Dalit Question and Communalism in Uttar Pradesh in the 2000s

Introduction

Uttar Pradesh (UP) has over the past two decades undergone rapid, in fact, destabilising change which makes the different responses by dalits mentioned earlier possible within short periods of time in recent years. A central reason is the waning of identity politics and the decline of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which played a central role in the 1990s. This has been accompanied by a new churning within the dalit community, creating internal divisions between a rising middle- or lower-middle class and the poorer and marginalised sections together with disillusionment with parties that represent them. Consequently, while in the 1990s there was consolidation of the dalit vote behind the BSP, in the 2000s there has been a fragmentation leaving the dalit community divided and incapable of a united response. Second, the decline of identity politics created space for the re-emergence of a desire for rapid economic development among all sections of the population in the state but most particularly among the poorer and disadvantaged sections. This has led to a shift from identity to aspiration among dalits, creating a desire for rapid economic advancement. Having achieved a modicum of political empowerment, identity and self-respect in the 1990s, dalits today are in search of a political party that can offer them economic betterment. These shifts have left them vulnerable to the promises of development and inclusion made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), particularly during election campaigns. Due to these changes, the riots have created polarisation not only between the Hindu and Muslim community but also between the latter and dalits. In order to locate the changing role of dalits during this tumultuous period, it is necessary to briefly discuss the nature of the riots, which is undertaken in the first part of the article. Against this backdrop, the second part discusses the subaltern aspect of the riots and role of dalits.

Everyday Communalism: Forms and Features ¹

The riots in eastern and western UP during the 2000s have been examined by using a model of institutionalised everyday communalism that takes forward the institutionalised riot system (IRS) developed by Paul Brass in his study of communal riots in Meerut city (Brass, 2006). This model allows us to analyse the new ways and means whereby communalism in the present phase is being manufactured by the Hindu right. While it shares some features of the IRS, it is different, fashioned primarily out of our field experiences.

A central differentiating element is the deliberate, planned and continuous everyday grassroots communal mobilisation over a long period of time by local leaders belonging to the area, recruited for the purpose and using small, mundane but provocative local incidents to gradually create animosity and social jealousies between Hindus and Muslims as well as dalits, who have lived together for a long time. These leaders belong to the area and are familiar with the people, their needs and interests. Some examples of these ‘leaders’ are members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini in eastern UP under Mahanth Adityanath and Jat leaders in western UP, such as Suresh Rana and Sanjeev Baliyan, used to gain support of the Jat community: in both cases, they are local MPs/MLAs and in charge of ground-level cadres who assist them by providing them information and organising meetings. Eastern UP, in fact, emerged as the laboratory of everyday communalism much earlier, and this experiment was replicated in western UP. This level also has political and sociocultural organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal apart from a host of other local organisations that come up during elections or periods of intense mobilisation. It is at this level that the work of institutionalising everyday communalism is carried out through agitations for cow protection, Love Jihad, beef politics, ghar vapasi, anti-conversion and random other agitations.

Second, the form of construction of communalism has undergone a marked change. Rather than large scale, statewide mobilisation and violent riots, seen during the RJBBM issue, what is attempted is a series of low-key, restrained and carefully calibrated communal incidents that avoid massive riots and through them a constant reproduction of a string of ‘communal moments’ suitable to create divides and for parties to mobilise votes and win elections (Narayan, 2014). A good example is the series of small incidents that took place between 2011 and 2013, which eventually led to the Muzaffarnagar riots and consolidated Hindu vote which enabled the BJP to win power.

Third, locations in which riots take place have undergone a substantial change in the contemporary period. Riots have spread into newer areas in western and eastern UP, areas which did not experience large-scale and violent riots earlier—not even during the RJBBM movement, apart from a riot in Muzaffarnagar in 1988. They are thus the products of conscious selection, planned and sustained, quiet, communal mobilisation by the BJP–RSS. Also, riots have spread into villages and peripheral areas of small towns for the first time. Finally, the institutionalisation of everyday communalism including its subaltern component and electoral politics are closely related; the former is a longer-term process and cultural goal, the latter is a more immediate political one and provides the power to take cultural goals forward.

In sum, the aim of everyday communalism is to install a permanent, deep-seated ‘normalised’ anti-Muslim prejudice making it acceptable in the popular discourse. This has helped the BJP during riots and the electoral campaign by creating a thick organisational structure for the party on the ground. A key component is that this is possible in societies undergoing rapid change such as an agrarian crisis, high levels of unemployment, shift to a post-identity or post-globalisation stage, leaving its members, particularly the younger generation, frustrated, open and vulnerable to communal mobilisation.

Subaltern Component of the Riots

The ideology and strategies used by the BJP–RSS during its grassroots mobilisation for creating everyday communalism has a strong subaltern component, which led dalits to move towards the BJP, witnessed in the 2014 and 2017 elections. For this Hindutva, conceived in the 1980s–1990s as a sociocultural and religious ideology for political mobilisation, was redefined. While in the 1980s–1990s when the BJP was identified with the upper castes, in the 2000s, the attempt was to create a single Maha-Hindu identity through the subalternisation of Hindutva. Everyday communalism in the 2000s is based on an ideology of ‘non-Brahminical Hindutva’ which argues for a united Hindu community different from its traditional upper caste variety and has created a subaltern component in the ranks of supporters and perpetrators. It is the non-Jatav section among dalits who are targetted as they are not attracted to the BSP. Further, the BJP was able to deftly weave together the promise of social inclusion within Hindu identity with rapid economic development to create a strong and stable nation for all castes/communities visible in the slogans like, ‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas’.

Two significant developments in UP in the 2000s made this possible: globalisation and cultural modernisation. UP is a backward state, and unlike the states of southern and western India, globalisation did not lead to better growth here. Successive regimes of the 1990s–2000s in UP were unable to put forward effective policies for development, seen particularly in the failure to provide jobs. Studies point to a deepening of the agrarian crisis––problems in the sugar industry (Damodaran & Singh, 2007) as also the decline in traditional industries such as brassware, leather, lock industry and weaving and carpet making––creating distress (Pai & Kumar, 2018). Consequently, in the 2000s, rising aspiration for economic change and improvement together with much frustration and unhappiness became evident among large sections of dalits whose hopes of economic advancement were not being met. The impact of these changes on the Hindu, dalit and Muslim communities made them prone to jealousy, competition and vulnerable to communal mobilisation by the BJP.

At the same time, sections of dalits, particularly the smaller, poorer and marginalised groups entering the mainstream and undergoing a process of modernisation, influenced by Hindutva ideology, aspired to be part of the larger identity of ‘Hindu’. The use of cultural strategy during grassroots mobilisation by the BJP is not totally new as ‘politically motivated communal forces’ since the mid-1990s have been silently and ingenuously working among dalits (Narayan, 2009). However, it assumed importance in the 2000s because smaller sub-castes, particularly those in eastern UP, began to enter the democratic arena. As dalits are highly fragmented with competitive and conflicting relations along subregional and sub-caste lines, an approach of wooing individual sub-castes was viewed as useful, as each had its own ideas, heroes and stories which could be used for mobilisation.

During the 2000s, local Hindutva leaders, including those belonging to organisations headed by Yogi Adityanath were unearthing local histories and myths through which they could link dalits to Hindutva and gradually build walls between them and others who had formed the composite culture of the villages. This strategy, for example, is visible in the linking of three dalit communities, the Pasis, Musahars and Nishads (Narayan, 2009) found in high numbers in eastern UP, with the Ramayana.

Hence, what we are witnessing is ‘politically induced cultural change’, the process by which political elites select aspects of a group’s culture, attach a new value and meaning to them and use them as symbols to mobilise the group (Brass, 1991). Consequently, while in the 1990s, for dalits, the Hindu upper castes were the ‘other’ to be challenged, today an attempt is being made to Hinduise the former and bring them closer to the latter, rendering the Muslim the ‘other’ for a united Hindu community. In western UP, media reports show that a ninth of all communal incidents after May 2014 were dalit–Muslim confrontations in villages (Pai & Kumar, 2018, p. 207). In Mau, our fieldwork revealed competition between Muslims selling vegetable and meat and dalits selling pork, which was cleverly used by Hindutva forces to foment communal tension.

However, following the 2014 elections, the relationship between dalits and the BJP-NDA government has undergone change. The latter made two significant attempts to consolidate dalit support in 2015––first, by appropriating the dalit icon, Dr Ambedkar, beginning with the laying of foundation stones for various memorial buildings in Delhi, Mumbai and London and setting up a committee to celebrate his 125th birthday and, second, by the installing of Ram Nath Kovind, a dalit from UP as the President of India. However, a number of incidents beginning in 2015, and the lack of remedial steps by the BJP, have angered dalits such as the suicide of Rohith Vemula, the Una incident when seven dalits were assaulted by cow vigilantes, the Saharanpur incident in 2016 when dalits were attacked by middle- and upper-caste villagers and attacks on dalits at the Bhima-Koregaon commemoration in January 2018 (Pai, 2018, April 4).

It was the Supreme Court ruling on 20 March 2018, which it was felt would dilute the SC/ST Act, and the apparent reluctance and delay by the government in filing a review petition against the Court’s order that led to exploding dalit anger (Pai, 2018, April 4). While India has witnessed agitations by dalit in the past, the scale of the protest which spread across several states––11 persons killed and many injured, public property damaged, the use of social media and visible anger on the streets––is perhaps unprecedented in recent times. While the central government was quick to blame opposition parties of encouraging the protest, these developments have fuelled a new, all-India dalit consciousness and galvanising younger leaders such as Jignesh Mevani and Prakash Ambedkar who are today leading mass movements: the ideas and forms of mobilisation used by the older leadership no longer seem to appeal. With rising political consciousness and aspirations, the younger generation of dalits today is upset; they feel that the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi used their support to win the 2014 and 2017 elections but has not fulfilled the huge promises it made during the electoral campaign. The result of these rapid changes is that dalits, unlike in the 1990s, are today divided into a number of groups––pro-BSP, pro-BJP and new organisations such as the Bhim Army and other smaller organisations in different states (Pai, 2018, April 4).

The radical shift in dalit support is reflected in three recent by-elections to the Lok Sabha in eastern and western UP. In the Gorakhpur and Phulphur election on 14 March, the defeat of the BJP points to significant cracks in the enormous Hindutva citadel built by Adityanath in eastern UP and the breakdown of three factors that held sway—fear, communal vote-bank politics and the hope of development (Pai, 2018, March 17). They signify the defeat of the highly divisive agenda of the BJP, its attempt to spread fear based on communal polarisation and the promises of development made by Modi, Adityanath and other leaders during the electoral campaigns of 2014 and 2017.

The Adityanath government has completed a year in office, but its development record has proved disappointing to voters. More important, the victory of the SP candidates suggests that Behenji (Mayawati) in regaining her popularity among her cadre, managed to convince dalit voters to shift to the SP. While the BJP and SP fielded candidates from dominant other backward caste (OBC) communities in eastern UP, the victory of the latter is due to the support of dalits. There are around 550,000 dalit voters in Phulpur constituency who have traditionally voted for the BSP. BJP leaders, caught unaware by the sudden announcement of the alliance, were wary of at least 50 per cent of the dalit vote shifting to the SP candidate.

In Kairana, the defeat of the BJP in May 2018 was due to Jat anger over mounting arrears for sugar cane supplied to sugar mills (Pai, 2018, June 4). The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) was able to take full advantage of the economic distress caused particularly to small farmers. However, according to our field study again it is the dalits, particularly Jatavs under Mayawati’s directive, who united to support the SP–BSP–RLD–Congress alliance; the chief of the Bhim Army issued a letter supporting the BSP from jail. The RLD candidate, Tabassum Hassan, is a Gujjar not a Muley Jat, and has been a BSP MP which makes her attractive to the dalits. It is mainly the OBCs, particularly the Sainis and Kashyaps, who supported the BJP together with the upper and trading castes. The BJP’s politics of uniting the Hindus, including the subalterns, does not seem to have worked in this election due to their disillusionment with the BJP’s failure in delivering on developmental promises and the increasing atrocities on dalits in incidents such as in Saharanpur (Pai, 2018, April 4). Thus, everywhere in UP, dalits have played a role in the defeat of the BJP in the bypolls since 2014.

Conclusion

This article has tried to discuss what happens to the Dalit Question and intercommunity relations during a period of rising communal tension and riots. It shows that UP, with its divisive communal past, economic backwardness, pervasive inequalities, continuing conservative outlook and entrenched caste and communal identities, has produced a specific variant or type of communalism different from that found in other states. This variant has two seminal features. On the one hand, the BJP’s strategy of ‘quiet communalism’ without riots has the capacity of creating much greater and permanent divides between Hindu and Muslim communities than in the past. The process has continued after 2014 as the BJP has obtained an absolute majority at the centre and in UP. On the other hand, by creating a subaltern component to its Hindutva ideology and strategies, the BJP has been able to bring a section of dalits closer to the upper and backward castes, earlier viewed as their oppressors.

While earlier the dalit movement challenged oppression and domination by the upper castes, today dalits form part of the larger Hindu community; it is the Muslims with whom they enjoyed a close relationship who have become the ‘enemy’. A fallout of the riots has been a polarisation between communities which changed the social fabric of the state. These changes have particularly affected dalits who shifted their support to the BJP in 2014 and 2017, though post-2015, unhappy with the BJP, they have joined hands with the SP–BSP to defeat the latter in important bypolls in UP. But whether the SP–BSP–Congress alliance will continue in future elections remains open. Also, since dalits do not constitute a monolith, the likelihood of the BJP obtaining the support of some sections by using the mobilisational strategy of non-Brahminical Hindutva among the non-Jatav sections in the 2019 elections remains a distinct possibility.

Rapid social change, changing political economy and cultural transformation have played a central role in these developments. A fusion of rising cultural aspirations and deep economic anxieties among dalits in UP, which remains an economically backward state, and where against the backdrop of globalisation a deepening agrarian crisis, unemployment and caste inequalities are widespread, has created a fertile ground for a new kind of communal mobilisation. Rather than identity which was important in defining social relations earlier for dalits, today social jealousies, cultural ambitions and economic concerns are driving forces. Hence, an ideological combination of social conservatism and promises of rapid development for all together with a social base among dalits has made Hindutva more appealing and acceptable to a larger number of Hindus belonging to all socio-economic levels. It is the upwardly mobile, new middle classes, the new rich, the better-off lower castes, anxious to obtain recognition, who are most prone to fall prey to religious and ethnic intolerance.

A question which arises is will this new social Hindutva coalition with the dalits, stitched together by the BJP, be able to sustain itself. It is a heterogeneous coalition in which the upper castes are still numerically dominant and the dalits and backwards are jostling for space and power. After the formation of a government in UP, the OBCs have emerged as a strong aggressive force as the BJP has given them plum posts, with lesser importance being given to the dalits. Neither the BJP government at the centre nor in the states in the Hindi heartland has shown evidence of substantial policies that could help dalits. While new strategies and promises of social inclusion and economic advancement enabled the BJP to emerge as a dominant force in 2014, it remains to be seen if it can be sustained enabling the party to perform well in the 2019 elections.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.