Stuck between Bhagwat and Bihar polls: How the reservation policy could hurt BJP doubly

The BJP should read an interesting chapter from Babar’s history. It might learn a few lessons from it.

In 1494, Babur became the king of Fergana after the death of his father in an accident. But Babur was not content with a small kingdom; he wanted to rule Samarkand, the city of his ancestors. So, in 1497, Babur laid siege on Samarkand for seven months and conquered it. But while he was fighting for Samarkand, some of his family members and nobles rebelled in Fergana. Within a few weeks, Babur lost control over Fergana and as he was marching to regain it, a rival king occupied Samarkand, leaving him without a kingdom.

The BJP is reliving this chapter from Babur’s history. While it is fighting a tough battle in Bihar, the quota stir by Patels in Gujarat has rocked its home turf.

The Patels are nearly 15 percent of Gujarat’s electorate. An overwhelming majority of them are supporters of the BJP. Take them out of the BJP’s nearly 48% vote-share in the 2012 Assembly polls and what do you get? Even if the Patels do not vote for the Congress; even if they abstain, prefer NOTA or support a third party, the difference between the two parties - nearly nine percent - gets wiped out. Without the Patels, as Hardik Patel (leader of the Patidar stir) is fond of saying, the lotus will not bloom in Gujarat.

The Gujarat effect is visible in the saffron parivar. When RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told Panchjanya recently that he favours a committee for re-examining the existing reservation system, he was voicing the concerns that would have been discussed in Nagpur, Ahmedabad and New Delhi. Bhagwat must have realised that when the most influential community from the state that has been marketed as a model of governance and development begins to revolt against the quota system, the resentment must be running deep in the veins of the society.

Gujarat is the Parivar’s bastion. Now that the Patel movement has unleashed a chain of events that could lead to social churning and realignment of political loyalties in the state, the Sangh chief understands there would be a heavy price to pay if the RSS - traditionally opposed to reservation since it ends up dividing Hindus on caste lines - remains silent while the Gujarat drama unravels.

Unfortunately for Bhagwat, the rebellion in the Parivar’s backyard has come when the BJP is in the middle of a battle for Bihar. And what it does to douse the fire in its backyard can have the opposite impact in Bihar.

Bihar has rarely been swayed by the Sangh Parivar agenda or its Hindutva rhetoric. At the peak of the Ram Mandir movement, even after LK Advani’s arrest by Lalu Yadav, the BJP managed to win just five seats in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections. This was in stark contrast to adjoining Uttar Pradesh, where communal polarisation helped BJP pocket 51 seats. In Bihar, Kamandal is irrelevant, Mandal is supreme.

So, while Bhagwat tries to manage the unrest in the Parivar’s Fergana, the BJP is worried about the consequences of the Sangh’s anti-reservation stance on the battle for Bihar. “We are not in favour of a review of the reservation system,” the BJP quickly contradicted the Sangh chief’s statement in a bid to ensure it does not alienate beneficiaries of reservation system in Bihar. The BJP knows that it will get wiped out in Bihar if the elections turn into a referendum on the reservation system, something that Lalu Yadav is keen on.

It would be a challenge for the BJP to control the consequences of the Patidar movement. For decades, the BJP was a party of Brahmins, Banias and Kshatriyas (Tilak, Taraazu and Talwar, as Mayawati memorably said). Its upper caste support base allowed the Sangh and the BJP to convey the impression of being anti reservation. But, the BJP today has a much larger social base, it has almost every caste and community under its tent. And the inherent contradictions of a bigger Parivar have begun to emerge, leading to fights between its members.

Dalit leader and BJP MP Udit Raj is now threatening to organise a rally in December to counter Hardik Patel. He claims that the Patel agitation in Gujarat is a conspiracy to end reservation for the SC/ST community.

With the Sangh and Patels pulling it in one direction and Bihar and Dalits pulling it in another, it would be interesting to see if the BJP manages to hold its ground, or, like Babar, ends up falling between Fergana and Samarkand.