Mandal vs ‘kamandal’ in UP pollscape

Radhika Ramaseshan
Senior journalist

The outcome of the Uttar Pradesh election has generated an intense debate over the centrality of ‘Mandal’ or ‘kamandal’ in shaping the electorate’s sensibility and determining the results, as though the reservation policy in government-run educational institutions and government jobs, recommended by the Mandal Commission, was pitted in a face-off against Hindutva. ‘Kamandal’ (a water pot used by ascetics) became a metaphor for Hindutva politics primarily because it rhymed with Mandal.

However, the two terms which evoke contrary images—Mandal is remembered for the violent backlash it provoked among upper caste youths against their backward caste peers when VP Singh announced the implementation of reservation, while ‘kamandal’ is identified with the divisive Ayodhya rath yatra steered by BJP leader LK Advani—are, in fact, mutually compatible and constitute a workable electoral formula which the BJP effectively deployed. The BJP used UP as a laboratory to test the efficacy of these constructs because unlike, say, Tamil Nadu, which dissociated faith from electoral politics, despite having a deeply religious and superstitious population, UP’s commonplace discourse is laden with allusions to faith and metaphors drawn from Hinduism. Religion has permeated the popular sensibility profoundly enough to inform, influence and mould politics.

From its inception, in the heartland the Congress had a stream that subscribed to the primacy of faith in everyday life and believed it could not divorce politics from religion even if this militated against the secular precept. Kanshi Ram, the BSP founder and ideologue, and the BJP recognised the significance of religion but assigned its place in politics through different prisms. For him, Hinduism was synonymous with Brahmanism. He believed that unless Brahminical hegemony over the heartland was demolished, the non-Brahmin castes and sub-castes would never rise. The RSS and BJP tapped into the wellspring of Hinduism to fashion a doctrine which sought to create a pan-Hindu identity rising above caste. It believed that its version of Hindutva was supreme in the pantheon of religions.

The BJP tried to fuse religion and caste into a cohesive whole that worked, at times, and fell apart on occasions, depending on how its adversaries crafted and propagated their narratives. The BJP’s success since 1989, with periodic reversals, achieved one end: its interpretation of Hinduism, simplistic and bigoted as it is, ran like an undercurrent through politics. Its opponents were forced to incorporate the BJP’s idiom, configuration and substance in their discourse, albeit in a watered-down form, so that they would not be accused of being ‘unfaithful’ to Hinduism.

The 1991 General Election marked the BJP’s first tryst with Mandal and ‘kamandal’ in UP. It won a huge number of Lok Sabha seats and registered its first victory in the Assembly. Doubtless, the upper castes, comprising Brahmins, Rajputs, Kayasthas and Banias (its core voters) went en masse for it because in their minds, these communities saw the BJP as their only insurance against the backward caste ‘threat’, brought about by reservation. However, conversely, even certain castes which already benefited from statutory quotas, like the Dalits and the backward castes which stood on the cusp of empowerment, voted for the BJP. Why?

Take the Jats, an intermediate caste. The Jats were never fully assimilated with the ‘savarnas’ (popular lore has it that even Chaudhary Charan Singh, a former PM, was reluctantly offered a seat whenever he visited a Brahmin home in villages) but they fancied themselves as a cut above the backward castes, not to speak of the Dalits. Because many of them had adopted the Arya Samaj sect of Hinduism, they warmed up to the RSS and the BJP. For decades, the Sangh tried to ally with the Arya Samaj with which it shared common convictions, the most important being cow protection. The Arya Samaj was increasingly drawn towards the RSS’s ideology. Since 1991, the Jats went largely for the BJP, although they had their own leaders, first in Chaudhary Ajit Singh and then his son, Chaudhary Jayant Singh. The choice of the BJP fell into a larger process of Sanskritisation to enable upward mobility in the caste hierarchy on par with wearing the ceremonial ‘janeu’ (sacred thread traditionally worn only by Brahmins), sporting a red ‘tikka’ and turning vegetarian.

If the Arya Samaj was the RSS-BJP’s passageway to woo the Jats, no less successful was their endeavour to work on the different Dalit and backward sub-castes by combining ‘history’ (largely undocumented), mythology and religion. For instance, in several elections, the Passis went for the BJP because it enhanced their sense of self by disseminating the story that Passis originated from the sweat of Parashuram, an incarnation of Vishnu. The BJP went a step further by telling Passis that under King Bijli Passi, they ruled UP and Bihar in the 11th century.

Raja Suheldev, a 10th-century ruler of Shravasti in eastern UP, was resurrected by the BJP as a ‘saviour of the Hindu religion’ because he was supposed to have vanquished Salar Masood Ghazi, purportedly a nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni. The backward caste Rajbhar community has iconised Suheldev. Therefore, when Om Prakash Rajbhar, a former BJP ally who went along with the SP in the recent election, claimed that the Rajbhars would desert the BJP, the BJP was unfazed. A leader said the Rajbhars would never go with a coalition which had Muslims as an integral constituent. ‘They remember Suheldev and his battle with the Muslim invaders,’ he said.

The BJP’s engagements with Mandal politics did not begin and end with just historical personages. It identified and nurtured a phalanx of backward caste and Dalit leaders from the grassroots, starting with Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti and culminating in Narendra Modi. That contains clues to its success in managing two seemingly contradictory political strands.