New Delhi: Days after a protest demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar featured “Jai Bhim” slogans and references to Dr BR Ambedkar, the same venue witnessed another agitation against caste-based reservation.
Its traditional upper-caste voter base has expanded to include Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). Any position on reservation has the potential to affect different sections of the BJP’s support base. Its core vote bank, the upper castes, felt that the party was their protector. But when the BJP created a bouquet of castes, they felt that the party was moving away from them, so they should teach it a lesson. Representatives of the reservation-opposition campaign have met senior BJP leader JP Nadda. India has a large young population but does not have enough employment opportunities to match it.
Because the party has built support among several social groups over the past decade, the August 21 protest poses a direct political challenge to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Because doing so would come at the cost of its OBC support, mishra said the party could not support their demand for a merit-based reservation system. The timing is important for Uttar Pradesh, where the assembly election is due in 2027. Senior journalist Himanshu Mishra, in a BBC programme titled ‘The Lens’, said BJP’s social base changed after 2014, when the party began reaching beyond its traditional upper-caste voters.
He also said the upper-caste protesters are looking for political leadership. “Most of it is a state of indifference,” he added. The Opposition, he said, has not produced a leader who can effectively take up these issues.
She called for a study and a white paper to examine the extent to which different communities had gained empowerment and where they still faced disadvantages. “You think that in all the central universities in this country, vice-chancellors from these communities have started coming? Have people from these communities began sitting in newsrooms? People have a problem with us being beneficiaries, but the point is that as Dalits, we do not want to be seen only as beneficiaries. He cited changes in land ownership, saying several OBC communities have gained greater economic strength through land transfers. “Democracy has weakened caste on one side, but electoral democracy has also strengthened it. “Most of the time when they are with their friends, there is no caste. “Merit is a very relative term. In one place merit has one meaning, while somewhere else it is understood differently. Merit does not have much to do with caste. Political and social groups can now organise online and reach large audiences directly. Social media has become an important tool for these campaigns.
She cited Bihar, where there are around 25 to 27 SC sub-castes.
The protest against caste-based reservation, according to him, is the first such movement since the beginning of the Modi era to create some unease among the BJP’s traditional voters. Paswan said reservation within the SC category also needs study. “There are many such castes, Musahar, Bhuiyan or Paswan, among whom there is political representation, while other communities do not have it,” she said. We also want to be part of decision-making institutions,” she said. Tata Institute of Social Sciences Vice Chancellor (Professor) Badri Narayan in the same programme said social categories have considerably changed at the ground level over the past few decades. He also said modernisation has reduced the role of caste in everyday life. This is contradictory in itself,” he said. Narayan said caste has become less visible in several parts of daily life, including social interaction and inter-caste marriages. He said younger people, particularly Generation Z, often spend their everyday lives without caste playing a major role. But as soon as a political issue or an issue of polarisation comes up, caste emerges,” he said. The word “merit” has featured repeatedly in arguments against reservation. Narayan said it is a relative term and cannot be treated as a simple measure of social opportunity. It is also an individual ability,” he said. He said the main issue is inequality and how it is changing within society. He said governments have tried to address both horizontal and vertical inequality through different measures. He also said social media can give such movements a new reach.
“If you come from a poor family, the government has created the EWS category for you. You will compete in that category. You are not in our category. She also questioned whether social equality has actually reached positions of influence. Referring to a Dalit IAS officer as an example, she asked whether parents will readily agree to a marriage with that officer.
Any proposal to change it would therefore need to examine issues such as social status, dignity, representation and access to justice.
Columnist Aditi Narayani Paswan, who is an associate professor at the Ambedkar International Centre, said the argument that better-off members of the Dalit community should lose reservation needs a clearer definition of what “prosperity” means. She said reservation for SCs and STs was not created on economic grounds. We are all competing in our own categories,” she said.
