Keeping up with UP: Can Congress-SP quota card breach the Sanatan narrative?

Singh’s announcement divided the society into pro and anti-quota groups. As the quota issue raged in the country, a worried Sangh Parivar launched the ‘Rath Yatra’ in September-October 1990, which covered 10,000 km in 10 states. The rest, as we are well aware, is history.

Now, as the BJP, under the leadership of Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, aggressively pushes its agenda, the Opposition has, once again, fallen back on the time-tested social justice theme to protect their voters from getting hijacked by the Hindutva bandwagon.

In an attempt to thwart the growing consolidation of the Hindus under the Sanatani banner, they are also pushing emotive issues of the Constitution, reservation and caste census. The Constitution issue paid dividends in the 2024 general elections. Can the quota promise also deliver votes?

Ironically, while the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar have gained from quota politics, the Congress has not succeeded in penetrating the vote bank of the lower castes.

Recently, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reiterated his party’s commitment to social justice, stating that the Congress, if voted to power, would remove the 50% cap placed on quota by the court. He said it during his visit to Bihar, which is heading for polls later in 2025. Earlier, Gandhi made a similar assertion in the Lok Sabha. The immediate reaction of the people was negative as many said it would nullify merit. However, his announcement may have appealed to the lower castes that dominate and decide the elections in Bihar.

MP Dubey, former head of the political science department at Allahabad University, believe that the statement was nothing but an emotional ploy to stop the lower backward castes from getting swept by religious sentiments in today’s highly charged atmosphere.

Shashi Kant Pandey of Baba Bhimrao Ambedkar University said the issue of caste, Constitution and quota was tested in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. “By raising the quota issue, Rahul Gandhi is trying to address a constituency that comprises 70% of the population. The BJP is also worried as they have not been their core voters, but beneficiaries of the schemes. The BJP had largely bulldozed the narrative of caste by Hindutva and plethora of welfare schemes but now quota and caste census are denting their efforts.”

Gandhi and SP leader Akhilesh Yadav have been consistently playing the caste card, raising the issues of caste census, quota and the Constitution. The question is would quota and caste census fetch them votes in the forthcoming assembly elections in Delhi and Bihar?

The Congress is actually moving in untested territory, as with the traditional vote bank of Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits, it had not dabbled in the backward-forward caste politics until the resurgent BJP pushed its Hindutva agenda. The SP had been the face of social justice in UP as they got the bulk of support from the backward castes. The backwards had rarely accepted a forward caste leader as their “neta” (leader) as they doubted their sincerity to the cause.

History proves that champions of quota met their nemesis in the electoral arena of modern India especially when the protagonists were from the upper castes.

Both former PM VP Singh and former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh had pledged to change the social justice system. One implemented the Mandal while the other mooted quota within quota.

Singh, who gave the call of “vyavyastha parivartan (change in social system)”, failed to resurrect himself in the latter part of his political career. Many agree with his close lieutenant Satya Pal Malik who had said, “You have left a legacy of divisiveness for which the nation would never forgive you”.

For those who have not kept track of UP politics, the Janata Dal’s tally of Lok Sabha seats in UP fell from 54 in 1989 to 22 in 1991 (the post- Mandal scenario) though Singh was expecting a Mandal miracle. Janata Dal disintegrated and disappeared while Singh then tried to wage a renewed battle for farmers and rarely talked about Mandal.

Rajnath Singh’s experiment with quota within quota for OBCs and Dalits in early 2000 boomeranged. What was touted as the BJP’s trump card failed in the electoral arena as it failed to divide the Opposition precious vote banks of OBCs and Dalits. The BJP ended up with less than 100 seats in the Vidhan Sabha of 403 in the 2002 assembly elections.

The Congress is now trying to rebuild the party on the reservation plank. Its national president Mallikarjun Kharge is a Dalit but rarely is his caste flaunted. Gandhi belongs to the upper caste. Thus, the Congress will need allies like the RJD in Bihar and the SP in UP to gain mileage from quota and caste census.