July 27, 1998

BJP's Ordeal
Deep divisions along caste lines left the party neither here nor there

After the RJD fireworks in the House on Monday, the BJP rode the moral high ground. The prime minister described the incident as a "warning bell for democracy" and blamed the Congress for backtracking on its earlier decision to support the bill. However, with a third of its 180 Lok Sabha members belonging to the OBC and working overtime to scuttle the bill, the party's support to the cause was not as obvious as it first seemed. The BJP-led Government would have found itself in an embarrassing situation had it not acted upon the previous Lok Sabha's recommendation of pushing through the amendment. Nevertheless, it was a risky strategy and a double-edged sword.

Leading the pack of BJP anti-reservationists were Uma Bharati, an OBC belonging to the Lodh community; Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, also a Lodh; Sakshi Maharaj, MP with VHP links; Gangacharan Rajput, MP; Union Textiles Minister Kashi Ram Rana; and Santosh Gangwar and Bangaru Dattatreya, both ministers of state. Rana, Bharati, Dattatreya and Gangwar met Vajpayee on Monday evening and urged him to defer the bill, while Rajput wrote a letter demanding a special session to discuss it. The OBC clan spirit is as prevalent in the BJP as in the other parties.

However, it ultimately took a seasoned player like Pramod Mahajan, a Rajya Sabha member, to convert the misgivings into tactical retreat. In the Tuesday morning meeting at the Speaker's chamber, when Pawar was wavering on how long the bill should be deferred, Mahajan (who had no locus standi, since he was neither in the Government nor a Lok Sabha member) formulated a proposal that everyone lapped up -- to defer the bill "for the time being". Balayogi immediately issued a statement incorporating it. The Government's obligation thus became shorn of a deadline. The BJP too could not be faulted because the Congress, without whose support the bill cannot be passed, had changed its line of unqualified support. The other guy had blinked first.

Left in the Lurch
Obsessed with class struggle, caste posed them an existential dilemma

In an age where invocations to the dictatorship of the proletariat leave the electorate stone cold, it is the Left that has emerged as the most vocal advocate of women's reservation. The Left has not only successfully hijacked Rajiv Gandhi's agenda for women's reservation, it has also given it a strong feminist flavour. The Left-ruled West Bengal Government first implemented the 33 per cent reservation in the 1993 panchayat elections even before the 73rd Amendment received the President's assent. The CPI(M) and the CPI were the prime movers behind the 1996 bill for women's reservation in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.

However, last week's show of OBC solidarity against the bill put the Leftists in an existential dilemma. Preferring discretion to ideological assertion, the Left glossed over the awkwardness of secularism, Mandal and women's reservation suddenly getting delinked. It even despatched Muslim women members of front organisations to show that there was no opposition to quotaless reservation.

The disorientation was most visible in the CPI(M), whose Central Committee was in session last week to formulate an anti-BJP alliance with the Congress. The mood-swing in the Congress on the OBC sub-quota issue came to the Marxists like a bad dream.

West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, who turned 85 this month, even made an overture by saying that the OBC issue "merited a second look". However, Basu failed to carry the Central Committee with him. True to the Marxist tradition of white-washing the minority view with a denial, the party later on got its Lok Sabha leader, Somnath Chatterjee, to say that Basu had never spoken on the subject of OBC sub-quota. But can the Marxist paradigm of class struggle find a voice in the din of caste struggle?

Politics of caste and gender
Who dictates priorities, the 27 per cent OBCs or 49 per cent women?

Had it become law, the bill would have revolutionised electoral politics in India, even if its social impact would not have been felt immediately. Given its magnitude and uniqueness -- no country, apart from Argentina, has affirmative action for women in legislatures (as opposed to employment) -- the debate has been pedestrian. For example, little attention was paid to the fact that the bill envisaged reserving one-third of the existing SC/ST constituencies for women. In other words, a future Lok Sabha would have seen some 43 Dalit or tribal women MPs, a revolutionary step by any standard.

The Government was well aware of the extent of OBC objection to a proposal that would have seen Laloo, Mulayam and Kanshi Ram struggling to find "winnable" candidates for the newly-created reserved seats. Yet, it chose to push through its commitment made in the National Agenda. The reasoning was unexceptionable: if the bill had gone through, existing MPs would have thought a hundred times before forcing a mid-term election in which many would have had to look for new constituencies.

Yet, the manner in which the legislation was scuttled is ominous. It reveals how easily a determined minority can bring Parliament to a standstill and replace debate with lung power. The Congress has shown that dynastic power means little if it goes against prevailing sentiment.

There is another casualty. The furore brought out the fact that caste and religion, rather than gender, remains the most potent forum of mobilisation. "Who has given you the right to put gender above caste?" asked an angry OBC MP. In trying to give women a political leg up, India may have opened the floodgates of divisive demands.

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