There is a discourse change in Uttar Pradesh

The 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections are the most important assembly elections in living memory. Election results in India’s heaviest state will be an important metric of public sentiment ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Uttar Pradesh attracts attention not only because of its size, but because of its centrality to the Hindutva project at this time, and equally importantly because of the shape it has taken in opposition to it. In this election, a question is asked time and again whether caste will defeat religion or will Hindutva win over Mandal? The election results will indicate whether the aggressive Hindutva line pushed by the ruling party in the last five years was successful or not.

hands on challenge

A quick survey of the political economy, identity politics, alliances, resources and campaign strategies leaves one with one clear impression: Winds of change are blowing in the state but how they will affect voting patterns is unclear. But even then, a trend is clear – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces a tough fight in Uttar Pradesh as communal polarization loses its edge. Economic crisis, chronic unemployment and agrarian distress are at the center of public discussion. As politics normalizes at the state and local levels, the BJP’s dominance in Uttar Pradesh is likely to be challenged.

The BJP’s thumping victory in the 2017 assembly elections created the conditions for the establishment of a communal-authoritarian regime in Uttar Pradesh. New political dominance was reflected in the growing mainstream of Hindutva in the public sphere of Uttar Pradesh. The huge legislative majority enabled the BJP to pursue its political agenda almost unopposed. During this period most opposition parties were not visible on the streets against the BJP government (except the Congress which led many public protests). They were barely on the ground. The opposition parties came to life in the last few months with the Kisan Andolan and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, which proved to be the springboard for launching their respective campaigns.

rift in identity politics

Identity politics has been at the heart of Uttar Pradesh politics for the past three decades. After 2014, Hindu communalism gained momentum at the cost of caste politics, which had been weakened by the BJP’s campaign to unite voters on the basis of caste by building a broader Hindu coalition. This became possible because the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) intervened to garner the support of the non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav Dalit communities and assured them that they would no longer be neglected as they were under the Bahujan Samaj Party. Were. BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) governments. But the tables have turned as the groups that helped the BJP gain power in Uttar Pradesh are now dissatisfied that they have not got their share in power. The exodus of some OBC MLAs and cabinet ministers from BJP to SP is a sign of the same. In early 2019, over 100 BJP MLAs, mostly from backward castes, staged a sit-in inside the assembly and raised slogans against their own government. It was only then that the senior party leadership intervened and assured him that he could be pacified.

to cause dissatisfaction

The discontent of the OBCs underlines the prerogative of caste over communal politics fueled by tensions between political and social domains. Since the BJP privileged the latter to the former, the ‘social’ was omitted as all attention was focused on the ‘political’, that is, Hindutva. The departure of influential OBC leaders and the anger of Jats in western Uttar Pradesh indicate the difficulties of seeing groups as a stable majority and minority against the BJP after a year-long farmers’ agitation. In democratic politics, the categories of majority and minority are not fixed – there is no pre-existing Hindu majority that will always vote en masse against an imagined enemy – the Muslim minority. Shifting electoral majority has not been consistent with social rifts. In fact, democratic politics offers the possibility of redefining who belongs to the majority and who to the minority in many areas.

The significant shift in political discourse in this election has been encouraged by a surge of protests over the past two years. Anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protests, farmer agitations, student agitations despite brutal police crackdown and thousands of people regularly taking to the streets demanding jobs have fueled this change. The special feature of these protests is that they were not organized by political parties and people are ready to take to the streets despite concerted efforts to stop them, but above all, they are concerned with everyday issues of life. The growing discontent across the state is prompting a shift towards the material conditions of life. This has given shape to protests against the BJP especially with respect to the crucial issue of jobs as the state has failed to provide employment.

The Union Home Minister’s decision to launch campaigning from Kairana is a clear attempt to neutralize the controversial change by driving a wedge among communities through communal polarization – the BJP’s master strategy for contesting elections. For example, the party’s openly communal appeal to think of Jat farmers as Hindus, however, is not making much progress. The OBC rebellion, the demand for caste census and the farmers’ movement are important barriers to polarization in eastern and western Uttar Pradesh. Despite the concerted efforts of the ruling party and its main campaigners, no communal consolidation has taken place so far. It reveals the challenges in building a stable political model centered on identity.

But it also exposes the limitations of caste based identity politics which cannot solve the dilemma of representation or inequality or even unemployment. Caste coalitions can win elections, but they will only do so by removing religion from caste as the central organizing principle of politics. This, in the process, will further empower the Hindu community as it promotes caste-based political mobilization and the sharing of power among caste groups. Caste is the unique identity around which the politics of social justice, equality and discrimination is organized in Uttar Pradesh today so that other communities can be boycotted even if they are persecuted by the government.

as a form of political retaliation

However, popular anger is shifting political discourse to social and economic issues, which have become more important than voters’ fatigue against hate politics. This development may perhaps re-emerge the living reality of everyday life and may serve as a countermeasure to Hindu majoritarianism. The special thing is that voters are not very enthusiastic about their experience of living under a Hindu Rashtra in Uttar Pradesh. But even then, it is not clear to what extent popular discontent will affect elections and translate into votes against the ruling government. People have paid an economic price for the government’s neglect of their basic needs. Will the ruling party pay the political price for the discontent of millions of poor workers who had to go back home following the pandemic and lockdown, catastrophic lack of public health facilities and massive unemployment in one of the union’s most important states?

Zoya Hassan is Professor Emerita of Jawaharlal Nehru University