New Delhi: The posthumous awarding of the Bharat Ratna to two-time Bihar chief minister and Extremely Backward Castes (EBC) icon Karpoori Thakur is being seen as another well-scripted strategy of the Modi government to potentially weaken INDIA alliance politics of caste census and reservation ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Already going all out with its Ram temple push, the BJP is aiming to solidify its grip on ‘mandal (social justice) and kamandal (Hindutva)’ politics — by leveraging the Ram temple to secure the core Hindu vote bank while using its decision to award the Bharat Ratna to Thakur to push its social empowerment narrative and secure EBC votes.
The BJP’s messaging was evident particularly when Prime Minister Narendra Modi penned a tribute for ‘Jan Nayak’ Thakur, which was carried by nearly every news publication Wednesday, and called the late leader’s son to congratulate him.
The party is hoping that the awarding of the Bharat Ratna — which comes at a time when Bihar celebrates the EBC icon’s birth centenary — will also have ramifications on all northern states’ politics. But the BJP’s main focus is the tricky electoral contest in Bihar after present CM Nitish Kumar’s switch in 2022. Nitish’s Janata Dal (United) counts EBCs and Mahadalits — two of the most socially backward groups in the state — among its core vote bank.
A caste survey conducted last year by Nitish’s Mahagathbandhan government that includes Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress found that EBCs form the highest caste group in the state at 36.1 percent. This is followed by the Other Backward Classes — including Yadavs, the RJD’s core vote bank — at 27.12 percent, the Scheduled Castes, including Dalits, at 19.65 percent, and Muslims at 17.7 percent.
Bihar has 40 parliamentary seats in the 17th and the current Lok Sabha, of which the BJP won 17 in 2019. The BJP has reportedly set a target to win 35 of these seats in the upcoming general election.
With its ‘mandal and kamandal’ strategy, the BJP’s posing a direct challenge to Nitish, who, through his years as a politician and chief minister, has modelled himself as an heir to the Karpoori brand of politics.
On its part, Nitish’s JD(U), while welcoming the move as long overdue, has said it was years of campaigning by the Bihar CM that has led to the decision of India’s highest civilian award being conferred to Thakur.
“It was Nitish Kumar, who, as chief minister, divided backward castes into two groups — EBC and OBC — by reserving 18 percent and 12 percent reservation for them back in 2005,” Ramnath Thakur, son of Karpoori Thakur and a Rajya Sabha member from JD(U), told ThePrint.
He added: “Nitish further implemented a reservation in panchayats and gave 50 reservation to women in local bodies — both of which were Karpoori visions. He carried on the Karpoori legacy. It was Nitish Kumar who first demanded a Bharat Ratna for Karpoori.”
JD (U)’s K.C. Tyagi also holds similar views: “It was Nitish who has practiced the Karpoori (brand of) politics from 1970 for the empowerment of backward castes. It’s a good decision for which JD (U) fought for several decades.”
The BJP, meanwhile, is unwilling to share credit. Soon after the central government made its decision public, former Bihar deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, who was a close ally of the JD (U) until 2022 when Nitish decided to dump the NDA and reunite with the mahagathbandhan, said it was the prime minister, an OBC leader, who’s “fulfilling Karpoori’s legacy”.
“As cabinet ministers, neither Lalu Prasad Yadav nor Nitish Kumar could confer the Bharat Ratna on Karpoori. But it was the son of a backward class leader who did this historic task. No prime minister has ever done so much work to empower the EBCs,” he told the media.
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Karpoori Thakur’s legacy and Nitish Kumar
A leader from the EBC ‘nai’ or barber caste, Thakur served as the chief minister of Bihar twice — from December 1970 to June 1971 (a leader of Samyukta Socialist Party) and then again from December 1977 to April 1979 (as a leader of the erstwhile Janata Party). After making his election debut in 1953, he remained a legislator until his last assembly election in 1985.
Thakur has a long history of association with social justice movements and has often been reckoned among the state’s most influential socialist leaders, along with the likes of Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan.
In 1978, a year after he became CM for the second time, Thakur implemented a layered reservation — unprecedented at that time. According to this policy — referred to as the ‘Karpoori formula’ — the total reservation in the state was set at 26 percent: 12 percent for EBCs, 8 percent for OBCs, 3 percent for women, and 3 percent for economically backward upper castes.
Through this, Karpoori is also believed to have set the tone for the Mandal politics — in 1990, two years after the socialist leader’s death, then PM V.P. Singh implemented the Mandal Commission Report and introduced 27 percent OBC reservation to counteract the growing Ram temple movement.
For years, Nitish Kumar appears to have modelled his politics after Karpoori Thakur, with JD (U) even drawing parallels between the two leaders.
In 2009, Nitish Kumar created the Mahadalit category in an attempt to carve a vote bank out of a base seen as a strong supporter of Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).
In November — a month after the Bihar caste survey was made public — the Nitish Kumar government proposed increasing reservation in the state from 50 to 65 percent. The two laws, which were passed in the Bihar Assembly the same month, make an upward revision of OBC and EBC quota to 43 percent from 30 percent, SCs to 20 percent from 16 percent, and STs to 2 percent from 1 percent.
Nitish Kumar’s biographer and author of the book ‘Nitish Kumar: Antrang Doston Ki Nazar Se’ Uday Kant told ThePrint that the caste survey that the Bihar government conducted was an “unfulfilled desire of Karpoori Thakur”.
“Even during his days as union minister (Nitish was railways minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA government), Nitish would constantly discuss the importance of conducting a caste survey,” he said. “It was Nitish, who, during his chief ministership, implemented Karpoori’s vision.”.
Bid to break Nitish vote bank
The NDA government’s decision to accord Karpoori Thakur a Bharat Ratna is significant— with the JD (U) now part of the opposition INDIA bloc, the BJP in Bihar is looking to weaken the EBC vote bank of the Nitish Kumar alliance, BJP sources said.
The BJP has already made several moves to capture the state’s EBC-OBC votes. Not only did it appoint Kushwaha leader Samrat Choudhary as its state chief to capture the ‘Luv-Kush’, or the Kurmi-Kushwaha vote bank, which forms the backbone of JD(U)’s voter base, it also made prominent EBC leader Hari Manjhi its state council leader. Its appointment of EBC leader Renu Devi as the state’s deputy CM in 2020, when it still counted JD(U) as its ally, was also well received.
Days before the decision was announced, the Nitish government and BJP engaged in a war of words over an event to mark the socialist leader’s centenary celebration, with the latter even threatening to hold its event to mark Thakur’s centenary celebrations outside the JD(U)’s and the RJD’s offices in the state after it was reportedly denied permission to hold the event.
The BJP continues to project itself as a champion of the EBCs. “Don’t forget. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s effort that led V.P. Singh government to posthumously give B.R. Ambedkar a Bharat Ratna,” a senior BJP leader told ThePrint. “The Congress did not do it for 50 years. Now it’s the Modi government that is conferring Bharat Ratna to socialist icon Karpoori Thakur. Other parties have not made such efforts during their time. It’s crystal clear how the Modi government is working toward the empowerment of backward castes.”
However, a senior BJP leader from Bihar who didn’t want to be named admitted this was the party’s way of countering the Nitish government’s caste survey.
“The BJP social justice card has opened a new chapter in Bihar, a state where Nitish has dominated politics for three decades now. But it will have an impact in Uttar Pradesh, where the mandal politics has own significance.”
Mohammed Sajjad, a professor of history at the Aligarh Muslim University who has written extensively on Karpoori Thakur, believes that the BJP, by “appropriating” Thakur’s legacy, is getting a grip on both Mandal and Kamandal (Hindutva) politics before the general election.
“Karpoori Thakur’s social justice and identity politics for EBCs fits into the strategy of the ruling party. This way, the BJP has both Karpoori and ‘Kamandal’ politics in its hands before the election,” he said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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