subject: Caste Factor and The Bhartiya Janta Party [print this page] Caste Factor and The Bhartiya Janta Party
After 1947 the Hindu Mahasabha was discredited as it had got mired in the controversy of Godse and Gandhi. Godse the assassain of Gandhi was a member of the Mahasabha.Thus it went into eclipse.
However a party by the name of Jan Sangha made its appearence.This was a Hindu party, though professing to be secular.But it never made an impression outside Delhi and Madhya Pradesh and soon went into oblivion. I remember its leader Balraj Madhok canvassing for votes on the plank of Hindutva, but the party just made no impression on the electorate.
Things changed a bit when in 1975, The Bharatiya Janata party(BJP) was born.In real terms it was a revamped version of the Jan Sangha. But the party had a set of leaders in Vajpayee and Advani who were intellectuals to a degree and they set about revamping the party. They also started broad basing the cadre and concentrated on getting people into its fold from all walks of life. But at the same time the party glorified the Hindu religion and Gods.This was not a bad thing, but the fact remains that the caste system which is the bed rock of Hindu society got further entrenched, as the BJP could not rationalize, why the caste system should not go.
Thus the BJP accepted the caste system.It must be noted that in his writings even Gandhi supported the caste division of society. However to create a face that the BJP was not opposed to the lower castes, a set of leaders from the lower castes and backward castes were inducted into the BJP. These leaders had no grounding with the parent organization the RSS(Rashtra Swayam Sevak Sangha) and were mostly unscruplous men who let the BJP down.Thus we had the sad spectacle of the National President of the BJP, Bangaru Laxman openly accepting bribes and wads of notes in his office. Perhaps the BJP was soft on him as it wanted to get out of its higher caste image.
But all this showed that the core group of the BJP were only the higher castes and the lower castes were just the props to propel the party forward.This has not paid dividend as even in their bastion of Utter Pradesh they have been bested by group of Backward and lower caste groups and the BJP is in wilderness.
The BJP has to a lot of homework, before it can be a worthy challanger at the center on its own.Time alone will show whether the BJP can get its act together. But to do it, the BJP will have to eschew caste politics as well as leave the hand of parties like the Siv Sena, that are openly espousing the higher castes as well as regionalism.The BJP must have a national agenda to succeed.
