Two senior OBC ministers’ departure from the Yogi Adityanath government along with several MLAs on Tuesday and Wednesday has rattled the BJP, which fears a possible revival of Mandal politics in the run-up to the crucial Uttar Pradesh elections.
The politics of caste identity — based on reservation benefits and a quest for social justice in other forms — that “Mandal” represents had for decades held at bay the BJP’s Ram temple-fuelled “kamandal” politics across the Hindi heartland.
Mandal politics has, however, appeared to take a back seat since 2014 with one polarising campaign after another lifting Narendra Modi to power at the Centre and Yogi Adityanath in Lucknow.
BJP strategists now fear that this week’s developments might reignite a consolidation of the backward castes that the party can’t afford.
Both the ministers who resigned — Swami Prasad Maurya and Dara Singh Chauhan — have accused the Adityanath government of being indifferent to backward castes and Dalits. Both are from the non-Yadav OBC sections that are widely believed to have powered the BJP’s victory in the last Assembly polls of 2017.
Sources said a meeting at the BJP headquarters in Delhi was discussing the possibility of fielding Adityanath from Ayodhya to sharpen the Hindutva pitch and blunt the effects of Maurya’s resignation when news came of Chauhan’s exit.
At least five party MLAs — four OBCs and a Dalit — too have quit. Barring one who has joined the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the rest — as well as Maurya and Chauhan — are believed to be in touch with the Samajwadi Party.
The backlash from the backward leaders is being blamed on the party central leadership, which has consistently shut out any complaints from disgruntled state leaders against Adityanath’s highhanded style of functioning.
Prime Minister Modi has publicly endorsed Adityanath’s leadership several times, sending a message to the critics to shut up and fall in line.
“This attitude has angered not only the backward and Dalit representatives in the Yogi government but also many upper caste leaders,” a party MP said, adding that the BJP was vertically split for and against Adityanath.
Adityanath’s government stands accused of using the BJP’s Hindutva narrative not only to target Muslims but also to override the aspirational politics of the no-longer-silent backward and Dalit communities.
Careful positioning by the principal challenger, Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, has encouraged the rebellion in the BJP.
Akhilesh has stitched together an umbrella coalition of smaller parties that have pockets of influence among the backward and most backward castes, highlighting his willingness to give representation to various marginal sections.
Akhilesh and father Mulayam Singh Yadav have in the past been accused of frittering away the gains of Mandal by allowing Yadav dominance over the OBC bloc, thus driving the other backward groups into the arms of Modi’s BJP.
Now Akhilesh has recast his politics and is trying woo the estranged non-Yadav backward groups, much as the BJP had done in 2017.
Om Prakash Rajbhar, who heads the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party and represents the aspirations of the most backward Rajbhar caste, had played a key role in the BJP’s rainbow coalition of 2017. He has now joined hands with Akhilesh.
“Modiji and Yogiji have been trying to polarise voters on religious lines while Akhilesh has countered it with caste,” a minister in Lucknow said.
Akhilesh has called for a caste enumeration, and for reservations proportional to each sub-group’s population, as an answer to the Modi government’s grant of quota benefits to the poor among the upper castes.
The caste challenge before the BJP comes not just from the backwards but also from its traditional support base of Brahmins, who are furious at what they see as Adityanath’s pro-Thakur bias.
BJP chief J.P. Nadda recently formed a committee of Brahmin MPs, MLAs and other functionaries to run a campaign to remove the “misconceptions” being spread by political rivals.
