Reservations: The new fault line?

On August 21, a youth group gathered at Jantar Mantar to protest against reservations. Their grievances extended to general resentment against the upper castes. By evening, the police swiftly removed them, unlike the CJP protesters, who were allowed to hold fort at the venue for over a month.

But unlike the CJP protests, the government engaged with the upper caste group quickly, without allowing the issue to become bigger. First, there was a meeting with Uttar Pradesh’s Brahmin Deputy Chief Minister, and then, six days later, with Union Minister J.P. Nadda.

Nadda had earlier engaged the CJP representatives and activist Sonam Wangchuk to understand their demands and then share them with the government. Nadda tweeted that he had met the August 21 protesters and held discussions with them, without going into the nature of their demands.

The RHA (Reservation Hatao Andolan) has a host of demands, from the removal of the creamy layer in reservations to reviewing reservations after 80 years, a national commission for the general category, making economic criteria the basis for reservations, and rolling back the UGC rules.

Nadda’s engagement did invite some questions from the group of protesters, who argued that one section had been picked for talks.

The issue is a challenge and an opportunity for the BJP. By engaging with the protesters, it sent a signal to its core constituency that it was sensitive to their demands and had even followed up with some concrete action, which may be announced in due course. Brahmins and other upper castes were feeling neglected as the party has been actively pursuing caste politics in Uttar Pradesh and the Hindi heartland. The party needs its core vote bank by its side during the polls, which are six months away.

But moving closer to upper-caste voters comes with its own risks. The BJP also depends on OBC and Dalit voters, many of whom have been brought into its support base through its alliance partners.

The RHA protest has, predictably, invited criticism from opposition parties and even some who support the government, as they argued that reservations cannot be removed. Congress, SP and AAP leaders have spoken against any tinkering with reservations and cautioned that even a review of reservations could mean their removal.

The BJP’s engagement with the RHA protesters is also aimed at keeping upper-caste voters from moving towards the Samajwadi Party, as Akhilesh Yadav had said that the ‘P’ in the party’s PDA slogan, which originally stood for Pichhda, Dalit and Alpsankhyak, would now also stand for Pandit.

For the Samajwadi Party, this was a significant shift. The party has long been identified mainly with Yadav and Muslim voters. Yadav does not need to win over all Brahmins. A small shift in their voting pattern could be enough to affect the result in some constituencies, particularly in a state where many seats are decided by relatively narrow margins.

Now, if the reservation debate escalates, the upper castes may ‘naturally’ stay within the BJP fold, as they did in the last polls.

But on the other side, if the debate becomes polarising around reservations, it has the potential to come at a cost to the BJP. Observers cite the example of the 2015 Bihar polls, when a comment on reservation by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat led to a perception against the BJP. This can pose a challenge for the party.

Hence, the government would be cautious about the larger message it sends in accepting any of the RHA demands.

There is another corollary to the RHA growing in size. The energy created by the Gen Z movement may be “channelled” into a debate on reservations, as a large number of participants in the CJP protests were from the upper castes. Especially when Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, through his ‘Chhattron Ki Goonj’ raking up debate against Manusmriti, often seen as being against marginalised communities. RHA may be counter to it?

But as a heavy upcoming season of polls suggests, the demands around reservations will get louder when the caste census is conducted, next year, as marginalised communities would demand a higher share based on their population.

Among the many options before the government may be to form a panel to see which communities, despite being in the reserved categories, have not been recipients of the benefits of reservations. Hence, a counter-measure in the form of economic criteria may be debated.

Politically charged times ahead.