A wise senior political leader once told me, politics in India works only around the Big-3 factors – religion, caste, and income (rich vs poor). The rest – policy making, governance, development – are all nice to have but the big-3 is where it is all decided.
Even within the big-3, income, or the rich-poor factor is somewhat neutralized. This is because all political parties claim and must be pro-poor. There is no upside in siding with the rich, which are in a minority anyway. All parties,hence, must demonstrate pro-poor policies and actions, varying from freebies to cash transfers.
This brings us to the big two fundamental gears driving Indian politics – religion and caste. Nothing comes close to these two in terms of engaging the voters. The pendulum oscillates on which of these dominate public sentiment at a given point in time. Clearly the last decade has been about religion. The BJP, quite successfully, managed to bring together and consolidate the Hindu vote like never before in independent India history. This was done by identifying some genuine issues around religion that weren’t being addressed. The Ram Mandir is a classic example. Every Indian has grown up reading the Ramayana in school or watching it on TV. The story is set in Ayodhya. To think that there isn’t a major Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and it was replaced with a mosque baffled most Hindus. It was a genuine emotive issue, and the BJP took ownership of it. It took decades, had its own share controversy, but finally Ayodhya had a temple. This was a genuine concern, and it helped galvanize the Hindu voters. This, along with a few other issues helped the BJP secure the votes for three historic terms.
Meanwhile, the caste issue remained relatively dormant in the past decade. Some experts even argued that maybe caste isn’t such a big issue anymore. Caste based discrimination has perhaps reduced to an extent that it doesn’t galvanize the voters anymore. Caste based reservations have been in action for over seven decades, and maybe caste inequality has indeed reduced. Maybe people don’t even think of caste anymore. Unlike religion, it often isn’t easy to tell people’s caste just from their names anyway. Maybe caste as a big political issue is past its expiry date in 2024. Well, these experts were wrong. Caste was, is and will remain a strong issue in Indian politics. In fact, it may well be the driver of Indian politics in the next decade. Religion dominated politics in the last ten years, and caste took a backseat. However, this onlymeans all the caste related issues are bottled up and arelikely to take center stage again as the pendulum swings to the other side.
For unlike religion, we are unintentionally divided by caste even in the constitution. The constitution has caste-basedreservation built into it. Certain state resources, such as government jobs and college admissions are kept aside for the underprivileged. While this was done as an affirmative action to help the oppressed communities, it also means that caste divisions will always remain. Two religions can still eventually get along. Apart from the occasional dispute on a religious site, where both parties laid claim, there is no legally codified divide. Religious divides are more a case of differing beliefs, culture and values, which can be overcome. Caste, however, has a built-in zero-sum game by design. There are only so many jobs and seats, and some are kept for a certain caste and not for the others. Whatever the good intentions behind it, it automatically creates a scope for a divide. Who gets reservations and who doesn’t? What percentage of jobs and seats should be reserved? What sectors? What is the representation of the underprivileged castes at high levels? Are reservations coming at the cost of merit and talent? Are upper caste children bearing the cost of the reservations? These questions aren’t just valid, they are permanent in our system. And since caste system largely applies only to the Hindus, it also means there is a permanent schism built into Hindu society. Are you even surprised that politicians play politics on it?
If the BJP wins by consolidating the Hindu vote, the only way the Congress wins is by splitting it. The Congress, which has historically been in power longer than the BJP, has always won by the D+M formula, where D is the Dalit (and other underprivileged castes), and M is the Muslim vote. Without the caste issue, the Congress just cannot win, no matter what their policies and how many yatras they do. Similarly, unless the Hindu vote consolidates somewhat, the BJP just cannot win, no matter what policies they formulate. The opposition, ignited and encouraged from the gains in 2024 LS elections, have now figured that to grow their vote share and seats is to bring back caste to center stage in Indian politics. Hence the caste census (again a somewhat genuine, but ultimately political issue) or frequent mentions of caste by political leaders. Given caste has not been centerstage for a while, they may find a receptive audience. Already on social media platform X, we had trends like #brahmingenes, where brahmins suddenly wanted to display Brahmin pride. Sure, everyone has the right to be proud of their identity, but even these trends ultimately bring caste centerstage and split the Hindu vote.
Which brings us to the big question. Is all this good for the country? Well, both religion and caste are used as divisive issues, and center around identity politics. When all this is the focus, real issues like the economy, education, infrastructure, and policy take a backseat. This is probably why we are lagging China, and much of the world despite having all the setup for being a great, economic superpower. All this identity politics ultimately a form of primitive tribalism, a primal urge to find and seek comfort in people like our own, even if it comes at the cost of the greater national interest.
- However, there are also some underappreciated positives from these divisions. The biggest one is not so obvious. That these divisions might well be the reason why we have been able to keep our democracy alive. Look at our neighbors. Neither of them have not been able to keep their democracy intact. Ours isn’t perfect, but our democracy is in place and miles ahead of our neighbors. This routine pendulum swing between religion and caste, this alternate consolidation and splitting of Hindu votemeans that power keeps shifting between the BJP and Congress. This in turn, keeps our democracy in order. If this wasn’t the case, we could have slipped into atotalitarian, authoritarian state on either side of the political spectrum. These sub-optimal divisions, even though holding back our progress, also keep our democracy alive.