Email
Print
ShareBig Issue
I was at a posh 'do' in Delhi full of intellectuals and people on the margin of power. I was shocked to be told by someone who was 'one of us' that Mayawati will never make it as prime minister. The country, he said, will not stand for a chamar at the top. He recounted how Jagjivan Ram's chances of being prime minister during the Janata Government were killed when Charan Singh told JP that if he chose that chamar, Lok Dal will withdraw support. Thirty years later, it would seem that the country or at least its elite has not moved much.
Mind you, my interlocutor was secular and progressive. He bet it would be Jayalalithaa who had a better chance. Despite being a Brahmin, she had managed to lead one division of a major anti-Brahmin movement. I took a bet with him that it would be Mayawati rather than Jayalalithaa, for no other reason than that UP has more Lok Sabha seats and Jaya has a more formidable opponent in Karunanidhi than Mayawati has in Mulayam.
But our exchange made me think that the next election, whenever it comes, may not be about roti, kapda, makan, or even about the nuclear deal. It may very well be about deciding who is an Indian and how equal a claim different Indians can lay to being part of the nation. The troubles in Orissa are about some organisations like the VHPrefusing to treat Christians as Indians.
The excuse is that they were claiming Dalit status despite being Christians and hence the burning and looting of their houses. The BJP should distance itself from such nonsense if it wants to be treated as a one-nation party. After all, that is their complaint about the UPA aiding Muslims, which they label divisive.
The person who has the best chance of doing so is Narendra Modi. Despite his callous role in the 2002 riots, for which I hope he is punished some day, he is one CM who has not played the OBC card of his own origins. Mayawati is arguing for an objective test-based affirmative action programme.
Being a Dalit, she has every reason for being inclusive as to who is an Indian. Ambedkar took his followers into Buddhism and other Dalits have converted to Christianity. Caste Hindus are schizophrenic about the Dalits. They wish to perpetuate the low ritual status of Dalits, but still want them to be Hindus. Gandhiji played this card against Ambedkar in the famous Yerawada fast. It put back the progress of Dalits by at least 50 years. The VHP in Orissa is clearly of the view that Dalits who convert have betrayed their Hindu roots and should be punished.
Mayawati knows how far she and her party have come from the lower depths to being within an inch of power at the top. Apparently, during the first BJP-BSP coalition in UP, after each cabinet meeting, the BJP ministers had the cabinet room washed out to purify it because Dalits had entered the room. When you have this degree of hatred, it is a miracle that Mayawati is willing and able to create a Dalit Brahmin coalition.
The Congress is missing a trick or two in this battle. It used to be able to rely on providing Brahmin leadership which looked after all sections of the country. It worked with Nehru and to some extent even Indira. But in UP and Bihar, the Brahmin elite had no intention of doing anything for Dalits. The sorry deterioration of these two states has a lot to do with the total neglect for the rural underclass which the Karpuri Thakurs and the CB Gupta types practised.
To this day, every measure of human development shows a sharp contrast north versus south of the Vindhyas. This is because the south had its anti-Brahmin revolution way back in the early decades of the last century and the Doab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh became Bimaru. Indeed, take the Bimaru states out, and India is a developed and high human development country.
The Congress has co-opted in random fashion this anti-Brahmin politics in the North. Mulayam and Lalu and Paswan are part of this. But the alliance is built on opportunism and not strategy. By parroting secularism, the Congress thinks it will protect all sections of the Indian nation. But its elitism is ingrained. The Dynasty is there not to be moved, and will not share power. Yet I believe the Congress is missing out on a wonderful opportunity to show its anti-elitist credentials.
I am not being facetious -- I think the Congress should project Rahul Gandhi as the complete Indian. He is the product of an Italian mother and an Indian father. But his father was the issue of a marriage between a Parsi and a Brahmin. So he is a quarter Hindu-Brahmin, a quarter Parsi and half-Christian. Not quite Amar Akbar Anthony, but close enough.
Indeed some scandalous Hindu fundamentalistblogssay that Feroze Gandhi was a Muslim and the child of Nehru's dhobi. In America, such a revelation would make the candidate unstoppable in any race for the White House. So I urge that instead of glossing over his roots, the Congress should boast about them. Who knows, the Congress may even survive the next election doing that. But in any case, the point will have been made: that Indians do not come in one religion or one size.
The writer is an economist and a Labour peer.
