I wanted to write this article before voting in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. On 18 November, I wanted to do an interview along these lines. I shared these thoughts with many friends. But I held myself back. I made up my mind not to write or give an interview on this subject until the announcement of the election results. I would like to clarify what made me do so.
Actually, post 2014, the people, especially intellectuals, have lost the virtue of tolerance. The so-called scholars and thinkers have turned so casteist and so arrogant that they are unable to digest the truth. And if you confront them with facts, they begin vomiting secularism or belching progressivism. If someone comes out with a well-argued prediction, unfounded allegations are hurled at him and he is trolled.
Haryana voted to elect its new assembly on 5 October 2024. Polling done, TV channels began beaming results of the exit polls conducted by different research/survey agencies. Almost all exit polls predicted that the Congress would be back in power with a majority of its own. This was said without ifs and buts. It was said that the BJP would win 19-28 seats while the Congress’s tally would be between 44 and 62 seats. This meant that the Congress would form its government with a two-thirds majority. Even the pro-government media institutions emphatically predicted Congress’s victory. The fact was that this was a total impossibility.
Let alone pro-Modi media, even scholar-politician Yogendra Yadav forecast a Congress victory with a huge margin. Though Yadav has a socialist background, he has been a leading light of the “candle brigade” – a construct of the Aam Aadmi Party. In Modi’s words, he is an “andolanjeevi” (one who lives off protests). Be that as it may, when a thinking person like Yadav says something, we are inclined to believe it.
But when the results of the Haryana Assembly elections were announced on 8 October 2024, all pollsters ended up with egg on their faces. On that day, I forecast the results of the Maharashtra elections. I insisted that Maharashtra would be a replay of Haryana. Why was I so insistent? That was because of my study of the caste system and the Machiavellian ways of the brahmanical forces. I refrained from writing or speaking about my prognosis because if I did so, my friends would begin eyeing me with suspicion and my foes would declare me a BJP acolyte. It is a crime to speak the truth to arrogant scholars, steeped in casteism.
Given the similarities between the past and the present caste equations in Haryana and Maharashtra, I was sure that the Maharashtra elections would be a replay of the elections in Haryana. What are the similarities? In 2013, Bhupinder Hooda, a Congressman from the Jat landlord caste was the chief minister of Haryana. At the time, in Maharashtra, Prithviraj Chavan, a Maratha, also from the Congress, was the chief minister. Both these chief ministers from landlord castes had the assemblies of their states pass Bills granting OBC status, and consequently reservation, to their respective landlord “Kshatriya” castes. This riled the OBCs. They became worried. And this impacted the parliament and assembly elections that followed. The OBCs voted for the BJP to drive out the Congress government that was playing Jat politics in Haryana. The BJP came to power, the Jat chief minister was shown the door, and Manohar Lal Khattar, a non-Jat, became the chief minister.
The same happened in Maharashtra. Due to Maratha reservation, OBC mobilization became a decisive factor in the 2014 Parliament and Assembly elections. The OBCs backed the BJP with a vengeance, driving Maratha chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and his Congress government out of power. The OBCs successfully countered the politics that was seeking to establish the hegemony of Jats and Marathas in the two states. Devendra Fadnavis, a Brahmin, became the chief minister of Maharashtra. Clearly, for the OBCs, as it became a popular saying, “even a Brahmin is preferable to a Maratha”.
In 2016, the Supreme Court rejected reservation for the Jats in Haryana. The Bombay High Court struck down Maratha reservation in Maharashtra. After the Supreme Court’s decision, Jats orchestrated anti-OBC riots in Haryana. Four bullets were fired at Rajkumar Saini, an MP, who had taken the battle to protect OBC reservations to the top court. Thankfully, Saini escaped unhurt from this murderous assault. As part of anti-OBC riots, the Jats indulged in arson and rape in the rural areas of the state. The riots translated into OBC polarization against the Jats and the BJP was its biggest beneficiary.
Fadnavis realized that an anti-Maratha OBC mobilization would benefit the BJP in Maharashtra, too. And he set about conspiring to make it happen.
In 2016-17, he extended government patronage to the Marathas for taking out protest marches in which lakhs participated. The demands for reservation for the Marathas and abrogation of the SC-ST Atrocities (Prevention) Act struck fear in the hearts of the OBCs and the Dalits. The show of strength did polarize the OBCs against the Marathas, but the BJP could not benefit from it. There were two reasons for this: One, with the High Court shooting down the proposal to grant reservations to the Marathas, the issue lost its relevance, despite BJP’s efforts to fan it. Second, when on 29 November 2018, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis gave his nod to the Maratha Reservation Bill, he mistakenly thought that the OBCs were already in the BJP’s pocket and that granting reservation to the Marathas would pay additional dividend. But what happened was just the opposite.
Fadnavis is a shrewd RSS volunteer and has a deep understanding of the caste system. Yet, he committed this blunder and paid the price for it. Balasaheb Ambedkar (Prakash Ambedkar) told a TV interviewer recently that the so-called Kshatriya castes like Jats, Patels and Maratha have an abiding characteristic – “No Maratha, even by mistake, ever votes for a non-Maratha individual or a non-Maratha party.”
The long and short of it was in the 2019 Assembly Elections, the BJP’s OBC support bank shrank and it did not get Maratha votes either. As a result, both Devendra Fadnavis and the BJP were ousted from power.
(Translation from the Hindi by Amrish Herdenia)
