 "Keshav Prasad Maurya")
The political life and times of Keshav Prasad Maurya, Uttar Pradesh’s deputy chief minister, reinforce the congenital contradictions in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s endeavour to marry “Mandal” and “Kamandal” in a unified whole. It is not easy to reconcile a pan-Hindu identity, derived from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s Hindutva concepts, with the aspirations and ambitions of the less empowered castes which saw statutory reservations in educational institutions and government jobs as the greatest facilitator of their upward mobility, although this pitted them in direct conflict with the upper castes.
The Hindutva-caste antagonisms dogged the BJP in 1991 when the
