Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 85

The Backwards Turn Right in the Hindi Belt: Trajectories and Implications
While the factors internal to the
group played their part in diluting the
politics of backward castes, the BJP’s
calibrated strategy to woo sections of
OBCs augmented its decline. First and
foremost, the BJP revived the rhetoric of
Hindu unity by revising its stand on the
issue of reservation. The party, through
various platforms and channels, sent the
message that it was not opposed to reservation
for OBCs and that the verdict
of the highest court on this issue was
fully acceptable to it. To demonstrate
this, the party supported the demand
of Jats for OBC status in Rajasthan and
Western UP. Second, the BJP made
strenuous efforts to engineer a split
among OBCs by working on the lower
OBCs. It consistently brought to the
fore the fact that parties that claimed to
espouse their cause and promote their
interests had actually betrayed them. To
sharpen the rift, the party advocated for
quota within quota for the lower OBCs.
To this end, for example, the BJP government
of UP headed by Rajnath Singh
brought a law to fix a quota for the most
backwards within the OBCs. The SP vehemently
opposed this, as it saw in this
move an attempt to divide the OBCs as
a group. 36 In recent years, attempts have
been made to sub-categorize OBCs at
the national level.
Third, the BJP intensified its
drive to use social engineering through
two routes. First, it began giving greater
representation to lower OBCs in party
positions and in the distribution of tickets.
In UP, for example, Kalyan Singh
was first made the party president and
later on the chief minister of state. He
was regarded as the architect of the
BJP’s strategy of relative Mandalization
in the state. 37 To bring the Kurmis and
Koeris into its fold, the BJP appointed
Keshav Prasad Maurya, hailing from
the Kushwaha community, as the state
party president in 2016. After the BJP
won the 2016 assembly election, he was
made one of the deputy chief ministers.
In 2019, another OBC leader, Swantantra
Dev Singh, was made the party chief.
In Bihar too, important party
positions were given to backward caste
leaders. For instance, Nand Kishore
Yadav was appointed party president
of the state unit in 1998. Prem Kumar,
a Kurmi leader, was made the leader
of opposition in the Bihar Legislative
Assembly in 2015. In 2016, Nitaynand
Rai was given the position of state party
president in spite of resistance from a
quarter of forward castes leaders within
the party. 38 Nevertheless, the BJP’s
attempt to woo OBCs came into play
when Narendra Modi was declared
the party’s prime ministerial candidate
in the run-up to the 2014 general
elections. He openly flaunted his OBC
background in his many rallies and
campaign meetings.
The second route of reaching out
to OBCs has been creating alliances
with smaller parties formed by leaders
of one or another backward groups.
For instance, in Bihar it has been in
alliance with JD (U), led by Nitish Kumar.
In 2014, when the BJP was not in
alliance, it allied with the Rashtriya Lok
Samta Party (RLSP), headed by Upendra
Kushwaha (a Koeri leader), and
thereby cut into Koeri and Kurmi votes.
In UP, the party allied with Apna Dal
and the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party
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