'The BJP will control all of India'

Q&A/Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Research, Paris, became interested in India while studying philosophy.

His book, Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, is considered a seminal work on the rise of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP.

His latest book, India's Silent Revolution, is a study of the rise of the other backward castes (OBCs) in Indian politics. He has also three edited volumes on ethnic and sectarian violence in Pakistan to his credit.

Jaffrelot spoke to Business Standard about the change in Indian politics and where the BJP is headed.
Excerpts:

You have just written a book on the politics of the OBCs in India. What are your findings?

I studied the phenomenon of the transfer of power from elite social groups in India, which played a hegemonic role in politics till the 1990s, to the intermediate castes, predominantly in north India.

If you look at the proportion of upper-caste MPs and MLAs in north India in the 1952 election, they constituted 64 per cent. But they were just 30 per cent in the 1999 election.

In sympathy, whereas there were only 5 per cent OBC MPs and MLAs in 1952, they were more than 20 per cent in 1989. I see this happening as the direct outcome of the impact of the Janata Dal.

Although the Janata Dal lost in 1991, the proportion of OBC representatives kept growing. The OBCs became a new vote bank in Indian politics and no party could afford to ignore them.

What made V P Singh, an upper-caste leader, see the OBCs as his constituency?

There are two interpretations to this. One is the tactical dimension "" he implemented the Mandal Commission report to counter then Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal who was pressuring him. So, to counter the kisan propaganda, Singh launched the OBCs as a vertical rather than a horizontal division.

But there is another dimension to this. One must not always look at politicians as cynical and self-serving. They can be idealists as well. When V P Singh left the Congress, in his speech, he referred to three people "" Ram Manohar Lohia, Jai Prakash Narayan and B R Ambedkar.

He made it a point to implement what Lohia advocated "" that 60 per cent of the seats should be reserved for OBCs. By this one move, the government converted to the socialist tradition. But I would say that principles as well as tactics were at work here.

And, of course, there was a countermobilisation....

The September 1990 rath yatra launched by L K Advani was not by chance. The idea it represented was: reunifying Hindus against Muslims in a conflict-free society "" that the enemy should be Muslims, not other castes.

But the BJP took another route to satisfy the burgeoning demands of the OBCs. It co-opted a number of OBC leaders into the organisation: Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar. We know that castes like Kurmis and Lodhis left leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav quickly to come into the BJP.

This was tactical. But it is to be noted that while these leaders were the public face of the BJP, the organisational apparatus was left unchanged.

So while the BJP fielded them in elections and gave them tickets and so on, there were few OBCs in the governments that the BJP led in the states. A problem arose when Kalyan Singh demanded more for the OBCs, behaving as a leader of the OBCs rather than Hindutva. But now they have come to terms with it.

The Congress couldn't do the same. Its vote banks were the upper castes and dalits or tribals. If these two caste groups made an alliance, the OBCs had to go elsewhere. So the countermobilisation was quite effective.

Do you think the Hindutva plank has been successful in subsuming the effect of Mandal?

The answer is yes and no. In Madhya Pradesh the effect of the OBCs is politically not very significant. So what Uma Bharti has done is to take the wind out of the sails of the Bahujan Samaj Party. The same goes for Rajasthan.

But in Bihar and UP, the BJP has been successful in building post-Mandal bases. For the first time, there is post-Mandal crystallisation. And the effect of the Mandal Commission report is not over. We will see a lot more of this kind of politics in the future.

The BJP is admitting all sorts of people in the party. How will this impact the party in the long run? Won't the party become a self-limiting entity?

The BJP should not dilute its identity too much. As you know, the RSS thinks in the long term rather than the short term. In that context, its own calculation is: let us not dilute.

But there is another aspect to this. The BJP knows it can't be all things to all people and absorb all society. So it is making alliances with other parties.

Also, it is difficult for them to go beyond the Hindi belt because Hindutva means different things to different people. Different people follow different Hinduism.

Take, for example, the Shiv Sena "" that is a Marathi version of Hindutva. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have their own version of Hindutva and the BJP is hardly there to lead. So the solution is to make alliances.

After Bal Thackeray, the BJP is most likely to take over the Shiv Sena. The same goes for Karunanidhi. In the end, the BJP will control all of India.

It helps them to have supportive state governments. The BJP wants its allies to take over more and more governments "" this helps it to expand its base. Shakhas are sprouting all over India, helped by supportive state governments.

Look at Chandrababu Naidu and the corresponding rise of the RSS in Andhra Pradesh. One reason the factional fights in Madhya Pradesh BJP did not surface was because Digvijay Singh had gone after RSS affiliates like Vidya Bharati. He banned civil servants from joining political parties. So the Sangh feels the pressure when its opponents are in power.

You completed your first book in 1996. What changes do you see in the BJP between then and now?

When it took over, the BJP was exclusionist. The bone of contention between it and the rest of the political spectrum was that only they were interested in Ram Mandir, Article 370, common civil code and so on. In the five years that it has ruled, no forward movement on any of these gives the signal that it is turning into a moderate body.

But the BJP is trying a different route. Today, its allies have become so docile and they swallowed Gujarat so easily that the BJP could return to its ethno-religious agenda with a vengeance.

Today, Ayodhya is back on the party's agenda. But the Telugu Desam Party is saying nothing. The socialists are saying nothing. This is leading the BJP to reassert Hindutva.

Its moderation is not as evident as it was in 1999. But with allies it can manage easily, it might not need to be militant to achieve its objective. Its allies will help it do that.

One story that is regularly trotted out is about the differences between Advani and Vajpayee. Why have the two never fought?

For 40 years, they have had a relationship. They don't fight because they are in the same boat. They are temperamentally different but ideologically the same.

Then there is the overweening effect of the RSS. The RSS teaches its cadres to obey. If you are given a responsibility and you play the personal card, you're finished.

If Atal had left the party over differences with Advani, what do you think would have happened? Despite his undeniable political charisma, he would have been finished like Balraj Madhok was.

The BJP has now floated its development plank. Is this tactical or is it moving away from Ayodhya?

Development is not different from nationalism. If you look at the discourse, it is not about removing poverty, it is about making India strong.

So the BJP is not for redistribution of wealth. It is for development as a link in nationalist economic thought. Growth and development are two different things.