Rahul Gandhi's caste census: Will the Congress gain from OBC politics?

The Congress was never an OBC party. Could the INDIA grouping of Opposition parties have convinced Rahul Gandhi and the Congress that a rising tide of OBC politics will lift all boats along with it?

Bihar's caste survey and Rahul Gandhi's electoral promise of a caste census signal the return of Other Backward Classes (OBC) politics. Whether the attempted Mandal 2.0 will lead to a political paradigm shift is yet unclear. However, the Congress party is distinctly moving away from its silence on naming caste in Indian politics.

Will Rahul Gandhi's rooting for the caste census and linking it to reservations fritter away the acceptance he gained across all sections of society during his Bharat Jodo Yatra? Has he been misled by OBC leaders into abandoning his broader platform to suit their narrow interests? Or is social justice politics attractive to the Congress because its traditional upper caste and Dalit vote base has abandoned it? There are no simple answers.

The Congress was never an OBC party. Indeed, it was the biggest loser from the emergence of OBC politics. It was never able to achieve a parliamentary majority after the Mandal Commission Report on OBC reservations was implemented. To this day, it does not have an OBC leader of national stature who is recognised as an advocate of Mandal politics.

Although Prime Minister VP Singh accepted the recommendations in August 1990, ironically, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's Congress government was left to implement the OBC reservation in 1992. Its main political beneficiaries were OBC parties led by Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar in Bihar. If Congress did not gain from OBC politics, then is it likely to make gains from it now?

Some political observers attribute the Congress party's stunning victory in the recent Karnataka Assembly elections to the party's understanding of the importance of caste politics. It was led to victory by two OBC leaders – a Kuruba (Siddaramaiah, now chief minister) and a Vokkaliga (D K Sivakumar, currently deputy chief minister). Even if one accepts this argument, there is no guarantee that what worked in Karnataka will work in other states, too.

Also Read: CWC's caste census decision powerful step for liberation of poor: Rahul

The OBC profile of the population varies across states. Even in north India, the OBC platform will have low traction in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Delhi. In Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which are OBC-dominated, the lion's share of electoral benefits will likely go to the main regional OBC party than the Congress.

The reason for the Congress supporting a caste census must, therefore, lie elsewhere. Could the INDIA grouping of Opposition parties have convinced Rahul Gandhi and the Congress that a rising tide of OBC politics will lift all boats along with it? The Congress could then be a collateral beneficiary of the Opposition's OBC politics.  

However, Rahul Gandhi's slogan "Jitni abadi, utna haq" ( rights proportional to population share) is ambitious and strident. Based on a caste census, the idea that the OBCs are getting less than their share of the population could lead to cracks in the Hindutva edifice, which seeks to homogenise Hindus across castes. The balance that the BJP has maintained between its upper caste perspective and the careful promotion of OBC leaders may go awry. Mandal 2.0 could isolate the BJP's upper caste base and create political dilemmas for the party while consolidating the position of the OBC parties.

However, there is no guarantee that a replay of the Mandal card will be as potent as it was for the OBC parties in the 1990s. In the 30 years since non-OBC parties have learned to accommodate OBC leaders in their party structures and legislatures. The BJP can today boast that it appointed 21 OBC chief ministers out of its total of 68 chief ministers, while the Congress has had only 43 OBC chief ministers out of a total of 250 up to now. The BJP's reinvention from a Brahmin-Bania party to an OBC-inclusive party began in the 1990s. Today, it showcases Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an OBC leader whose cabinet has 27 OBC ministers. The Congress has not been so deft – it had only one OBC minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet when it went into the 2014 general election.

Political gains may also be short-lived for the established Mandalite parties as fresh figures for sub-castes may energise the Most Backward Classes and groups within the Scheduled Castes to organise separately. The awareness that they have benefitted less from OBC reservations has already shaped new parties in UP and Bihar. Thus, new parties came up for Rajbhars (Omprakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party) and Kurmis (two factions of the Apna Dal) in UP and for Musahars (Jitan Ram Majhi's Hindustan Awam Morcha), Koeris (Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Samata party), Mallahs and other boatmen castes (Mukesh Sahani's Vikassheel Insaan Party) and Dusadhs and related castes (Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party – Ram Vilas), etc. The BJP is already courting them to undermine the dominant caste parties.

Also Read: I'm for caste census 100%; it's like X-Ray that will help: Rahul Gandhi

Further differentiation within the OBCs triggered by the caste census could undercut the monolithic representation of the OBCs by the existing Mandalite parties. In Tamil Nadu, almost every backward caste has a political party already. Unleashed nationally, the existing OBC parties could disintegrate into smaller caste-based parties. The emergence of Maha Dalit Parties could also change the complexion of Dalit politics.

Opposition parties are not unaware that a caste census can threaten existing political equations and calculations in a state. The Congress itself has refused to release the caste census its state government conducted in Karnataka in 2015. Despite making shrill demands to release the results of the census on the BJP government that followed it, it is reluctant to do so now after regaining power in Karnataka, claiming that it is incomplete! 

Social justice is a desirable goal, but how politics would unfold after a caste census is unclear. That is why the long-term strategy of the Congress remains unclear even while it pursues Oppositional INDIA politics in the run-up to 2024.