Is Caste Politics returns in Gujarat? 

In the late 1970s and 80s, Amitabh Bachchan’s bell-bottom pants were in trend. Twenty-five years later, they are back in trend again.

“Caste politics is something similar,” chuckles a veteran politician in the state.  First, it was the Patidars. Then the Other Backward Communities jumped in. A fringe group of Brahmins, since long, has been seeking more political attention. And now, with the Dalits asserting themselves as a vote bank, identity politics may well be back in Gujarat.

Move over communal and development politics. If the political circus witnessed in Una in the last fortnight is any indication, Hindu ‘hriday samrat’ Narendra Modi’s decade of bringing all ‘Hindus’ together against ‘others’ may well be ending.   Identity politics’ is the assertion of communities as a vote bank on the basis of their identity, which could be professional or interest-based. But in the Indian context, it is invariably caste-based.

The most prominent example is Shiv Sena rallying for native Maharashtrians.  Census 2011 puts 7.1% of Gujarat’s population as SC and 17% as ST. The census also pegs 46% of Gujarat’s population as ‘urban’, but as per political pundits only 80 Assembly seats are the ones with urban populace. Further, they estimate that voters in only about 49 seats vote for the candidate or ideology and in as many as 131 seats vote singularly on the caste agenda.

Caste politics was the hallmark of Gujarat political discourse in the 80s when Madhavsinh Solanki ruled with unparalleled majority. The KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) equation worked wonders for the party. Chimanbhai Patel and Keshubhai Patel were just about getting by, when Modi came along. He changed the mainstream discourse from caste to communal politics and introduced a new genre ‘development politics’. This gave BJP comfortable room to play.

In 2015, some low-key murmurs amongst Dalits started after being at the receiving end of the Patidar outrage. But, now that they are out as a decisive force, netas are alert – not to the plight of the marginalised community, but to the threat/opportunity of the vote bank

Meanwhile, a six-year-old entity ‘Thakore Sena’ made headlines last year, headed by an emerging leader Alpesh Thakore. He repeatedly thunders, “We will form the next government”. Thakore Sena claims to have a team of 27-28 lakh volunteers, spread across 9,500 villages in Gujarat. He rattles off numbers like another five-seven lakh volunteers in its SC-ST cell, and avows presence in 18,000 villages soon. He has a volunteer from each minor caste of the SC and ST, meaning he is bringing them together but only as a representative of their individual caste

‘Sauno saath, sauno vikas’ may have been the BJP’s official agenda, but most argue that caste politics was omnipresent. Caste differences were perhaps glossed over to establish the development image. The rise in Dalit atrocity cases and conviction rate of 3.92% is only a tip of a multi-tipped iceberg. Be that as it may, the communal discourse is still a tinderbox.

So what all are we bracing for ahead of the 2017 polls?