The place that caste occupies in trendy Indian life is exclusive. It’s indelible but generally imperceptible, enduring but frequently shifting. Its sticky strands entangle each the tech entrepreneur in Bengaluru and the farmer in Bihar, silently however relentlessly shaping a baby’s entry to the classroom or the general public house, her proper to drink water or get her voice heard, her well being care and successes on the office, her alternative of companion and whether or not it’s met with violence, and her sense of belonging and self. It’s not solely an enforcer of discrimination, but additionally a supply of delight for some, and neighborhood for others. In every technology, it morphs into newer challenges, swapping untouchability for un-rentability, express slurs for implied exclusions, and outright brutality for pernicious exclusions. It’s this sobering actuality that lays the muse for the cussed persistence of caste as a central driver of Indian politics.
No yr embodied this phenomenon greater than 2024. It witnessed India host the biggest democratic train on the earth that loosened the Bharatiya Janata Get together’s (BJP) stranglehold on the electoral enviornment and buoyed the Opposition, earlier than a clutch of essential meeting polls noticed the BJP wrest again momentum even because the Indian Nationwide Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) chalked up some victories. Extra importantly, greater than another common elections because the early Nineteen Nineties,the primacy of caste in India’s political panorama was established, belying prophecies that predicted the gradual paling of caste, both by the hands of contemporary city life and laissez-faire capitalism, or by strident Hindutva and majoritarian politics that will subsume intercaste variations below a broader Hindu umbrella.
The BJP approached the 2024 elections with a transparent edge. The occasion had swept three heartland states in December 2023, blanking out the Congress and triggering chaos inside the nonetheless fledgling INDIA. Assured of a 3rd consecutive time period, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in Parliament that his occasion’s purpose can be to win 370 seats out of 543 in Parliament; a goal of 400 was set for the broader Nationwide Democratic Alliance (NDA). His administration even eschewed the custom of providing sops and freebies within the interim price range earlier than the elections, selecting to stay to a path of fiscal self-discipline, seemingly comfy of their political domination. Alternatively, the Congress may handle a victory solely in Telangana whereas shedding direct contests with the BJP, irritating potential allies. Weakened by its poor present, the Congress fought its lowest share of seats in historical past as emboldened allies flexed their muscular tissues.
It turned out to be a profitable technique. The Opposition posted its finest leads to a decade as simmering anger over jobs and fears about the way forward for the Structure dented assist for the BJP and prevented it from reaching the midway mark. The Congress improved dramatically in its head-to-head contests in opposition to the ruling occasion and regional satraps equivalent to Akhilesh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee held off BJP onslaughts of their respective provinces, guaranteeing that India’s three greatest states – Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal – broken the NDA essentially the most. Modi secured a historic third time period however an energised Opposition took their seats in Parliament in numbers not seen for twenty years.
The second, although, was short-lived. The subsequent few months noticed the political momentum swing dramatically because the BJP launched a fierce counter-attack, bolstering last-mile outreach, enhancing coordination with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, refining its Hindutva pitch, increasing its welfare internet, and exploiting Opposition complacency to clinch game-changing victories in Haryana and Maharashtra. Although the INDIA bloc received Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand with decisive majorities, it was simple that the BJP had managed to arrest any notion of slide with its thumping victories and injected confidence into the common occasion employee – a reality demonstrated by its aggressive stance in Parliament.
Driving these political undulations have been the shifting sands of caste. 2024 noticed India’s most explicitly caste-coded elections in a technology with quotas occupying a spot within the marketing campaign not seen because the Mandal churn within the Nineteen Nineties. Each side embraced the centrality of reservations in India with contrasting world views – the BJP tried to corral Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and different backward courses (OBCs) in a singularly Hindu mould, and pitted them in opposition to Muslims; and the Congress evoked the determine of the Structure and the potential risk to it from a supermajority. In the long run, the pivotal shift of the Dalit votes away from the BJP made the distinction in these elections. Of the 84 seats reserved for the SCs, the BJP received 46 in 2019 and solely 29 in 2024. Its median vote share dropped from 50.76% to 45% and strike price from 73% to 42%. Usually seats, its strike price was at 56% and tribal seats 59%, in comparison with 42% for SC seats.
The BJP instantly went again to the drafting board, and the outcomes have been seen within the flatlands of Haryana three months later. Looking for a 3rd consecutive time period, the ruling occasion defied nearly each exit ballot prediction and its personal lukewarm pre-poll evaluation to trounce the Congress by stitching collectively a coalition of smaller caste teams cautious of the domination of Jats, the principal vote financial institution of the opposition occasion. The BJP performed up reminiscences of the violent Jat agitation for quotas and different atrocities particularly in opposition to Dalits, projected its OBC chief minister and used the subclassification of Scheduled Caste quotas to cleave assist in a neighborhood that had backed the Congress within the Lok Sabha polls. An analogous story performed out in Maharashtra – one other state that had favoured the INDIA bloc within the common elections – the place the much-vaunted Maratha anger about being denied reservation got here a cropper because the BJP was capable of efficiently coalesce backward teams to neutralise quota leaders equivalent to Manoj Jarange Patil, and once more used sub-quotas to grab a considerable chunk of the Dalit vote. In each states, the Opposition marketing campaign appeared listless, content material to projecting the Structure even because the BJP had advanced its marketing campaign to deal with nuts-and-bolts points and discovering a more practical technique to inject communal undertones – take into consideration how the pitch blaming the Congress for faith-based quotas failed in Maharashtra within the Lok Sabha polls, however an identical slogan on “Ek Hain Toh Secure Hain (if we keep united, we’ll be protected)” slogan, asking Dalits, tribals and backwards to stay united, discovered great success 4 months later.
2024, then, was the yr that caste once more emerged as a central pivot of Indian politics, and a battle between Mandir and Mandal that appeared to have been decisively settled for the previous during the last decade turned aggressive once more. It’s a yr when the BJP stumbled resulting from decrease caste anger earlier than crafting a brand new components to maintain its giant however restive coalition collectively. It is usually a yr when the Opposition discovered nice success within the picture of the Structure however failed later to translate the reverence of the doc to the real-world questions of aspiration, mobility and financial stability – a seat in a faculty or the safety of a authorities job. It’s the yr when reservations turned an indeniable actuality of Indian political life (and compelled each the BJP and the Congress to desert earlier opposition to quotas). It’s the yr Mandal advanced, and caste endured.
