It seems that the only politics that works in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is the politics of identity. New Chief Ministers of these States try hard to show that they want to escape from it. They start off by employing the alternate politics of development, but ultimately fall back on tried and tested identity politics to remain in power. In Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav was seen as having taken power through the politics of identity. When Nitish Kumar defeated him in 2005 by an absolute majority to become the Chief Minister, it was considered to be the end of politics based on identity, and the beginning of politics based on governance through the spread of development, such as bijli, sadak, pani . Five years later, Nitish Kumar's re-election was based on a strategic blending of both — he, too, discovered that like the vampire in the Vikram-Betal stories, there is no beating identity politics. Despite the all-encompassing development that Bihar has seen, the desire for a reinforcement of identity remains a strong force in the collective and individual lives of the different communities of that State.
Looking at election discourse
In the recent Assembly elections in U.P, opposing former Chief Minister Mayawati's identity-based politics was top on the election agenda of both the Congress party's Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, the young Samajwadi Party (SP) leader and now Chief Minister. Both systematically campaigned against the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)'s politics of statues and caste conferences. Both spoke the language of the politics of development. As in Bihar, after Ms Mayawati's defeat, everyone pronounced the end of identity politics in Uttar Pradesh.
However, a critical analysis of the SP's election discourse makes it clear that the politics of identity was very much present under the guise of development politics, and which came up in two ways — by invoking the religious identity of Muslims, and addressing the caste identity of Hindu voters, both under the guise of talking about development.
The two months that Akhilesh Yadav's government has been in office have also shown that the politics of identity is alive and well. And it is most apparent in the way names of heroes and icons have re-emerged in the political discourse.
The most important schemes launched by Ms Mayawati for the benefit of Dalits were named after Ambedkar, the greatest Dalit icon. Akhilesh Yadav, after coming to power, launched a scheme, supposedly based on socialism, called the “Lohia Samagra Gram Vikas Yojana” which replaced the BSP's “Ambedkar Gram Sabha Vikas Yojana.”
Under the new scheme, Mr. Yadav sanctioned Rs.250 crore for creating infrastructure in over 1,000 villages with a population of over 250, which are predominantly inhabited by the Most Backward Classes. The “Ambedkar Gram Sabha Vikas Yojana,” on the other hand, was targeted mainly at predominantly Dalit villages.
The subtext here is that Lohia was an OBC. In its budget of 2012-13, the government has initiated another programme in the name of the socialist leader — the “Nalkoop Nirmaan Yojana” to supply water to villages. In the same vein, the SP government has also declared plans for memorials of Karpoori Thakur, an eminent socialist leader of neighbouring Bihar, who, like Lohia, was OBC.
The SP has already turned Lohia into an OBC icon; it now wants to do the same with Karpoori. Thus the SP's strategy of using caste icons to build vote banks is no different from Ms Mayawati's. Only the target audience — the OBCs and MBCs — is different.
Extensions of agendas
The new government has also scrapped all the projects named after Dalit icons like Ambedkar, Kanshiram and Savitribai Phule and replaced them with other projects. The declaration of the construction of the “Janeshwar Mishra” park spread over 500 acres and the establishment of the “Jaiprakash Narayan International Centre” in Lucknow, which was also done recently, may be understood as an extension of a similar political agenda. It is interesting to note that there is no Dalit symbol or icon among the names of the new programmes declared by the SP government.
During her reign in Uttar Pradesh, Ms Mayawati erected statues of Jhalkari Bai and Uda Devi, Dalit heroes of the 1857 rebellion, in several cities and towns in an attempt at inverting the mainstream nationalist history that glorified Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, who had been put on a pedestal by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The new government is now making attempts to resurrect the name of the Jhansi queen by launching the Rani Lakshmibai Pension Scheme for below poverty line women. Female heads of poor families would be given a pension of Rs.400 and it is claimed that the scheme will benefit 51 per cent of women belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
In the popular telling of the Jhansi story, Jhalkari Bai was Rani Lakshmibai's maid. In Dalit literature, she was more dedicated to the nation than Lakshmibai, and braver and more intelligent than her. She bore an uncanny resemblance to the queen and gave her intelligent advice from time to time. When Lakshmibai fled from the fort with her son strapped to her back after the British surrounded the fort, Jhalkari Bai confronted them bravely and kept them confused about her real identity for a considerable period of time.
While Ms Mayawati tried to rally Dalit identity by resurrecting memories of Jhalkari Bai, Akhilesh Yadav, by reviving the memories of Rani Lakshmibai, is on the one hand trying to destroy the identity built up by Ms Mayawati's politics and on the other, trying to rally the identity of non-Dalits who voted for him in this election.
Both are aimed at consolidating social categories and pitting them against one another, using government development schemes to build icons of caste identity, and from there, to identify certain castes with a certain political party — enough to keep the vicious circle of party, caste and identity spinning in the electoral market.
(Badri Narayan is Professor at G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. His recent book is The Making of the Dalit Public in North India, Oxford University Press, 2011.)
