganga valley.

What we have seen in Karnataka — the power struggle and the yielding to a caste that poses no threat to the Lingayats — is a new experiment in a caste compact for the BJP. So will the Lingayats now always be the base of the BJP?
Nobody can use the words ‘forever’ or ‘always’ with any sense of confidence. After all Virashaivism was in its origins as an alternative to the Brahmanic-centered view of faith. In the past, figures like S R Bommai were Virashaiva Lingayats prominent in the Janata Dal.

But it is true that the spread of the BJP in 20 years owed a lot to the Lingayat alienation from the two then dominant formations.

Today, the significance of figures like Shobha Karandlaje and Sadananda Gowda show the BJP trying to re-create an alliance of the two dominant communities. The mosaic keeps shifting and at this juncture the party has captured the changes in its own make up. The rest hinges on how far it manages the changing kaleidoscope.

Karnataka is the first state in the south where the party broke through. Now it is looking less like a beachhead and more like quicksand. Rapid growth, especially in mining and real estate, has been the undoing of the party. It was unable to manage its own ranks. Now, the result is survival in power but an erosion of the idea that it is a distinct and different kind of force.

Here, caste-based mobilisation has proved to be a better glue for power than Hindutva. But it may prove costly at a pan-Indian level.

The way the BJP is organised, can chief ministers decide what caste compact will be the state-wise base for the BJP ?
The chief ministers are the key elements in the party that have come to the fore over the last decade. This is, especially, the case with states where it has been able to retain power. In central India, the role of the government in purchasing grain at good support price has taken on from where the earlier Congress governments left off. The high growth Gujarat model builds on the Chimanbhai period.

But the caste-community mosaic is generally to be assessed at the state level. In Gujarat for instance, the Narmada waters played a key role in pastoral groups who got water for their herds looking with favor at the ruling party. But this is an unusual state as the older dominant groups are in considerable disarray as the state leadership is largely personality-centered.

So, there is variation across the states. Whether this will be a lasting experiment is to be seen. In the past the only all-India party able to accommodate diverse kinds of leaders from different states at one time was the Congress. Will BJP be able to play a similar and lasting role? This is what it has to ask itself.

How did the NDA governments effect a change?
There was no roll back on Mandal. Prodded by its Tamil ally, J Jayalalitha, it even agreed to amend the Ninth Schedule to safeguard reservations over 50 per cent.

Now this ceiling was a sine qua non for the days of the party’s ascendancy under L K Advani. But the reality of coalition politics triumphed. Today, there is quiet burial of the old platform.

Conversely, the shrinkage of the NDA post-Gujarat in 2003-04 was rapid. It had to do with more than communalism. Many of the anti-Congress Mandal and Dalit leaderships decided they had a better deal with the Congress. This happened faster than the BJP had ever anticipated.

So, the NDA period was in a step forward one step back ward phase. Power came faster than the BJP had grown. In reaching out, it had to accommodate other strands of opinion. In the long-run, it own worldview was diluted despite itself.

Has caste overwhelmed Hindutva?
This question presupposes that Hindutva can have or will transcend caste. But, in its basic agenda, it is not only political but also social. The nature of the leadership of the Sangh has to be taken into account as it arose in western India as much in response to assertion of peasant and so called lower castes as to any external challenge.

But democracy, not just universal suffrage, demands engagement with larger classes and communities. In doing so, it faces dilemmas and problems. Two decades of Mandal and para Mandal politics have not derailed Hindutva, but they have forced it to reconfigure itself.

This was inevitable.
Today, the new kind of alliances the BJP has entered into will have a dynamic of their own. These could be in politics, say with Nitish Kumar or in society via internal accommodation.

My own sense is that Dalit and also adivasi assertion will be the big challenge over the next quarter century. Not just for the BJP but for the larger national parties. How they channelise these aspirations will be central to success or failure.