Mandal v/s Kamandal, the Sequel

In the 90’s, after VP Singh had opened the Pandora’s box of reservation (Mandal), it set off another political wave – Ayodhya, Hindutva, or what came to be called Kamandal (the brass vessel to carry water, carried by sadhus).

 

Today, after almost a decade of rule of Kamandal, we seem to have a revival of Mandal again, writes Raghu S Jaitley. As leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi criticized the budget saying:

“The government of being of the forward castes, by the forward castes and for the forward castes.”

The Opposition is right in demanding that the census be conducted, but they also insist on a caste-based census. And then the Supreme Court passed a verdict:

“permitting sub-classification for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in reservations by state governments. This will allow state governments to reserve seats for specific sub-groups within the quotas that are aimed at SC and ST communities based on the relative deprivation of those sub-groups.”

Jaitely muses:

“Reservations, quotas, caste census, Ambedkar, Lohia, Mandal - they are all back in the mix of political issues at the moment.”

 

Going back to the 90’s, Jaitley says there were 2 opposing political pulls since then – Mandal, which focussed on identifying people by castes and sub-castes and then trying to deliver to specific subgroups v/s Kamandal (“consolidation of the Hindu identity largely on the Hindutva plank”).

 

Modi and the BJP won over the last decade:

“(The) cohering forces of identity consolidation (were) stronger than the natural, centrifugal force of identity division.”

But now, as shown in the 2024 elections, the question has emerged:

“Has the BJP maxed out on this?”

 

All this while, when not in power (or not in power for long), the BJP had a lot of things they could criticize that resonated with many:

“Everything from dynasty politics, secularism, minority appeasement, corruption, lack of accountability, poor execution.”

But now:

“But ten years of being in power, especially the very personalised way that he has governed has blunted his outsider, challenger persona.”

Many of the topics that enthused its supporters are now a done deal – from Ayodhya to the repeal of Article 370.

“Once the majority is awake, how do you send it back to sleep for it to be roused again? The problem of getting a large part of your majoritarian consolidation agenda done is what do you do after that?”

 

This is where and why the opposition senses an opportunity. If the BJP is out of ideas to whip up its supporters, perhaps other questions will be heard and work to the opposition’s advantage:

“Is the economic pie growing well and is it getting distributed equitably among those who joined this monolith?”

If enough of the BJP supporters feel the answer to that is No, then they could switch allegiance… to caste based politics. That would help the opposition in two ways – (1) it breaks up the BJP’s monolithic vote bank; and (2) it revives the caste based vote bank, which mostly lies with the opposition.

 

Jaitley feels that:

“The deck is stacked against the forces of consolidation.”

And we need to be careful:

“Caste census can be a useful policy tool in the right hands. But this reductionist idea of delivering social justice through its arithmetic runs the risk of the Balkanisation of all political formations into smaller caste-based interests.”