Perils of caste census: BJP buckles under Yadavs’ pressure
Kuldip Nayar
THE RSS, with a repulsive and parochial ideology, has taken the BJP to task for having supported the proposal to have caste enumeration in the 2011 census. The party has once again been caught on the wrong foot to placate the Yadav opinion. It has gone to farthest limit to please them in the past.
Had there been no Mandal, there would have been no kamandal. Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee made the observation after returning from Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1990. He had gone to the President to give a letter on the withdrawal of support to the V.P. Singh government.
The BJP was furious over the stoppage of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra at Samastipur in Bihar. Lalu Prasad Yadav, then the state chief minister, was V.P. Singh’s ally. It was apparent that Lalu Yadav had not acted on his own, but at V.P. Singh’s instance.
The dilemma before the BJP was that if it did not proceed with the yatra to expand the base among the Hindus, it would further lose the support that the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations had cost it among the Dalits. V.P. Singh was the villain of the piece in the eyes of the party because he had accepted the report on reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBC).
The country saw the fall of the V.P. Singh government and a large-scale violence planned and instigated by the Sangh Parivar. However, the worst fallout was in the form of retaliation by the upper castes to the V.P. Singh government. It had given a quota of 27 per cent reservations in employment and education to the OBCs through an ordinance, which was made a constitutional amendment Act subsequently. The BJP did not oppose it at that time because of the substantial OBC electorate.
The entire country erupted into a kind of civil war. But people ultimately settled to live with the additional reservations. (The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes enjoyed a quota of 23 per cent). It took the nation many years to achieve an equilibrium of sorts. Reservations in educational institutions still irritate the upper castes but they have got reconciled to the Supreme Court’s limit of 50 per cent in reservations.
Many years after the downfall of V.P. Singh, this writer asked him that if he had any agenda after the reservations under the Mandal Commission. He said he did not have. When I pointed out to him that he was blamed for the large-scale violence in the country, the former Prime Minister said: “True, I broke my leg, but I at least scored the goal.”
Probably, the Yadav leaders have given an undertaking to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi that they (Yadavs) would support the Women’s Reservation Bill if the government were to accept their demand to have caste enumerated in the census. But the ruling party has been deterred by the anger of the upper castes and has appointed the Group of Ministers (GoM) to recommend a solution. The latest is that there is a sharp division in the GoM and the government is back to the original proposition of finding a consensus on the caste issue.
It is not the first time that Sonia Gandhi, given to immediate pressures, has faltered in her decision. She did so when she announced the formation of Telengana at midnight. But she realised the mistake and formed a committee under Justice B.N. Krishna to make recommendations on the division or the status quo in Andhra Pradesh.
Sonia Gandhi’s initial mistake to have caste in the census saw the same change of mind — first the announcement to have caste census and then to appoint the GoM to consider whether it should be recorded.
The Congress or, for that matter, the BJP which has supported the caste census does not realise the harm the political parties are doing to the polity for electoral considerations. There was no need to rake up the issue when Sharad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav, representing the creamy layer of the OBCs, came to articulate the issue to expand their political base. A firm ‘no’ would have nipped their ploy in the bud.
Incidentally, all the three Yadav leaders claim to be the followers of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia and Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan who urged the nation to become a “casteless society.” Even during the Independence movement, the slogan was to have a country without creed and caste after winning freedom.
Whatever the compulsions of the Yadav leaders, the Congress and the BJP should not have played into their hands. They can still take a moral stand on an issue and insist on non-partisan mature thinking on the part of political parties. They cannot play with fire and then expect that the conflagration would be limited. The caste census may once again give an opportunity to fanatics of every colour to peddle their agenda.
The British had a question in every census till 1941 to find out religion and caste. But theirs was a policy of “divide and rule.” When Jawaharlal Nehru became India’s first Prime Minister, he had even the column of caste in application forms and such other government records deleted. The question on caste was never asked after 1951.
To introduce caste is to renew all the ills of primitive and fractured society. The khap panchayats seen in Haryana will appear all over the country. It is horrible to find Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda agreeing with the khaps to ban the inter-gotra marriage. Thank God, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has rejected the pernicious practice.
Yadav leaders’ argument that the caste census would help them know how many poor are among the OBCs. Why not count the poor? Travails do not lessen if the poor belong to the upper caste. It is time India began the economic consideration as the criterion for reservations. Otherwise, we shall be perpetuating bias, prejudice and hatred, something not desirable in a country which is wedded to establishing an
egalitarian society. Courtesy: Tribune India
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