Dr. Chandan Yadav
National Secretary, Indian National Congress
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/bjp-and-its-abcd-response-to-the-caste-census-demand/
The BJP’s response to the caste census and for a national socio economic survey based on caste has been one of graded hostility. As the clamour for a national level census on the lines of the Bihar government one grows louder with each passing day, the BJP escalates its efforts to reinforce its regressive social agenda. This graded response of the BJP can be termed an ABCD response – Avoid, Block, Confuse and Destruct.
Avoid
BJP has always avoided caste census which is not unnatural considering their right wing, conservative and religious revivalist ideology that upholds social inequalities and opposes social justice. Who can forget that the BJP took out Ram Rath Yatra during the Mandal movement and the implementation of the Mandal commission report to provide 27 percent reservation in job for OBC. It was unprecedented that a national political party which lacked courage to openly oppose the decision of the government took out a chariot of deception. No political party has ever practised duplicity on such a grand scale. The same BJP sat on the report of the first ever socio-economic caste census (SECC) in independent India conducted by the UPA government under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi. It has not released the report since coming to power in 2014.
Block
Political parties belonging to India alliance in Bihar took a historic decision on the floor of the Bihar assembly to conduct a caste survey in Bihar. A delegation of these political parties called on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to request him to conduct caste census. But the prime minister did not care for the popular demand. Finally the Bihar government decided to conduct caste survey from its own resources. Some organisations opposed the caste survey and challenged it up to the level of the Supreme Court of India. BJP is suffering from so much negativity in regard to caste survey that when it could no longer avoid caste survey , it decided to block the progress of the caste survey in Bihar. BJP is a past master in the art and practice of subterfuge that like in the matter of Ram Mandir it again couldn’t muster courage to oppose caste survey openly and so it directed its counsel to oppose and block caste survey in the Supreme Court in league with the non-political organisations. However the Supreme Court couldn’t be convinced by the central government counsel that conducting caste survey was unconstitutional and therefore refused to block the process of caste survey.
Now it should be clear to all political pundits that there are differences between social engineering and social justice. BJP is primarily a party of social engineering having little concern with social justice. Under social engineering it has projected spineless workers belonging to backward castes from its ranks as leaders to exploit caste sentiments. Just as in the darkness we mistake rope as serpent, so, out of ignorance, the analysts mistake the social engineering of BJP as social justice. This is best exemplified by the fact that Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh govts decided to increase percentage of reservation long ago but BJP through its governors have kept the bills blocked even today.
Confuse
When all attempts to avoid and block the caste survey failed and the report of Bihar caste survey was released in the first week of October and a new debate gripped the nation that negates the religious revivalist project of the BJP, the BJP, in line with its long history of deceitfulness, embarked upon to confuse the people of India in regard to necessity of conducting all India caste census. The Prime Minister who has umpteen times claimed himself an OBC by caste and has thereby harvested rich crop of votes suddenly proclaimed that there is no such thing as caste in India and the people are only poor without having any social identity. It was coming from the stock of the same BJP whose politics is centred around exploiting religious and caste identities of people of India. The BJP whose biggest leader claims that there is no such thing as caste has not only pitched Hindus and Muslims against each other, it has also pitched Hindus against Hindus; non Chamar Dalits against Chamars, non-Yadav OBCs against Yadavs, extremely backward castes against backward castes, Adivasis against Adivasis as in Manipur etc. What BJP is trying to do is to create confusion in the minds of the people of India that a caste census is not required. The BJP will continue to do caste politics in a divisive manner but it will not conduct caste census so that social realities do not come to surface and politics continues to be done on hollow, imaginary and emotive but devoid of any substance issues.
The charlatan class who form core support base of BJP have flooded social media platforms with messages that portray caste census as something that will weaken Hindu unity. They are saying, see, Muslims are united as Muslims while Hindus are divided into many groups. Charlatans shall always ignore inconvenient facts. Bihar caste survey report has enumerated at least forty Muslim castes and has categorised them into general, BC and EBC categories just as Hindus castes have been categorised. The entire ecosystem of BJP has swung into action in spreading lies to create confusion in the minds of the people about caste census as they have always done in regard to any project of national awakening and nation building.
Destruct
Now that the facts are clear and confirm the lived experience of the State’s people, the BJP is out to destruct the findings through laughable and brazen arguments. The latest in this line is the statement of Amit Shah the Home Minister of India under whose charge comes the census department of India. In a public meeting in Bihar he stated that population figures of Muslims and Yadavs have been deliberately inflated in the report of Bihar caste survey. He has conveniently brushed aside the data from 1931 census which confirms that population of Yadavs as counted in the Bihar caste survey is far from inflated. Similarly census reports of 2001 and 2011 confirms that the population of Muslims in Bihar caste survey are very much true and not at all inflated. What Amit Shah is attempting is not only to divide the society and then rule but also to destroy the credibility of Bihar caste survey.
Read also: Caste census: X-ray, MRI and diagnosis
Conclusion
What is to be noted here is that the BJP’s ABCD approach towards the demand and the crying need for caste based socio economic survey of the Indian population is nothing unexpected. In fact, it is a mere reflection of the Sangh Parivar’s longstanding refusal to acknowledge, far less address serious issues of caste inequality that damages the potential of the Indian society. Their arguments in fact are totally in line with BJP’s ABCD formula of governance. The time has come to call them out and fight for the rights and welfare of all citizens belonging to all sections of the society
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