The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes

in the Hindi Belt

CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT

THE RISE OF THE OTHER BACKWARD CLASSES (OBCs) is certainly one of

the main developments in the Hindi-belt politics over the last ten years. The OBCs
are castes in the Indian social system that are situated above the Untouchables but
below the forward castes (the "twice born," Brahmins, Kshatriyas [warriors] and
Vaishyas [merchants]) and the intermediate castes (mostly peasant proprietors
and even dominant castes). They form the bulk of the Shudras-the fourth category
(varna) of the classical Hindu social arrangement. The OBCs, whose professional
activity is often as field-workers or artisans, represent about half of the Indian
population, but they have occupied a subaltern position so far. Their rise for the
first time seriously questions upper-caste domination of the public sphere.
The over-representation of these elite groups in the political sphere has
always been more pronounced in the Hindi-speaking states than anywhere else. In
the South, and even in the West, the upper castes lost ground early, largely
because they were smaller in number---in Tamil Nadu Brahmins account for only
3 percent of the population whereas they constitute almost 10 percent in Uttar
Pradesh (a state where the upper castes altogether represent one-fifth of society).
But the upper castes remained politically dominant in the Hindi belt also because
of the pattern of land ownership that enabled them, especially the Rajputs, to
consolidate their grasp over the countryside as zamindars, jagirdars, or taluqdars
under the British and to retain some of their influence in spite of the efforts
toward land reform after 1947.
In fact, these notables were the backbone of the Congress Party's
network, and for decades the social deficit of democracy in North India resulted
from the clientelistic politics of this party. The Congress co-opted vote-bank
'owners,' who were often upper-caste landlords, and Untouchable leaders, whose
rallying around the ruling party deprived their group of some important
spokesmen. There were even fewer lower-caste leaders within the Congress
Party, the lower castes being closer to the opposition parties, especially the
Socialists, or the "independents" (Brass 1980); they remained marginalized also
for this reason. Until the early 1970s, the upper-caste Members of Parliament
(MPs) represented more than 50 percent of the North Indian MPs as against less
than 5 percent for intermediate castes and, at the maximum, 10 percent for the
Other Backward Classes.

Christophe Jaffrelot is a Research Fellow at CERI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches

Internationales) and Editor-in-Chief of Critique internationale. I would like to acknowledge the
comments of the participants to the AAS conference of which this paper has emerged, especially those
of the two discussants, Paul Brass and Ashutosh Varshney.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

Historically, in North India two kinds of approaches have prevailed among

those who attempted to dislodge the upper-caste, urban establishment from its
positions of power. The first one concentrated on their mobilization as peasants
(kisans). It was initiated by members of cultivating castes such as Chhotu Ram (a
Jat) in Punjab between the 1920s and the 1940s (Gopal 1977), and Swami
Sahajanand (a Bhumihar) who became a leading figure of the Bihar Kisan Sabha in
the 1930s.1 The second one relied more on caste identities and was primarily
articulated by socialist leaders such as Rammanohar Lohia, who regarded caste as
the main obstacle towards an egalitarian society. While the 'kisan school'
endeavored to gather together all those engaged in cultivating work on the basis
of socioeconomic demands, the caste-oriented Socialists attempted to form an
alliance of the non-elite groups mainly on the basis of affirmative action
techniques: they asked for caste-based quotas, especially in the administration.
The social groups represented by these two approaches had much in common but
did not coincide. The proponents of "kisan politics" came primarily from the rank
of peasant-proprietors who tried to mobilize "the peasants" - as if that were a
social category without internal differentiation - to promote their own interest
and maintain lower castes under their influence. The caste-based approach was
rather conceived for defending the latter.
Over the last decades, these two strategies have contributed to the rise of first
the middle-caste peasants and then the OBCs in North Indian politics. The first
significant changes occurred in the 1960s when they entered the Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh legislative assemblies in massive numbers under the auspices of the
socialist parties and Charan Singh. Kisan politics asserted itself in the 1970s and
1980s, thanks to Charan Singh and his lieutenants. But in the late 1980s and
1990s, the anti-establishment agenda was taken over, on the political scene, by
heirs of the socialist movement within the Janata Dal, whose quota politics
culminated in the implementation of the recommendations of the Mandal
Commission report. As a result, the kisan front broke down along caste lines, the
peasant proprietors from the intermediate castes distancing themselves from the
OBCs. But do the latter have more coherence and can they resist the new upper-
caste dominated, BJP-led ruling coalition?

Quota Politics and Kisan Politics

Few men and political parties in North India have tried to promote the
cause of the lower castes since Independence. The Congress Party was dominated,
at the Center, by progressive leaders a la Nehru who did not regard caste as a
relevant category for state-sponsored social change, and it relied anyway on a
network of conservative notables. None of them was truly interested in
acknowledging the needs of the Other Backward Classes even though this
expression was originally used by Nehru in his first speech, on his Objectives
Resolution, on December 13, 1946, before the Constituent Assembly. He
announced that special measures were to be taken in favor of "minorities,
backward and tribal areas and depressed and other backward classes"
(Constituent Assembly Debates 1989, 1:59) but did not elaborate further and,
interestingly, senior congressmen such as K. M. Munshi resisted any effort to
clarify who these OBCs were (1:697). Article 340 of the Indian Constitution voted
on January 26, 1950, merely stated:

The President [of the Republic) can by decree nominate a Commission formed by
persons he considers to be competent to investigate, within the Indian territory, on
the condition of classes suffering of backwardness as well in social as in educational
terms, and on the problems they meet, the way of proposing measures which could
be taken by the Central or a State Government in order to eliminate difficulties and
improve their condition.
(Government of India n.d., 178)

1 See his book Khet Mazdoor in Hauser 1994.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

The first Backward Classes Commission was appointed on January 29, 1953
under the chairmanship of a former disciple of Gandhi, Kaka Kalelkar (Government
of India 1955). Its report relied heavily on the concept of caste for defining the
Other Backward Classes. Caste was not the only criterion but it was a key element
and the Commission, therefore, established a list of 2,399 castes, representing
about 32 percent of the Indian population, as forming the bulk of the "socially and
educationally backward classes" that needed affirmative action programs.
The report was rejected by Nehru's government. G. B. Pant, the Home Minister,
objected that "With the establishment of our society on the socialist pattern ...,
social and other distinctions will disappear as we advance towards that goal"
(Memorandum, {n.d.}, 2.) Secondly, he disapproved of the use of caste as the most
prominent criterion for identifying the backward classes. He considered that "the
recognition of the specified castes as backward may serve to maintain and even
perpetuate the existing distinctions on the basis of caste" (ibid.). The report was
tabled before the Parliament accompanied by a Memorandum by Pant on
September 3, 1956, but was not even discussed (Government of India 1980, 2). In
May 1961, the Nehru government eventually decided that there was no need for
an all-India list of the OBCs---and that, consequently, there would be no
reservation policy at the Center. Even though they were responsible for Article
340 of the Constitution, Congressmen were obviously reluctant to cater to the
needs of the lower castes, either because of sheer conservatism or socialist ideas.
So far as the Communists were concerned, they were very reluctant to take
caste into account, holding the view that this social category was bound to be
submerged by that of class. For a long time the Socialists were the only ones to
consider the lower castes as a pertinent social and political entity.

The Socialists and Affirmative Action for

the Lower Castes
The first to recognize the importance of the lower castes was probably
Rammanohar Lohia. Although he was from a merchant caste and had been
influenced by Marxism, Lohia decided to fight for the cause of the lower castes. To
those who favored an analysis in terms of class, he objected that "caste is the most
overwhelming factor in Indian life" (Lohia 1979, 79):

Many socialists honestly but wrongly think that it is sufficient to strive for economic
equality and caste inequality will vanish of itself as a consequence. They fail to
comprehend economic inequality and caste inequality as twin demons, which have
both to be killed.
(20)

Lohia therefore became one of the staunchest supporters of positive

discrimination---what he called "unequal opportunities' not only in favor of the
Scheduled Castes but also of the backward castes:

When everybody has an equal opportunity, castes with the five thousand years old
traditions of liberal education would be on top. Only the exceptionally gifted from
the lower-castes would be able to break through this tradition. [....] To make this
battle a somewhat equal encounter, unequal opportunities would have to be
extended, to those who have so far been suppressed.
(1979, 96)

According to him, the Marxist views about revolution or Nehru's policy of

nationalizing private properties amount to "vested-interest socialism" because
none of these things would change Indian society:

Workers with the brain are a fixed caste in Indian society; together with the soldier
caste, they are the high-caste. Even after the completed economic and political
revolution, they would continue to supply the managers of the state and industry.
The mass of the people would be kept in a state of perpetual physical and mental
lowliness, at least comparatively. But the position of the high-caste would then be
justified on grounds of ability and in economic terms as it is now on grounds of birth

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

or talent. That is why the intelligentsia of India which is overwhelmingly the high-
caste, abhors all talk of a mental and social revolution of a radical change in respect
of language or caste or the bases of thought. It talks generally and in principle
against caste. In fact, it can be most vociferous in its theoretical condemnation of
caste, so long as it can be allowed to be equally vociferous in raising the banner of
merit and equal opportunity. What it loses in respect of caste by birth, it gains in
respect of caste by merit. Its merit concerning speech, grammar, manners, capacity
to adjust, routine efficiency is undisputed. Five thousands years have gone into the
building of this undisputed merit.

(1979, 96-97)

Lohia did not entertain any romantic idea of the Indian plebe - "the Shudra too
has his shortcomings. He has an even narrower sectarian outlook" (1979, 13)-but
in spite of this for Lohia, the Shudra deserved special treatment, especially in one
direction: he should be "pushed to positions of power and leadership" (13). He did
not regard affirmative action in the education system as desirable2 but
emphasized the need for quotas in the administration and for the election
candidates. Obviously, reservations were intended to give a share of power to the
lower castes; it was an empowerment scheme. In 1959, the third national
conference of the Socialist Party expressed the wish that at least 60 percent of the
posts in the administration be reserved for Other Backward Classes (135). This
recommendation was reiterated at the fifth annual session of the party, in April
1961, a few months before the third general elections (142). Subsequently, the
program or election manifestos of Lohia's party promoted the notion of
"preferential opportunities," which was justified by the special nature of caste
society, as in the program adopted by the first Conference of the Samyukta
Socialist Party (SSP) held in April 1966:

It should be remembered that equality and equal opportunity are not synonymous.
In a society characterised by a hierarchical structure based on birth, the principle of
equal opportunity cannot produce an equal society. The established, conventional
notions about merit and ability must result in denial of opportunities in actual practice
for backward castes, harijans [Scheduled Castes), adibasis [Scheduled Tribes] etc. The
principle of preferential opportunities alone will ensure that the backward sections will
catch up with the advanced ones in a reasonable period of time.
(Mohan et al. 1997, 258-59)

This document again recommended a quota of 60 percent for the

backward sections of society-comprising then the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled
Tribes, OBCs, and women---but extended it to "all spheres," not only the
administration, but also the education system and the assemblies. The weakness
of the "people's movement," according to the document, resulted from its
divisions, and also from "the preponderance of upper-caste leadership in [the]
major political parties" (Mohan et al. 1997, 260). To show the way, the SSP
nominated a large number of candidates from non-elite groups, and the socialists
had a larger number of OBC Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) elected
than other political parties in the states where they achieved their best scores, in
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In the latter state, in the 1967 elections, the SSP had
almost 40 percent of its MLAs coming from the lower castes (as against 22 percent
on the Congress side) (Mitra 1992, 120).

2 Hetried to justify this stand in 1958 by saying: "Let the backward castes ask for two
or three shifts in schools and colleges, if necessary, but let them never ask for the
exclusion of any child of India from the portals of an educational institution" (1979, 104)

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Obviously, Lohia's strategy bore its most significant electoral fruits in Bihar,
the birthplace and cradle of socialism in India since the foundation of the Congress
Socialist Party in the state capital in 1934. In 1967, Lohia's party, the Samyukta
Socialist Party (SSP), the Communists, and the Jana Sangh formed a majority
coalition called the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD, the united parliamentarian
group). However, the socialist leaders were, in a way, victims of their own strategy
of promotion and mobilization of the lower castes. While this policy largely
explained their success and the election of a large number of lower-caste MLAs,
especially Yadavs whose number had increased so much as to be just behind the
Rajputs (14.8 percent as against 24.1 percent) (Blair 1980, 68), this group did not
show much commitment to the SSP. Soon after the elections, Bindeshwari Prasad
Mandal, a Yadav who was to preside over the second Backward Classes
Commission in 1979, defected and formed the Shoshit Dal, "the party of the
oppressed" with forty lower-caste MLA dissidents from different sides, including
the SSP. Madhu Limaye, one of Lohia's lieutenants, lamented that "as soon as
power came, SSP men broke up into caste groups. They equated .... [Lohia's] policy
with casteism! . . . Ministers developed affinities on caste lines. Castemen
belonging to other parties were felt to be closer than one's own Party comrades
belonging to other castes" (Limaye 1988, 155-56).
In fact, these developments had some positive aspects. Castes, eventually,
got transformed into interest groups, which meant that lower-caste people could
not be integrated in vertical linkages as easily as during the heyday of the
Congress Party domination. The lower castes may have lent themselves to
manipulations by political entrepreneurs like B. P. Mandal, but greater caste
consciousness also implied a stronger rejection of vertical arrangements and a
growing solidarity between lower-caste MLAs from different parties. These
phenomena had become so pronounced that to topple the SVD government the
Congress had no other choice but to support one of the Shoshit Dal leaders; thus
in February 1968 B. P. Mandal became the first OBC Chief Minister of Bihar. He
was to be followed by other non-elite leaders. Out of the nine Chief Ministers who
governed the state from March 1967 to December 1971, only two belonged to the
higher castes.

Charan Singh and the Mobilization of

the Farmers

Besides the socialist approach recognizing caste as a lever of social domination

and the corollary caste-based mobilization and affirmative action, North India saw
in the late 1960s the shaping of an alternative strategy by Charan Singh which
aimed at empowering the peasantry. The fact that "the Chaudhuri," a title held by
Jat leaders, became influential in the late 1960s is largely explained by the relative
economic growth which, at that time, benefited the middle-class farmers of North
India. This growth resulted from two cumulative phenomena. First, the land
reform, even though it had remained incomplete, enabled many tenants to
become peasant-proprietors. Secondly, the Green Revolution served the interests
of those among these landowners who had some investment capacity. This
"revolution" stemmed from the introduction of high-yielding seeds between 1965
and 1966, but also from the development of irrigation and the use of chemical
fertilizers.
Charan Singh always identified himself with the interests of the peasants. In
1939, before the executive committee of the Congress parliamentary group in the
Uttar Pradesh assembly, where he had been elected for the first time in 1937, he
proposed a 50 percent quota in public administration in favor of the sons of
farmers. He framed his project in terms of a latent "urban India versus rural India"
conflict:

In our country the classes whose scions dominate the public services are either those
which have been 'raised to unexampled prominence and importance' by the
Britisher, e.g. the money-lender, the big zamindar or taluqdar, the arhatia or the
trader, or those which have been, so to say, actually called into being by him--the

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

vakil [advocate], the doctor, the contractor. These classes have, in subordinate
cooperation with the foreigner, exploited the masses in all kinds of manner during
these last two hundred years. The views and interests of these classes, on the whole,
are, therefore, manifestly opposed to those of the masses. The social philosophy of a
member of the non-agricultural, urban classes is entirely different from that of a
person belonging to the agricultural rural classes.
(Singh 1986, 203)

The All-India Jat Mahasabha supported his proposal, but Charan Singh did
not value caste affiliations very much. He tried, rather, to subsume caste identities
into a feeling of class or at least into one of a peasant movement. This approach
was partly dictated by his own caste background, since the Jats occupy an
intermediary position: though technically they have to be classified as Shudras,
their dominant caste status is often the root-cause of conflicts with lower castes.
In addition, their number is comparatively small in Uttar Pradesh (1.2 percent of
the population). Therefore Charan Singh had good reasons for forging a kisan
interest group that the Jats would be leading, and for promoting an identity
opposing the peasants to the town-dwellers in order to subsume caste divisions
into a new group feeling. Even though OBC leaders rallied around the Chaudhuri,
his scheme was not designed for emancipating their group but for promoting the
interests of those who owned some land and could sell their surplus crops. In fact,
it was likely to reinforce the Jats' hegemony over the lower castes.
As Revenue Minister in charge of land reform in Uttar Pradesh after
Independence, Charan Singh promoted the interests of what he called the middle
peasantry by abolishing the zamindari system.3 The bulk of this class was to come
from the intermediary castes, including his own, the Jats. This approach largely
explains the selective character of Uttar Pradesh land reform and his later conflict
with Nehru. In 1959 he vigorously opposed the project of agricultural co-
operatives announced by the Prime Minister in the Nagpur session of the
Congress. He immediately published a book called Joint Farming X-Rayed: The
Problem and Its Solution, in which he proposed a strategy of global development
radically opposed to that of Nehru. 4 Questioning the need for a rapid, state-
sponsored industrialization as advocated by Nehru, Charan Singh proposed to
give priority to agriculture and to promote it by developing small farmer holdings,
the only way to generate the surpluses that were needed for industrial
investment.5 For him, agricultural cooperatives would annul the productivity
gains resulting from the elimination of the zamindar-like intermediaries because
they would jeopardize the independence of the farmers:

The thought that land has become his [the peasant's] and his children's in perpetuity,
lightens and cheers his labour and expands his horizon. The feeling that he is his own
master, subject to no outside control, and has free, exclusive and untrammelled use of
his land drives him to greater and greater effort. [. . .] Likewise any system of large-scale
farming in which his holdings are pooled must affect the farmer, but in the reverse
direction. No longer will he be his own master; he will become one of the many; his
interest will be subordinated to the group interest.
(Singh 1959, v-vi)

3 This system, which had been established by the British, combined property rights and
fiscal aspects: the zamindars, like the taluqdars and the jagirdars, were both landowners
and tax agents since they collected the land revenue.
4 Charan Singh wrote this book while he was out of the Uttar Pradesh government. He

had resigned in April 1959 because of several disagreements with Sampurnanand, the Chief
Minister. (Johnson 1975, 145).
5 Charan Singh spells out this point rather late in the book but it is his basic argument:

"Industrialization cannot precede but will follow agricultural prosperity. Surpluses of food
production above farmers' consumption must be available before non-agricultural
resources can be developed" (Singh 1959, 251).

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Obviously, economic rationality is not the only reason for rejecting agricultural
cooperatives. Charan Singh admits that "Ultimately it is not a question of
economic efficiency or of form of organisation, but whether individualism or
collectivism should prevail" (1959, 107). Indeed, he argues, "The peasant is an
incorrigible individualist; for his avocation, season in and season out, can be
carried on with a pair of bullocks in the solitude of Nature without the necessity of
having to give orders to, or, take orders from anybody" (104). Charan Singh spells
out a very romantic view of the kisan, even a mystique of the peasant, as the man
in communion with Nature (a word that he writes with a capital n) and the only
one able to sustain its "nutritional cycle" (266).
On landless agricultural labor, Charan Singh's views are worth noting, too.
Referring, en passant, to the laborers' condition, he notes that "If wages have at all
to be paid, in view of the fact that a large supply of idle labour is almost always
available, the wages paid need only be subsistence wages" (1959, 168). Indifferent
to the condition of the landless laborers, Charan Singh was against too low a
ceiling in the land reform program which could have benefited them because it
would multiply the noneconomic exploitations and weaken the peasant-
proprietor pattern.
In spite of this selective defense of the rural folk, Charan Singh systematically
attempted to project himself as the spokesman for village India. He presented the
village community as forming a harmonious whole and claimed that it "was
always a stronger moral unit than a factory. The sense of the community was a
vital thing among the peasantry, providing a natural foundation for collaboration
or co-operative action" (Singh 1959, 270). He completely ignored the deep social
contradictions and class antagonisms between landowners, tenants,
sharecroppers, and laborers. While Charan Singh is of course the representative of
peasant-proprietors, his whole strategy consists in forging a kisan identity in
which all the people working in the fields may be able to recognize themselves. He
insisted on the dichotomy between the cities and the countryside in this very
perspective.

There has always been lack of equilibrium, rather a sort of antagonism between
cities and the countryside. This is particularly so in our land where the gulf of
inequality between the capitalist class and the working class pales into insignificance
before that which exists between the peasant farmer in our village and the middle-
class town dweller. India is really two worlds-rural and urban. The relationship
between the countryside and the cities is, therefore, a vital problem to us.
(Singh 1984, 212)

Charan Singh's kisan politics was successful to a certain extent, since he was
able to gradually evolve a coalition of cultivating castes from different social
ranks. This coalition came to be known as AJGAR, an acronym where A stood for
Ahir (or Yadav), J for Jat, G for Gujar and R for Rajput. While there was no
representative of the (often landless laborers) untouchable castes in this
grouping, it covered a wide range of status from OBC to intermediate and upper
castes. For instance, Mulayam Singh Yadav was among the followers Charan Singh
attracted in the 1960s. Yadav was elected MLA for the first time in 1967 on a
ticket of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Charan Singh's party. Interestingly, he was
introduced to the Chaudhuri by another OBC, Jairam Verma (Lal and Nair 1998,
32), who was a Kurmi, a sign that Charan Singh attracted cultivating castes even
beyond the AJGAR coalition.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

The Janata Party at the Confluence of Quota

and Kisan Politics

The fact that both strategies, quota politics and kisan politics, persisted during
the "JP movement" and the subsequent Janata phase is evident from the discourse
then promoted by Madhu Limaye and Charan Singh, who became Deputy Prime
Minister and Home Minister in 1977. The former, as convener of the JP Movement
Programme Committee in 1975, drafted a document where one could read the
following statements:

Caste hierarchy based on birth is the biggest obstacle in the path of achieving
social equality. In an unequal society, the doctrine of judicial equality and equal
opportunity cannot by itself remove caste disabilities. The doctrine of
preferential opportunity, therefore, had to be invoked in order to enable the
backward sections to come up to the level of the upper-castes. Reservation in the
services that we have today had not enabled us to over come the disabilities from
which our suppressed communities suffer [. . . ] This must change, and these
people and other backward classes should be enabled to secure, through
preferential opportunities and reservation, the substance of power.
(Limaye 1997, 314)

Madhu Limaye emphasized the empowerment dimension of affirmative action

schemes the same way as his mentor, Lohia, did. Charan Singh regarded the "three
decades of Congress rule in post-Independence India as essentially elitist and
urban oriented" and argued that the Janata Party had to maintain "its live links
with the villages, with agriculture, with cottage and village industries, and
generally with the uplift of our Kisans" (Singh 1997, 325, 327). Two major
components of the Janata, the former Congress (O) of Prime Minister Morarji
Desai and the Hindu nationalist Jana Sangh "were unwilling to concede primacy"
to Charan Singh (Varshney 1995, 104). Dismissed by Desai on the ground of
indiscipline, he organized a huge peasant rally of about one million people in
December 1978 and then rejoined the Government as Senior Deputy Prime
Minister in charge of Finance. His "kulak budget," to use the pressmen's words in
1979, reduced several indirect taxes on mechanical tillers, diesel for electric water
pumps, and chemical fertilizers, by 50 percent for some of them; it "lowered
interest rates for rural loans; increased subsidy of minor irrigation; and
earmarked funds for rural electrification and grain-storage facilities" (105). The
Janata did not last long enough to implement all these measures, but Charan Singh
had raised the peasants' issues in such a way that they arrived center-stage; so
much so that they were taken up by farmers' movements in most of the states (T.
Brass 1995), amongst which the Bharatiya Kisan Union of Tikait and the Shetkari
Sangathana of Sharad Joshi in Maharashtra were especially noticeable for their
attempt at projecting their apolitical character.
The Janata government was too heterogeneous a coalition to have a consistent
affirmative action policy. The Jana Sangh, representative primarily of the urban
and upper caste middle class, was reluctant to move in the direction of affirmative
action. The differences showed clearly at the subnational level, when Karpoori
Thakur, the socialist Chief Minister of Bihar, and Ram Naresh Yadav, his socialist
counterpart in Uttar Pradesh, tried to introduce quotas in the state
administration. Yet Desai yielded to OBC pressures and appointed the second
Backward Classes Commission, whose principal terms of reference were "to
determine the criteria for defining the socially and educationally backward
classes" and "to examine the desirability or otherwise of making provision for the
reservations of appointments or posts in favour of such backward classes of
citizens which are not adequately represented in public services (Government of
India 1980 1: vii). The Commission, whose chairman was B. P. Mandal, concluded
from its survey that the OBCs were coterminous with low castes, representing 52
percent of the population, and that their backwardness justified a quota of 27
percent of the posts being reserved for them in the bureaucracy and the public
sector. The Mandal Commission report was submitted in late 1980, more than a
year after the fall of the Janata government. Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

were not interested in implementing measures that might affect the upper-caste
supporters of the Congress or, at least, damage its image of a "catch-all party." The
report was finally made public by the Janata Dal when it took power from the
Congress in 1989.

The Janata Dal and the Empowerment of the

Lower Castes

The Janata Dal, which was officially founded on 11 October 1988, amalgamated
the legacies of Lohia and Charan Singh, as evident from the identity of the parties
it incorporated. On the one hand, the Lok Dal (A) of Ajit Singh, son of Charan
Singh, and the Lok Dal (B) of Devi Lal, another Jat leader from Haryana, merged in
the Janata Dal. On the other hand, many socialist old-timers from the Janata Party,
such as Madhu Dandavate (who was to become Finance Minister in V. P. Singh's
government), George Fernandes (who was to hold the portfolio of Railways), and
Surendra Mohan (a member of the Janata Dal Executive Committee who shaped
its election manifesto), took an active part in it. This amalgamation had inner
problems, as the controversy over the naming of the party quickly demonstrated.
Until the last minute the party was to be called Samajwadi Janata Dal (Socialist
People's Party), but Devi Lal strongly objected to the term socialist and it had to
be removed (Mustafa 1995, 110).
Yet the party's discourse on social justice remained heavily loaded with
socialist references, and its affirmative action program drew most of its
inspiration from Lohia's modus operandi. The party's president, V. P. Singh, was a
late convert to this brand of socialism. Descending from a Rajput lineage which
had been the ruling family of a small princely state near Allahabad, the "Raja of
Manda", as he came to be called rather ironically, had shown some early interest
in the Sarvodaya movement, but had then been co-opted by the Congress Party to
become, as MLA and then MP, one more "notable" in the vote-bank pyramid. He
was expelled from the Congress in July 1987 because of his accusation that
Congress Party leaders were corrupt. The party he founded then with other
Congress dissidents, the Jan Morcha, was small, but it played a pivotal role in the
foundation of the Janata Dal and became the rallying point of other opposition
parties with which it formed the National Front. The day after he was sworn in as
Prime Minister, on 3 December 1989, in his First Address to the Nation,
Rammanohar Lohia and Jaya Prakash Narayan were the only names he mentioned
as his guides (V. P. Singh 1997, 357). This shift from Congress to a mixed brand of
Socialist politics reflected V. P. Singh's old commitment to Sarvodaya but also his
dependence upon socialist leaders.
The Janata Dal indeed tended to adopt the socialist program for social justice:
it concentrated its attention less on class than on ascriptive groups and turned
towards affirmative action as the main remedy. The program adopted by the party
during its inaugural session promised that "Keeping in view special needs of the
socially and educationally backward classes, the party [if voted to power] shall
implement forthwith the recommendations of the Mandal Commission" (V. P.
Singh 1997, 343).
The party was prepared to show the way and promised to allot 60 percent of
the tickets in the general elections to "the weaker sections of society." Before that,
V. P. Singh had promised to apply this 60 percent reservation to the party
apparatus. The 60 percent quota was an old socialist idea that Lohia had
propagated in the 1960s. It could not be implemented allegedly because of the
opposition of Devi Lal (Mustafa 1995, 115). Once again, the socialist approach was
opposed by a Jat who tried to appear as the heir of Charan Singh.
The JD, indeed, represented the aspirations of the proponents of kisan politics
as well. Devi Lal, the then Chief Minister of Haryana, had won the 1987 state
election largely because he had promised to waive the cooperative loans up to Rs
20,000 (Varshney 1995, 141). The 1989 election manifesto of the National Front
promised to do the same with "Loans upto Rs 10,000 of small, marginal and
landless cultivators and artisans" (143). Most of the items regrouped under the
headline "Rural Economy" were in favor of the peasant-proprietors:

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Not less than 50 percent of the investible resources will be deployed for the
development of rural economy. Farmers will be assured of guaranteed remunerative
prices for their produce, a countrywide network of godowns and warehouses,
remission of debts, provision of cheap credit, removal of unreasonable restrictions
on movement of agricultural produce, crop insurance, security in land holding and
strict implementation of land reforms and improved access to water resources.
(26)

The only promise which directly concerned the agricultural laborers was the
one about the land reform, which was not implemented. On the other hand, Devi
Lal, who became Deputy Prime Minister with the Agriculture portfolio, and Sharad
Joshi, one of his advisors, with a cabinet rank, waived "all agricultural loans under
central jurisdiction up to Rs 10,000" (Varshney 1995, 143).
Yet, kisan politics was not as resolutely pursued by the V. P. Singh government
as the "quota politics," probably for two reasons. From a pragmatic point of view,
V. P. Singh was more eager to cater to the needs of the lower castes than to those
of the middle peasants. The latter constituency was already won over by Ajit Singh
and Devi Lal. V. P. Singh was more interested in broadening his base among the
OBCs. From a more ideological point of view, like most of the old socialist leaders,
V. P. Singh believed less in economic and financial support than in the reform of
the power structure within society, for which affirmative action appeared to be
the most relevant method. The 1989 National Front election manifesto underlined
that "Implementation of reservation policy will be made effective in government,
public and private sector industrial undertakings, banking institutions, etc., by
resorting to special recruitment drives so as to fulfill their quotas within the
shortest possible time" (National Front Manifesto 1989, 26) and that "The
recommendations of the Mandal Commission will be implemented expeditiously"
(27). While the government did not dare to extend the reservation system to the
private sector, it did implement the Mandal report recommendations.
V. P. Singh announced this decision in a one-and-a-half page suo moto
statement in both Houses of Parliament on 7 August 1990. He justified it in his
Independence Day Address on 15 August by the need to give "a share to the poor
in running the Government" (Mohan et al. 1997, 360):

We believe that no section can be uplifted merely by money. They can develop only if
they have a share in power and we are prepared to provide this share. In this year of
justice, in memory of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar the Government has recently taken a
decision to give reservation to the backward classes in the jobs in Government and
public sector. It is being debated as to how many persons would get benefit out of it.
In a sense, taking into account the population of this country, the Government jobs
account for only one percent [of the total] and out of this one percent if one fourth is
given to anyone, it cannot be a course for his economic betterment though it may
have some effect. But our outlook is clear. Bureaucracy is an important organ of the
power structure. It has a decisive role in decision-making. We want to give an
effective share in the power structure and running of the country to the depressed,
downtrodden and backward people.
(361)

As it was for most socialists before him, the caste system was also a target for
V. P. Singh, and he analyzed the caste system based on power relations. This
approach could not please the proponents of kisan politics. Devi Lal had been
appointed by V. P. Singh as chairman of a committee for the implementation of the
Mandal report recommendations, but, according to the Prime Minister, he "did not
take much interest" (cited in Mustafa 1995, 171). He had strong reservations
concerning the report because the Jats had not been included among the OBCs
(interview with Ajay Singh, Jat minister in V. P. Singh's cabinet, New Delhi, 28
October 1997). Devi Lal tried to have the Jat's inclusion accepted by the
government, but in vain.6 Finally, V. P. Singh decided to ask Minister of Social
Welfare Ram Vilas Paswan, a Dalit leader, to do the job.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

The Prime Minister announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission

report recommendations only a few days after Devi Lal resigned from his
government. Though there were other issues also leading to the rupture, the
views and interests of V. P. Singh and Devi Lal could not coincide. Indeed, the
social potential of V. P. Singh's reforms was perceived as posing a threat to Jat
interests insofar as it could promote the assertiveness of tenants and agricultural
laborers from the lower castes.
Devi Lal's resignation signaled the breakdown of Charan Singh's coalition. For
partisans of "quota politics," such a breakdown was for the better because kisan
politics, in their view, merely served the economic interest of the peasant-
proprietors and maintained the social status quo in the countryside. The old
socialist and Ambedkarite approach based on an anti-caste discourse and
affirmative action was considered more promising.

Caste Polarization around Mandal

The main achievement of V. P. Singh was to make a broad range of castes

coalesce under the OBC label. In fact, he made it a relevant category for the lower
castes, as per the quotas recommended by the Mandal Commission report. Many
of those who were earlier known as "Shudras" internalized this administrative
definition of their identity in the early 1990s. The OBC category also crystallized
for a while because the upper castes militantly resisted such reservations in the
administration. The cleavage between upper castes and lower castes was
suddenly reinforced by a collective, open hostility on the part of the former and by
the unleashing of violence.
Soon after V. P. Singh announced the implementation of the Mandal
Commission report recommendations, upper-caste students formed organizations
such as the Arakshan Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti and the Mandal Ayog Virodhi
Sangharsh Samiti in Uttar Pradesh. Students who were from the upper castes but
from the lower middle class protested against a new quota that would deprive
them of some posts in the administration. They wanted to "abolish all
reservations including reservations for the Scheduled Castes" (Hasan 1998, 155),
a demand that brought the Dalit and OBC leaders closer. At the same time, the
students "feared that their hopes of government patronage would be thwarted by
a coalition of lower-castes" (155), which they were largely shaping themselves by
provoking a new cleavage between forward castes (including Jats) 7 and lower
castes.
Immediately, leaders from the Janata Dal organized a counter mobilization.
Sharad Yadav, one of the Ministers of V. P. Singh, launched the movement in Delhi.
"We will," he said, "show them within 15 days how many people are behind us if
they don't come back to their sense. . . " (cited in The Hindustan Times, 3
September 1990). V. P. Singh went to Patna for an anti-upper-caste rally. Thus, the
early 1990s were marked by an exacerbation of the cleavage between upper
castes and lower castes, an atmosphere which explains at that time the emotional
value of the OBC as a social category.
Their new unity helped the OBC to organize themselves as an interest group
outside the vertical, clientelistic Congress-like patterns. The aim was to benefit
from its main asset, its massive numbers (52 percent of the Indian population), at
the time of elections. Indeed, the share of the OBC MPs increased in the Hindi belt
because lower-caste people became more aware of their common interests and
decided no longer to vote for upper-caste candidates. In South and West India
such a silent revolution had already started before independence and bore fruits
soon after.

6 Interview with P. S. Krishnan, New Delhi, 4 April 1998. P. S. Krishnan was Secretary to

the Ministry of Social Welfare who prepared the implementation of the Mandal report
recommendations for R. V. Paswan.
7 The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) was explicitly against caste-based quotas and

favored, like the BJP, an economic criterion for job reservations.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

By contrast, in the states of the Hindi belt-Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya

Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and Chandigarh-politics
was still almost monopolized by the upper castes until the 1980s, as suggested by
the caste background of the MPs returned to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of
Parliament).
As Table 1 shows, the share of intermediate-caste and OBC MPs really started
to increase in 1977, thanks to the Janata Party's victory, when the proportion of
the upper-caste MPs fell below 50 percent for the first time. But the decline of the
upper castes benefited more the upper layer of the peasantry, especially the Jats,
and the return of the Congress Party in the 1980s brought back a large number of
upper-caste MPs, especially in 1984. The percentage of OBC MPs increased again
after the Congress lost power in 1989, doubling from 11.1 percent in 1984 to 20.9
percent in 1989, when the share of upper-caste MPs fell below 40 percent for the
first time, largely because the Janata Dal, the winner of the ninth general elections,
had given tickets to a considerable number of OBC candidates. Interestingly
enough, the proportion of the OBC MPs continued to grow in 1991, in spite of the
Congress party's comeback in 1996, when the BJP became the largest party in the
Lok Sabha and in 1998 when the coalition it was leading was able to form the
government. This evolution was continuously pursued at the expense of the upper
castes. Most political parties, it would appear, had started giving a larger number
of tickets to OBC candidates.
However, the rise of the OBCs has been rather uneven in the states of the Hindi
belt. In Rajasthan the share of OBCs among the MPs has remained stable at 12
percent between 1984 and 1998, whereas over the same period it has increased
from 11 percent to 20.8 percent in Uttar Pradesh and from 7.5 percent to 20.5
percent in Madhya Pradesh. In Bihar, the share of OBC MPs rose from 17 percent
to 43 percent between 1984 and 1996. The figures concerning the Vidhan Sabhas
confirm these trends. In Uttar Pradesh, the share of upper-caste MLAs decreased
from 58 percent in 1962 to 37.7 percent in 1996, whereas the proportion of OBCs
grew from 9 percent to 30 percent in 1993-before declining to 24 percent in 1996
due to the BJP's success (Jaffrelot and Zerinini-Brotel 1999, 80). In Madhya
Pradesh, the share of upper-caste MLAs decreased from 52 percent in 1957 to 33
percent in 1998, while the proportion of OBCs rose from 7 to 21 percent (ibid.). In
Bihar, the share of the upper castes in the state assembly decreased from 42
percent in 1967 to 33 percent in 1990, while that of the OBCs rose from 26
percent to 35 percent in the same period.8
The OBCs' rise to power, in conjunction with the increasing electoral
participation of the lower castes, has been called a "second democratic upsurge"
by Yogendra Yadav, who further considers that "The expression 'OBC' has ...
traveled a long way from a rather careless bureaucratic nomenclature in the
document of the Constitution to a vibrant and subjectively experienced political
community" (Yadav 1996, 96, 102). While the "Mandalisation" of Indian politics
has certainly contributed to the democratization of a traditionally conservative
democracy, the capacity of OBCs to sustain the kind of unity that is needed in
forming a "political community" is very doubtful.

Are the OBCs a Community?

In 1996, one member of the Uttar Pradesh Backward Classes Commission
observed that "Political change is now leading to social change. The OBC which
was a constitutional category has now become a social category" (cited in Hasan
1998, 164). This comment, which reflects a widely held view, is questionable.
While lower-caste solidarity increased during the Mandal affair, when caste
polarization was at an extreme, such solidarity has been declining since the mid-
1990s.

8 I am most grateful to Anand Kumar (CSSS/JNU) for providing me with these data.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

Grassroot Mobilization or Yadav Manipulation?

The rise of the OBCs is first of all the rise of the Yadavs and the Kurmis, as their
share among the MPs testifies. Together, they represent about 15 percent of North
Indian MPs in the 1990s, as much as the Brahmin or the Rajput MPs. Certainly,
table 1 shows almost graphically that, while the Yadavs and Kurmis alone had
representatives in the Lok Sabha until the 1970s, new castes joined the political
arena in the 1980s (Lodhis, Koeris, Gujars, Malis) and 1990s (such as the Jaiswals,
the Telis, and the Kacchis - I have classified the latter two castes among the
'others' in Table 1). However, the share of the Yadavs and the Kurmis has grown
too, so much so that each one of these castes represents about one-third of the
OBC MPs of North India since 1989.
Even though the Kurmis organized themselves as early as the Yadavs through
caste associations,9 the Yadavs have been at the forefront of the OBC mobilization
since the very beginning. The leader of the All-India Backward Caste Federation in
the 1960s and 1970s, Brahm Prakash Chaudhury, was a Yadav. B. P. Mandal
himself was a Yadav, and Yadav leaders have consistently paid greater interest to
his report. After the Janata Dal took over in 1989, they mobilized in favor of
implementing the Mandal Commission Report. Sharad Yadav, the Minister for
Textile and Food Processing in V. P. Singh's government, was among the most
vocal. After the anti- Mandal agitation started, he was at the forefront of the
counter-mobilization in Delhi and elsewhere in the country, until he launched his
Mandal Rath Yatra in late 1992 and early 1993 in reaction to the Supreme Court's
decision regarding the exclusion of the "creamy layer" of OBCs from the quotas.
The Court used this expression to designate the elite among the OBCs who did not
need any help from the State and, therefore, should not be entitled to any quotas.
The Janata Dal, with Laloo Prasad Yadav as President and Sharad Yadav as leader
of the legislative group in the Lok Sabha, then lobbied for excluding the well-off
peasants from the "creamy layer." They were obviously defending the interests of
their caste since many Yadavs had become relatively rich. Eventually, the pressure
exerted by the Yadavs-and other OBC leaders-proved to be effective, and the
"creamy layer" was defined in a rather loose way. It comprises only the OBC
applicants from establishment families, or those whose fathers owned land
beyond 85 percent of the acreage permitted by ceiling laws.
When the 27 percent reservation was eventually implemented at the Center
after the Supreme Court decision of November 1992, the upper castes did not
resist it any more. They resigned themselves to the rule of numbers. Moreover,
the liberalization of the economy also began to make careers in the private sector,
to which affirmative action laws did not apply, more attractive. Simultaneously,
having won the battle over quotas, the lower castes did not feel an acute need for
solidarity any more. The very notion of the OBCs started to lose its edge. The
general OBC category was, in fact, often used by a Yadav elite to promote its
interests. Such an elite manipulation was not uncommon in the past since the
kisan identity promoted by Charan Singh was also perceived by many Jats as a
means to mobilize a large social base and Lohia had deplored it already in the
1960s: "Ever and even again, the revolt of the down-graded castes has been
misused to up-grade one or another caste . . . " (Lohia 1979, 90). Lohia had
already seen the Yadavs as the main protagonists for such a strategy (103).

9 On the Kurmis early entry into the public sphere, see Verma 1979 and on the Yadavs,

Rao 1987.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

Yadav Politics in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh

The way Yadav leaders used the Janata Dal reservation policy for promoting
their caste interests is evident from the strategies of Mulayam Singh Yadav and
Laloo Prasad Yadav after they became Chief Ministers, in November 1989 and
March 1990, respectively, of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. M. S. Yadav lost power in
1991 but governed the state again between 1993 and 1995. L. P. Yadav won both
the 1990 and the 1995 state elections, and is still at the helm through his wife,
Rabri Devi, who took over from him in 1997, when he was indicted for corruption
in the infamous "fodder scam”.
Even before V. P. Singh's reservation policy was announced, Mulayam Singh
Yadav, the new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, had promulgated an ordinance
providing the OBCs with a quota of 15 percent in the state administration (Hasan,
149). Though he came from the Lok Dal, Charan Singh's party, Mulayam Singh
Yadav decided "to place a far greater emphasis on the collective identity of the
backward classes than the Lok Dal had ever done" (Duncan 1997, 262). That was
well in tune with what Lohia had taught him in his early career. In fact, Yadav was
initiated into politics by Lohia when the latter came to his village for a "j'at todo"
(break caste) meeting (Lal and Nair 1998, 32). He then took part in the canal rate
agitation launched by Lohia in 1954.
The Samajwadi Party (Socialist Party) - which Mulayam Singh Yadav founded
after severing his links with the Janata Dal in 1990 - contested the 1993 state
election in association with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a Dalit-led party, and
highlighted the cleavage between the upper castes and the lower castes. Its
election manifesto promised a quota of 27 percent for the OBCs in the state
administration, and it implemented the quota once Yadav became Chief Minister
for the second time through the Uttar Pradesh Public Services (Reservation for
Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes) Act of 1994.
This new measure, while it was under discussion, was strongly resented in
Uttarakhand where the OBCs represent only 2 percent of the population. Yadav
severely repressed this protest movement. His government at that point had only
three "representatives" of the upper castes but as many as twenty members of the
OBCs and Dalits (and two Muslims) (Duncan 1997). Upper-caste bureaucrats
were transferred to nonessential posts. The number of Additional District
Magistrates from the upper castes decreased from forty- three (out of sixty-three)
to only thirteen in only six months. The Chief Secretary, a Brahmin, was replaced
by a Kayasth. These decisions, which were publicized on purpose, were partly
made under the pressure of the BSP. But they accorded well with M. S. Yadav's
strategy.

Table 2. Distribution, according to Caste, of DMs and DDCs in Bihar in 1995

District Magistrates Deputy Divisional Commissioners
OBCs 26 30
Minorities 4 4
Forward Castes 20 16
Total 50 50
Source: India Today, 28 February, 1995, 100-7.

A similar scenario unfolded in Bihar. Already during the 1990 election

campaign, the JD assured voters that it was the only party prepared to reserve
posts for the OBCs in the State administration and at the Center. Once voted to
power, it increased the quota for the OBCs up to 27 percent. In August 1993 the
Patna University and the Bihar University Amendment Bill was passed, according
to which 50 percent of the seats would be reserved for the OBCs in the
universities' senate and syndicate (Chaudhary 1999, 193). In 1993, a member of
the Indian Administration Service (IAS) from the Scheduled Castes replaced a
Brahmin as Chief Secretary and an OBC took over the charge as Director General
of Police from another Brahmin. A large number of OBC bureaucrats were
transferred from the sidelines to the main department, and the number of the
District Magistrate (DM) and Deputy Divisional Commissioners (DDC) positions -

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

two strategic positions - belonging to the OBCs increased. The number of OBC
DMs and DDCs exceeded those from the upper-castes (see table 2).
In 1993 the Bihar Vidhan Sabha passed the Panchayati Raj Bill according to
which "the Panchayats with majority of the people belonging to backward classes
will be reserved for them only and in these Panchayats upper-castes will be
debarred from even contesting elections" (Chaudhary 1999, 226). This bill was
unanimously passed by both houses of the state legislature.
The Yadavs benefited more than any other lower-caste groups from the
policies followed in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the two states in which they form the
largest component of the OBCs with respectively 8.7 and 11 percent of the state
population (according to the 1931 census). In Bihar, the largest caste (after the
Chamars) they had one-fifth of the MLAs in 1990 and more than one-fourth of the
MPs in 1996. In Uttar Pradesh, where they form the third largest caste after the
Brahmins and the Chamars with 8.7 percent of the population (according to the
1931 census), they represented more than one-fourth of the MLAs in 1993 (as
much as the Rajputs and more than the Brahmins). 10 The governments of
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav were more and more identified
with the Yadavs, so much so that it became obvious that the notion of the OBCs
had been used by this caste to its own advantage right from the beginning.
Of course, the Yadavs were likely to be among the first beneficiaries of the
quotas because they are more numerous and relatively more educated than the
other OBCs. But they were also favored by the governments of Mulayam Singh and
Laloo Prasad Yadav. In Uttar Pradesh, out of 900 teachers appointed by M. S.
Yadav's second government, 720 were Yadavs. In the police forces, out of 3,151
newly selected candidates, 1,223 were Yadavs (Indian Today, 15 October 1999,
37). Such a policy alienated the BSP, the SP's ally, but also the Kurmis, the second
largest OBC caste of the state, which was well represented in the BSP. Sone Lal
Patel, the Secretary General of the party, who presided over the Uttar Pradesh
branch of the All-India Kurmi Mahasabha, organized a Kurmi Rajnitik Chetna
Maha Rally in Lucknow to protest against the Yadavisation of the State one year
after the formation of Mulayam Singh Yadav's government (India Today, 15
December 1994).
The SP does have Kurmi leaders, but it has not been able to project itself as a
party representing the second largest OBC caste of Uttar Pradesh. In 1993, more
than one-third of its MLAs were Yadavs (as against 8 percent Kurmis) and in
1996, almost one-fourth (as against less than 3 percent Kurmis) were Yadavs (J.
Zerinini-Brotel database). In 1996, a preassembly election opinion poll by the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies showed the extent to which the OBCs
were politically divided in Uttar Pradesh. While 75 percent of the Yadavs
remained strongly behind the SP, the Lodhis supported the BJP of Kalyan Singh, a
Lodhi himself, and the Kurmis divided their votes chiefly between the BJP (37
percent) and the BSP (27 percent). 11 A summa divisio took shape within the
OBCs, with the Lower OBCs (or Most Backward Castes) expressing a strong
preference for the BJP and a more limited inclination in favor of the SP (25
percent) and the BSP (19 percent).

10 1 am most grateful to Jasmine Zerinini-Brotel for these figures.

11 India Today, 31 August 1996, 53; A. Mishra, "Uttar Pradesh-Politics in flux," Economic and
Political Weekly, 1 June 1996, 1300, and "Uttar Pradesh-Kurmis and Koeris: Emerging 'Third' Factor,"
op. cit., 4 January 1997, 22-23.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

The BSP has thus become a strong contender for the vote of a substantial
section of the OBC. In contrast with its Dalit image, in Uttar Pradesh and in
Madhya Pradesh the party has gained some following among the OBCs, and
especially the Most Backward Castes (MBCs) (Jaffrelot 1998a). The poll showed
that, while only 4 percent of the Yadavs were prepared to vote for the BSP, 27
percent of the Kurmis and 19 percent of the "lower backward" supported this
party in Uttar Pradesh. Indeed, BSP's leader, Kanshi Ram, regarded the MBCs as
his main target in 1996: "There are 78 Most Backward Castes in Uttar Pradesh. 26
percent of the UP population are from the MBCs and the maximum tickets I have
given to the MBCs" (interview with Kanshi Ram, New Delhi, 12 November 1996).
This strategy is well illustrated by the social profile of the BSP candidates in the
1996 Assembly elections: 30 percent of the candidates were OBCs (more than half
of them MBCs), whereas 29 percent were Scheduled Castes, 16 percent from the
upper castes, and 16 percent Muslims. 12
The political division of the OBCs is also most obvious in Bihar where, again,
the main cleavage is between Kurmis and Yadavs. In this state, too, the Kurmis
resented the bias of Laloo Prasad Yadav in favor of his caste fellows. For instance,
Yadavs were appointed as heads of important boards such as the Bihar Public
Service Commission, the Bihar Secondary Education Service Commission, the
Bihar State Electricity Board, and the Bihar Industrial Development Corporation.
Kurmi leaders felt sidelined, and one of the most prominent of them, Nitish
Kumar, left the Janata Dal in 1994 and sponsored the creation of the Samata Dal
along with George Fernandes. This party made an alliance with the BJP in the mid-
1990s and cashed in on the Kurmi vote in all subsequent elections.
Obviously, the very notion of the OBCs as 'a political community' needs to be
qualified because of the rivalry between major castes such as the Yadavs, the
Kurmis, and the Lodhis. Castes classified as OBCs might have coalesced in the
early 1990s because of the Mandal affair, but this cementing force declined
subsequently. The internal divisions, however, do not mean that the rise of the
lower castes can be taken lightly. They may not form a social-or even a political-
category, and the jatis classified as OBCs may be divided themselves in their
political choices, but the members of these castes have acquired a new political
consciousness that leads them to vote more than before for candidates from their
own milieu. This has forced political parties to pay more attention to the OBCs in
selecting their candidates, instead of relying on rather old clientelistic and
paternalist vertical linkages. The growing importance of the lower castes in the
public sphere shows that they have gained a new influence. Even though he
regretted the 'casteist' attitude of B. P. Mandal in 1967-68, Madhu Limaye drew
similar conclusions from this episode:

If the [socialist) caste policy had not been there, the factional abuse would have taken
some other form. But this does not prove that the general policy was wrong.
Throughout the zig zag and tortuous course of this policy, the rising consciousness
among the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs had been a fact of life. It was
still not what Lohia called a 'resurrection of India - the destruction of caste'. Still it was
a step forward of sorts towards equality.
(Limaye 1998, 163-64)

The BJP's Reluctant Mandalization

While Limaye's comment above may sound relevant even for today, one must
finally consider the implications of the rise of Hindu nationalism for OBC politics.
There is a kind of dialectic between both phenomena. Many upper-caste people
and non-OBC Shudras, like the Jats, became supporters of the BJP and took part in
the Ayodhya movement because that was the only party that initially showed
some reluctance towards caste-based reservations, while trying to subsume the
lower castes versus upper castes cleavage by resorting to ethnoreligious
propaganda.
12 These data have been compiled on the basis of lists published in Bahujan Sangathak, 11

November 1996.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

The Hindu nationalist movement has always been known for its upper-caste,
even brahminical character. The Hindutva ideology relies on an organic view of
society where castes are seen as the harmonious limbs of the same body (Jaffrelot
1996, ch. 1). Since its creation in 1925, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
has concentrated on attracting to its local branches (the shakhas) Hindus who
valued this ethos, either because they belong to the upper castes or because they
want to emulate them. The technique of "conversion" of lower-caste people to
Hindutva relies on the same logic as what M. N. Srinivas called "sanskritisation"
(Srinivas 1995, 7).
However, the upper-caste character of Hindu nationalism has gradually
become a liability for the BJP because of the growing political consciousness of the
lower castes. The 1993 election results, when the BJP lost both Uttar Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh partly because of the OBC and Dalit voters, led the party leaders
to promote a larger number of lower-caste people in the party apparatus. K. N.
Govindacharya, one of the BJP General Secretaries, was the main advocate of this
policy, which he called "social engineering." Murli Manohar Joshi, a former
president of the BJP, opposed this move and even implicitly questioned the notion
of "social engineering" in general by asking "what social justice has been brought
in the name of social engineering? Rural poverty has increased and most of the
rural poor continue to be Dalits" (interview in Sunday, 26 January 1997, 13).
As the 1996 election approached, the party evolved a compromise between
these conflicting views. The party's manifesto put a stress on social harmony 13
but also admitted that the existing quotas in favor of the Scheduled Castes and the
OBCs could not be questioned "till they are socially and educational [sic]
integrated with the rest of society." This compromise reflected the debate within
the BJP between the advocates of "social engineering" and those who wanted to
abstain from acknowledging caste conflicts.
Up to the late 1990s, the BJP opted for what I have called "indirect
mandalisation" (Jaffrelot 1998b), that is, the making of alliances with parties
representing lower castes (such as the Samata Party in Bihar or even the BSP in
Uttar Pradesh). However, its leaders seem now prepared to resign themselves to a
more direct brand of mandalization, inducting a growing number of lower-caste
cadres in the party executive committees and the nomination of more OBC
candidates at the time of elections. While the share of OBCs among the BJP MPs
returned in the Hindi belt - the party's stronghold - is lower than among the
Congress and Janata Dal's MPs, it increased from 16 percent in 1989 to 20 percent
in 1998, while the proportion of its upper-caste MPs dropped from 52.3 percent in
1991 to 43.4 percent in 1998 (Jaffrelot 2000). The state units of the BJP show the
way. In Uttar Pradesh, even though the share of the OBCs among the BJP MLAs
marginally increased from 18 percent to 22 percent from 1991 to 1996, the share
of the OBCs in the governments of Kalyan Singh - himself a Lodhi - jumped from
22 percent in 1991 to almost 32 percent in 1999 (Jaffrelot, Zerinini, and
Chaturvedi forthcoming).
True, OBC candidates from the BJP are not projected as Backward Caste
leaders, which is largely due to the Hindu nationalist ideology: the RSS and its
offshoots insist on the need to put the emphasis on the Hindu sense of belonging
to an organic community, the "Hindu nation," rather than to particular castes.
According to Uma Bharti, a prominent OBC leader of the BJP, the acceptance of
such an outlook has given lower-caste leaders of the BJP a "Brahmin's mentality."
She even complains that the "BJP OBC candidates have an upper-caste mentality.
They do not show their caste" (interview with Uma Bharti, New Delhi, 12
February 1994).

13 The manifesto said: "The task is nothing short of rekindling the lamp of our eternal

'Dharma,' that Sanatan thought which our sages bequeathed to mankind - a social system
based on compassion, cooperation, justice, freedom, equality and tolerance" (Bharatiya
Janata Party, For a strong and prosperous India - Election manifesto 1996, New Delhi, 1996,
p. 5).

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

However, the BJP has been led to co-opt an ever-increasing number of OBC and
Scheduled Castes leaders from other parties, including the Samajwadi Party and
the BSP, in order to cope with the need for "mandalising" itself and in view of the
rise of lower-caste parties. Many of its cadres and election candidates do not have
any RSS background today. On the contrary, they import "subversive" references:
for example, a BJP Scheduled Caste MLA from Agra West originally from the BSP
adopts Ambedkar's discourse (interview with Ram Babu Harit, Agra, 3 November
1998), and an OBC MLA from Bhopal, even though trained in the RSS shakhas,
displays the photograph of Lohia in his office and forcefully articulates egalitarian
arguments (interview with Babulal Gaur, Bhopal, 23 October 1998). This dilution
of the sanskritisation ethos may well accentuate the "mandalisation" of the BJP in
the near future.

Conclusion

Traditionally, political mobilization against the urban, upper-caste

establishment has followed two routes in North India. One route-that of quota
politics-came from Lohia, who attributed most of social inequality to caste and
favored affirmative action programs. The other route - that of kisan politics - came
from Charan Singh, who promoted peasants' solidarity against urban India. The
former strategy eventually prevailed over the latter in the political arena when it
was adopted by the Janata Dal. It proved to be doubly effective since, first, it
emancipated the OBCs from the hegemonic strategy of the proponents of kisan
politics - mainly the Jats whose interests did not fully coincide with that of the
OBCs and, secondly, it contributed to getting an OBC vote bank crystallized after
the implementation of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission report,
the most important decision ever made in the framework of the "quota politics."
For the first time, lower-caste people have started to vote en masse for leaders
belonging to their own milieu. It means that the political class is changing with the
replacement of an upper-caste oligarchy by rather plebian newcomers. This silent
revolution has probably opened the second age of Indian democracy as Yogendra
Yadav convincingly argued.
But the OBC phenomenon is also something of a myth because the Other
Backward Classes do not represent a cohesive social category. There was unity
when the battle lines were drawn over the Mandal Commission's
recommendations, when the castes classified as OBCs had to mobilize to
overcome the resistance from the upper castes. But this solidarity declined when
the battle was won-partly because the upper castes gave up, all the more easily as
the 1991 liberal turn opened for them better opportunities in the private sector
than in the bureaucracy-and it soon appeared that the OBCs were stratified, the
less backward of these caste groups, the Yadavs especially, instrumentalizing this
category to promote their own interests. The policies of Mulayam Singh Yadav and
Laloo Prasad Yadav, as well as the fragmentation of the so-called OBC vote, bear
testimony of the cleavages between the castes classified as OBCs.
The rise of the OBCs has met another adversary in Hindu nationalism, which
remains upper-caste dominated and whose OBC politicians have little affinities
with the value system of lower-caste movements. The Hindu nationalist
movement, however, is experiencing a tension between sanskritisation and "social
engineering," a strategy which is leading the BJP to co-opt a larger number of OBC
leaders without any RSS background among its election candidates; at the same
time, those who have one, like Kalyan Singh or Babulal Gaur, are asserting
themselves and tend to project themselves as lower-caste leaders.
Obviously, the rise of the lower castes in North Indian politics, though
substantial, will have a more transformative effect if two conditions can be
fulfilled in the future: (1) if OBC leaders of the BJP take over the party apparatus
on behalf of more egalitarian values, and (2) if the Most Backward Castes (MBCs)
unite and gain their share of power against the dominant OBCs. The former move
is very likely to be resisted by the RSS and, were it to happen, likely also to
undermine the ideological cohesion of the Sangh parivar. The latter possibility is
one of the challenges before the lower-caste parties.

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 The Rise Of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt

They will have to overcome many more difficulties than their southern
counterparts which have been pursuing this strategy for decades. In Tamil Nadu,
for instance, the Dravida Kazhagam and its successors, the DMK and then the
AIADMK, could rely on the Dravidian identity as a cementing force, since the
Brahmins, who were smaller in number than in the North anyway, were seen as
the Aryan invaders. By fighting them, the lower castes were promoting a regional
identity transcending caste cleavages. Such an ideological basis is missing in the
North, where the notion that the lower castes are descendants of the original
inhabitants of India can never prevail in the same way. In the Hindi belt, lower-
caste discourse has always been influenced by the categories of sanskritisation.
For instance, the Ahirs (who call themselves "Yadavs") and the Kachhis (who have
adopted the name of another Rajput dynasty, the Kushwahas) claim a Kshatriya
ancestry. Instead of developing horizontal solidarities, they are engaged in
competition based on the criterion of status. Deprived of a common identity, the
OBCs may join hands because of their growing awareness of common interests
regarding the reservation policy, but this route is bound to be longer than the one
used by the Dravidian parties.

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