Third Force

Today's society is asking for a new social contract for India. Several social classes are clamouring for a renegotiated settlement. The Dalit has emerged as a clear winner.

Forget Uttar Pradesh's social revolution -- even cosmopolitan Delhi has joined in a spectacular social upheaval. In the just-concluded MCD polls, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) earned 9.89 per cent of the votes and 17 seats. The party led in the north-west Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, stood second in north-east Delhi with 13.81 per cent vote share, and demonstrated its arrival in east Delhi with a 10.93 per cent vote share.

BSP's exceptional performance in the MCD polls anticipated the party's historic win in UP. In eight assembly segments in Delhi, BSP polled over 20 per cent of the votes. In 15 assembly segments, the party polled over 15 per cent of the votes. In other words, the BSP can hope to win at least 15 assembly seats and lay its claim on three Lok Sabha seats. Contrary to the popular perception that BSP performed well in crowded, low-lying areas, the elephant secured acceptability in posh areas such as Greater Kailash, Malviya Nagar, Kalkaji, and Model Town. And, Mayawati did not spare even a minute for the MCD polls.

Even as the MCD polls pointed to the dawn of a new politics in India, many questionable theories did the rounds on BSP's UP perfor-mance. One was that the people of UP wanted a change, and voted for BSP because the party was seen as the potential force to dethrone Mulayam Singh's goonda raj. Others said that non-Yadav castes voted for BSP, that UP's experiment could not be replicated elsewhere, and that the Dalit-Brahmin coalition too had some role to play. However, a deeper inquiry throws up the Dalit-Brahmin coalition as the principal driving force around which all factors came together.

The Dalit-Brahmin coalition is a new political phenomenon that works independently of 'anti-incumbency' or goonda raj situations. To return to the MCD polls, amidst the sealing controversy the elections were bitterly fought between Congress and BJP. Yet, in a polity that was believed to be highly polarised, BSP garnered 10 per cent of the votes -- a jump of about 90 per cent since the assembly elections of 2003. Only an exceptional political phenomenon can explain this jump in vote share. Was it a Dalit-Brahmin political undercurrent blowing inside the entire Hindi heartland?

We must understand why Indian society is asking Dalits to lead, why UP rejected both BJP and Congress, and how the Dalit-Brahmin thesis works.

By definition, the hierarchical Indian varnashram society is made up of two major social blocks -- Dwijas (Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya) and Shudras (Mandal castes).Untouchables/outcastes or Dalits are at the margin of the varna order. Tribals are segregated even demographically. By tradition, the Brahmin-led Dwijas have ruled society. Every social movement targeted Dwijas as tormentors and identified Brahmins, quite justifiably, for all the ills of Indian society.

After Independence, the hegemony of Dwijas started to crumble. Mandal implementation in 1991 was the final blow. While the desperate Dwijas fought Mandal, no other social class supported them. They lost the moral mandate to rule. Today, only two states of India, Uttarakhand and West Bengal, are ruled by Brahmins. Post-Mandal India was mesmerised by the slogan of social justice, and Shudras got an historic opportunity to restructure India on egalitarian lines. They got the moral mandate to rule society, with Dalits going along with them.

But Shudras, instead of breaking social hierarchies, set out to replace Dwija hegemony with their own, emerging as a partisan social block. Under them, even core democratic institutions faced unprecedented threat. Dalits found their right to adult franchise under attack.

Now, Shudras have lost the moral mandate to rule. Who would then rule India? Shudras rejected Dwijas, and vice versa. Dalits began rejecting both. The result was a hung Parliament and hung assemblies all these years. The decade-long social churning produced an unarticulated social consensus -- a third force with Dalits as social harmonisers.

Why didn't that consensus grow inside Congress and BJP, the two main national parties? Arguably, the Congress had the inner strength to play a social harmoniser. But it frittered away that historic opportunity by alienating friends and later choosing to fish in Mandal waters. Not only did it enter the pond when there was nothing left, it alienated both Dwijas and Dalits in north India. Meanwhile, as traditional anti-Congress voters, the Mandal castes refused to take Congress's call. The isolated Congress couldn't entice Muslims either.

BJP lacks the capacity to be a social harmoniser. Spurred by its successes in Maharashtra, Punjab and Uttarakhand, the BJP reinvented Kalyan Singh as the chief ministerial candidate, unmindful of the fact that OBCs were facing political isolation in UP. Angry Dwijas deserted BJP en masse. BJP's revival plan came a cropper.

BSP did not win because of Dalit-Brahmin votes alone. It got votes from other castes as well, in particular, from a section of MBCs. The perception that the Brahmins too will vote for BSP, prompted the rest to fall in line.

BSP will be instrumental in formation of the next government at the Centre. It will lay its claim on at least 140 Lok Sabha seats in the Hindi belt.

The writer is a Dalit ideologue.

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