Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 77

The Backwards Turn Right in the Hindi Belt: Trajectories and Implications
II. Political Mobilization
Political mobilization of the OBCs
has taken place differentially
across time and space, and
through different routes. In the southern
part of India, it took a definite shape
much earlier than in the rest of India. 17
Even within the Hindi belt (Bihar,
Haryana, Madhya Pradesh [MP], Rajasthan,
and UP) it took place to varying
degrees. For instance, states like MP
and Rajasthan had been marked by the
absence of backward castes movements
worth the name in spite of their substantial
presence. 18 Instead, Bihar and
UP became the epicenter of political
mobilization of the backward castes.
Even so, mobilization of the backward
castes in these two states took place in
phases and through different routes.
In UP, leaders like Ram Manohar
Lohia, Chaudhury Charan Singh, and
Kanshi Ram made efforts to mobilize
the backwards castes/communities in
the 1960s. The mobilization of these
castes/communities took place through
two routes—social justice and peasant
movements. Lohia, for instance, advocated
60 percent reservation in public
employment for BCs, religious minorities,
and SCs/STs. In the 1970s, Kanshi
Ram carried the social justice movement
forward and made strenuous efforts
to unite the entire spectrum of the
subaltern castes (Bahujan Samaj). Charan
Singh, on the other hand, mobilized
non-upper caste peasant communities
such as Jats and Yadavs. Even when he
was Revenue Minister in charge of land
reforms in the Congress government
in UP, Charan Singh claimed to have
promoted the interests of the middle
peasantry by abolishing the zamindari
system. 19
In Bihar too, the fusion of quota
and peasant politics undergirded the
political mobilization of the backward
castes. There were deep-rooted movements
against the iniquitous distribution
of land and the exploitative agrarian
system. 20 While the Congress regime
seemingly quelled the demands of the
backward castes by abolishing the zamindari
system early on (in 1949) and
subsequently undertaking a number of
legislative measures aimed at land reforms
between the 1950s and 1960s, the
former Zamindars found a number of
ways to retain large proportions of their
land that were to be acquired as surplus
land. Withholding all limitations,
the Land Reform Laws since 1948 had,
nevertheless, transferred ownership
rights in vast areas of land to the upper
stratum of the backward castes, mainly
Yadavs, Koeris, and Kurmis. This gave
them the strength to ask for a larger
share in political, economic, and educational
opportunities. 21 By the late 1960s,
they began to assert themselves politically
and pushed for reservation in public
employment. It gave further impetus
to their mobilization under the umbrella
of “backwards.” Intense political mobilization
of these vastly heterogeneous
caste/communities and their shift, especially
after the end of the Emergency
in 1977, toward non-Congress parties,
the Janta Party in particular, not only
effectively challenged the hegemony of
the Congress Party, but also brought
about changes in the social profile of
political elites in the state. For instance,
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