The pendulum politics of Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal(U) chief Nitish Kumar, who swung between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-Congress axis several times in recent years, signifies the social kinetics unleashed by the rise of Hindutva. The evident opportunism in the renewal of the BJP-JD(U) alliance is only superficial.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has subsumed the social justice rhetoric within the rubric of Hindutva. This Hindutva 2.0 has thrown old tropes of social justice politics into a tailspin. Mr. Kumar’s latest somersault is his last attempt to hold on to his base — he concluded that his political longevity would be higher as an ally of the BJP than as an opponent. The BJP, on the other hand, has split the Opposition and derailed an attempted revival of Mandal politics, through its newest alliance.
Various strands of subaltern politics shared a common scepticism about Hinduism, even as nationalist politics sought to advance a composite Hindu identity through appeasement and coercion. Socialists, the forebears of the current social justice stock, hoped to use the Jan Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, to undermine the dominance of the Congress. Socialists saw the Congress as the vehicle of upper caste dominance and hoped they could opportunistically ally with Hindutva.
Editorial | Changing partners: On Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his recurrent political somersaults
Hindutva remained a marginal player within the spectrum of anti-Congress politics until the birth of Ayodhya politics in the 1980s. Terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir, supported by sections of Sikhs and Muslims, provided a helpful backdrop to the rise of Hindutva, but the simultaneous rise of Mandal politics raised a barrier. But all social justice groups were not opposing the BJP. Mr. Kumar, under his mentor George Fernandes, split from the Janata family and joined hands with the BJP in 1994.
The relations between Hindutva and caste-based social justice politics remained fluid, with both sides looking to take advantage of the other, even as tensions bubbled underneath. Mr. Modi’s proclamations about his own Other Backward Class (OBC) origins began making a dent in the flanks of social justice politics by 2014.
In 2015, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s call for a rethink of caste reservations brought forth a resurgence of social justice politics and propelled the JD(U)-RJD alliance to victory in the Bihar Assembly election. But the alliance lasted only for two years. Since then, Mr. Bhagwat has made compendious arguments in favour of continuing with reservations for an indefinite period, resolving a fundamental friction between Mandal and Kamandal. The move in the past one year to infuse a new life into Mandal politics through the call for a caste census did not gain momentum.
Mr. Kumar’s government conducted a caste survey in Bihar and its results were published, but it did not turn out to be a climactic political event. Meanwhile, Mr. Modi’s speech at the inauguration of the temple in Ayodhya recently amplified the subaltern legends that embellish the epic of Ram.
Hindutva model of social justice
Subaltern Hindutva thrives by expanding representation in politics and cultural spaces that are under construction in the new nationalist project. Subaltern classes that allied with Muslims since 1990s in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to gain political power find three attractions in the Hindutva model of social justice.
First, it allows numerically weaker OBC groups to break away from the Yadav-, Jatav-, and Jat-led politics in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Secondly, the BJP encouraged OBCs to decouple from Muslims and increase participation in repurposed great traditions. This is presented as upward mobility.
Thirdly, the BJP offers subaltern classes better political representation. Mr. Modi presents himself as a member of the OBC community; the BJP elected a Dalit followed by a tribal woman to the highest office in the country. The combination of these factors have made conventional social justice politics redundant at the moment.
The BJP model has its own contradictions that might sharpen at some point in future. For the moment, the Sangh Parivar has moved to the centre on the question of social justice, and Mr. Bhagwat’s changed view on reservations is only one indicator of that. The pendulum of social justice politics might stop swinging for now. Mr. Kumar’s opportunism might end with the complete assimilation of his politics by the BJP.
