Dalit politics has been studied passionately by activists and academics from within and outside the fold. However, over the last decade, academic readings on Dalit politics have seemed at a loss to explain a new phenomenon: the movement of Dalits towards Hindutva in increasing numbers.
Many activists and academics began to rue the shift of Dalits towards the Bharatiya Janata Party, sensing this to be the end of ‘authentic’ Dalit politics of the Ambedkarite kind. Badri Narayan, however, documented how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sought extensive Dalit outreach.
In a new book, Maya, Modi, Azad: Dalit Politics in The Time of Hindutva, Sudha Pai, who has followed the Bahujan Samaj Party’s politics, and Sajjan Kumar, a leading researcher, offer rich insights into the churn in Dalit political behaviour through extensive field work in Uttar Pradesh, the State that has been instrumental in delivering two successive Lok Sabha majorities to the BJP.
Bahujan Samaj Party supporters at Manyawar Kanshiram Ji Smarak Sthal, in Lucknow. | Photo Credit: Rajeev Bhatt
Why the split in votes
Explaining the split in Dalit votes, the authors argue that the BSP, which has steeply declined over the last decade, succeeded in fulfilling its goal even as it stepped off the political radar. Its aim was a politics of instilling self-respect, a sense of dignity and self-confidence among Dalits.
However, the fulfilment, Pai says, did not lead to greater support for the BSP. Rather, the success cut short the BSP’s journey of electoral successes. Kumar, who first coined the term subaltern Hindutva, explains that a self-confident and assertive Dalit middle class became aspirational and got fragmented, questioning the necessity of supporting a single party and a single leader.
Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati at a rally in Badaun. | Photo Credit: PTI
Indeed, this is one of the finest insights of the book. One sign of self-confidence is always fragmentation, as an individual or a sub-group agency begins to question the need for a larger ‘authentic’ self. Just as a Brahmin can be a supporter of the BJP, the Congress or even a socialist, it goes without saying that a confident Dalit middle class will also articulate itself in fragments. In other words, the electoral debacle of the BSP also reflects the success of the BSP in providing ‘aatma-samman’ (self-respect) to Dalits who grew up seeing Kanshi Ram and Mayawati as their natural leaders.
The authors do not rue this shift, thus breaking with a body of scholarship that seeks out the ‘authentic’ Dalit as against a ‘non-authentic’ Dalit. The book argues that fragmentation is a pointer to increased agency among individual Dalits and SC sub-groups, thereby pointing to a deepening of democracy.
Aspects of Dalit empowerment
An ‘apolitical’ convention named ‘Dalits Cultural Resistance’ against the ruling double engine BJP governments at the Centre and the State, on the occasion of B.R. Ambedkar’s death anniversary, in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: Murali Kumar K.
This self-confidence also generates what to the non-discerning eye might seem a contradiction: the rise of Dalit electoral support for the BJP co-exists with vociferous protests in the context of atrocities. It is here that the authors deliver another powerful argument — the distinction between the electoral and political, or the pragmatic and normative. So, Dalits will both vote for the party that they think has a better chance of fulfilling their aspirations and protest when they sense discrimination. Both are related aspects of Dalit empowerment.
So, is this increase in Dalit support for the BJP only tactical? The answer to this constitutes a third original insight offered by the authors. They argue that the duration of electoral support shows whether it is merely tactical or has become ideological. For groups who alternate between one party and another from one election to another, the support is largely tactical. But if a particular sub-group of Dalits — like, say, the Valmikis — votes for the BJP in large numbers over two or three elections, the support can be construed to be an ideological one.
Amid an electoral decline of the BSP, one sees the rise of agitational Dalit politics by Chandrashekhar Azad in western U.P. But, even apart from Azad, there are autonomous sub-regional leaders among Dalits, like Shravan Kumar Nirala in eastern U.P. and Daddu Prasad in Bundelkhand, the latter two having quit the BSP after having contributed to it substantively. All of them are critical of one another even as they swear by Ambedkar.
Members of the BJP with farmers at a Kisan Samman Yojana programme in Sangareddy district. | Photo Credit: Mohd Arif
Pai and Kumar argue that apart from wider acceptance of Hindutva with the dominance of the BJP over the polity, welfare measures like Ujjwala scheme, direct benefits transfer, health insurance and Kisan Samman Yojana have made larger sections of Dalits vote for the BJP. This apart, a mix of extreme nationalism as also wider representation to multiple caste groups when it comes to seat distribution and appointment to key posts has helped the BJP. This is despite criticism from economists that the economy has not been in the pink of health.
The book not only explains an important socio-political churn of our times, but stays ahead of the curve at a time when many academic writings are unable to find new explanations for social changes, and end up lamenting the changes rather than explaining them.
BJP Dalit Morcha members distribute pictures of Ambedkar to mark his birth anniversary, in Sangareddy district. | Photo Credit: Mohd Arif
Maya, Modi, Azad: Dalit Politics in the Time of Hindutva; Sudha Pai, Sajjan Kumar, HarperCollins, ₹599.
The reviewer is a journalist who has covered the BSP and Hindutva for years.
