After Tricking OBCs and Dalits, BJP’s Magic Present for Pasmanda Muslims

The Bharatiya Janata Social gathering performed tips on the Different Backward Courses and Dalits of Uttar Pradesh and turned a big phase amongst them in opposition to the Yadavs and the Jatavs, arguably essentially the most dominant caste teams in these two classes. The BJP’s trickery splintered them, maybe irreparably, to its benefit.

The BJP has now mounted a magic present for the Pasmandas, a term which suggests “these left behind” and refers to Muslims belonging to the Different Backward Courses (OBCs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs). With its magic present, the BJP hopes to fragment the Muslim group, broaden its personal help base, and weaken the Opposition earlier than the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The sport of deception was initiated after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the BJP nationwide government assembly in Hyderabad in July, exhorted social gathering staff to succeed in out to not solely weaker sections amongst Hindus but additionally the “disadvantaged and downtrodden” sections amongst minorities, “such because the Pasmanda Muslims.”

Modi additionally suggested to the BJP to take out “Sneh Yatras”, or love yatras, as a substitute of “Sangharsh Yatras,” or yatras for waging battle, because the social gathering is now not within the Opposition. In the identical speech, he said Hyderabad was Bhagyanagar for the BJP.

Some love that!

Wooing Pasmandas

Since Modi’s Hyderabad speech, the BJP has made moves to woo Pasmanda Muslims. Danish Azad Ansari was appointed as Uttar Pradesh’s Minister of State for Minority Welfare; Iftikhar Ahmad Jawed was made the chairperson of the State Board of Madrassa Schooling, as was Chaudhary Kaif-ul-Wara of the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Akademi. The media spotlighted their Pasmanda background to foreground the BJP’s technique.

However these appointments are to posts historically reserved for Muslims. Their salience in India’s bigger social and energy body is minimal—and, paradoxically, exclusionary.

For example, in 2014, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was made the Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs. Eight years later, Naqvi is within the Cupboard however stays in-charge of simply Minority Affairs. This exhibits the BJP will unlikely assign Muslims, whether or not Pasmanda or in any other case, with heavyweight ministerial portfolios.

Certainly, the BJP’s magic present is all about throwing the crumbs of energy to Muslims—and is actually not about giving them a share in energy in proportion to their inhabitants. These crumbs of energy will now be tossed to Pasmandas, within the hope of splitting the group between them and non-Pasmandas. This might shrink the help base of non-BJP events, that are largely recipients of the group’s votes.

The media just lately headlined the BJP’s choice to grant 4 tickets to Pasmanda Muslims within the forthcoming elections to the Municipal Company of Delhi, which has 250 seats. This implies only one.6% of the BJP’s candidates shall be Muslim. Nothing a lot to crow about, is it?

The BJP nominated Ghulam Ali Khatana, a Pasmanda from Jammu, to the Rajya Sabha. Khatana was the face of the Pasmanda Mental Assembly held at Lucknow final month. He stated Opposition events think about backward Muslims as a mere “showpiece.”

On the identical assembly, Kunwar Basit Ali, the Uttar Pradesh BJP minority morcha president, requested Muslims to return the favour proven by his social gathering to Pasmandas by voting for it. Favour? Ali thundered, “How lengthy will you carry the ideology that used to make governments by getting you killed within the title of riots? Underneath the BJP rule, no riot has occurred, no sister or daughter has been widowed, no brother is in jail in reference to riots.”

The Lie

Ali is fibbing. In an earlier piece, I supplied knowledge to point out that hate crimes, patented by the Sangh, gash and bleed Pasmandas comparatively way over non-Pasmandas, or higher caste Muslims. The piece additionally establishes that Muslims are attacked not on account of their caste identification however for his or her Muslim-ness.

That is the purpose former Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar, who invented the time period Pasmanda, hammered in his letter to Modi: “What’s the purpose of taking out ‘Sneh Yatra’ if hate statements and bulldozers go on?” Anwar went on to say, “Pasmanda Muslims have been worst hit of all of the campaigns within the title of cow safety, ghar-wapsi, love jihad, Tablighi jihad within the time of Corona pandemic or temple-mosque conflicts which were occurring since 2004.”

Anwar’s letter is an instance of talking fact to energy. For example, he asks in his letter, “Didn’t House Minister Amit Shah ji name upon the folks, on the time of Delhi Meeting elections when a peaceable motion of Muslim girls in opposition to the NRC [National Register of Citizens] and CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act] was occurring, to ‘press the button in such a manner that Shaheen Bagh will get electrical shock’? Mr Prime Minister, does it go well with an individual of as excessive a standing as you to say that we recognise folks by their sartorial desire? [A reference to Modi’s speech before the 2019 Jharkhand Assembly Elections.]”

The lure of quota

The BJP is, fairly evidently, strolling on a parallel monitor, demonising Muslims even because it woos the Pasmandas, believing their determined existence can have them to repose religion within the BJP’s promise of ushering in a brand new daybreak for them.

That is evident from the Modi authorities’s choice to constitute a three-member fee, headed by former Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan, to look at whether or not these amongst Dalits who transformed to different religions—Islam and Christianity—must be included within the SC reservation.

However the authorities’s intent is suspect. For one, the fee has been given two years to submit its report. This implies the report will come months after the Might 2024 elections. It’s debatable whether or not the BJP, after securing the votes of Dalit Muslims, would trouble to implement reservation for them in case the Balakrishnan Fee makes such a suggestion.

For the opposite, the Union authorities may have issued a Presidential order to insert Dalit Muslim and Dalit Christian castes within the SC checklist, based mostly on a 2008 review-study commissioned by the Nationwide Fee of Minorities. The examine discovered that Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians suffered the identical harsh remedy as fellow Dalits in different religions. Dalit Muslims have been the worst off amongst all Dalits; under-represented among the many prosperous and over-represented among the many poor.

No marvel, sociologist Satish Deshpande, the lead writer of the examine, points out, “It’s smart to keep in mind that ‘examine commissions’ are a basic gadget of evasion and undergo extensively various fates. We should wait and see if the federal government will stroll its discuss.”

Certainly, the BJP resorted to the “basic gadget of evasion” to not fulfil its promise of giving to comparatively extra depressed teams among the many OBCs and Dalits of Uttar Pradesh a larger share within the reservation earmarked for them. Right here is the way it occurred.

Tricking OBCs, Dalits

In the course of the Nineteen Nineties, Samajwadi Social gathering (SP) had consolidated, to a big diploma, the OBCs as its help base and the Bahujan Samaj Social gathering (BSP) had achieved likewise with Dalit subgroups. It was then stated that the SP takes the votes of OBCs however favours solely the Yadavs, the caste to which social gathering supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav belonged. Equally, it was alleged that Kanshi Ram and Mayawati favour their very own Jatav caste over different Dalit subgroups.

To sound credible, such allegations required to be quantified. In 2001, Rajnath Singh, then Uttar Pradesh chief minister, constituted a social justice committee underneath Hukum Singh, who was a minister then. The committee stated its survey confirmed that that the Yadavs have been 20% of the OBC inhabitants in Uttar Pradesh however had 33% of state authorities jobs.

The committee cut up the OBCs into three teams—backward, extra backward and most backward lessons. Solely the Yadav caste was slotted underneath the backward caste and assigned simply 5% of jobs within the OBC reservation pool.

However the committee’s personal report confirmed that the Yadavs weren’t the one group to have jobs increased than their share of inhabitants. For example, the Jats constituted 3.6% of Uttar Pradesh’s OBC inhabitants however their share in jobs was 6.85%, and the Kurmis have been 7.46% of the OBC inhabitants however had a 12.49% share in jobs. The extra quite a few a caste group the extra possible it’s to get a lion’s share of jobs within the reservation pool.

The Hukum Singh committee additionally claimed that the Jatavs have been 55.70% of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh and had 56.77% of state authorities jobs. Though marginally over-represented, the Jatav caste was the one one positioned in a single group—and assigned 10% of the 21% of presidency jobs reserved for Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. The remaining 11% was allotted to different Dalit subgroups.

The committee’s suggestions weren’t applied, as Rajnath Singh bowed out of workplace in March 2002. Nonetheless, the BJP now had knowledge to bolster its largely bogus claims, amplified by the media, that the SP favoured the Yadavs and the BSP the Jatavs. Though the report was thought-about motivated, because it had been of a committee headed by a BJP chief, the marketing campaign in opposition to the domination of Yadavs and Jatavs took off.

In Might 2018, Chief Minister Adityanath constituted yet one more committee underneath Justice Raghavendra Kumar to ostensibly rationalise reservation. This committee positioned the Yadavs, Kurmis, Jats, Sonars and some small OBC teams underneath the backward class and assigned them 7% reservation. The extra backward castes have been allotted 11% and essentially the most backward the remaining 9%.

The Kumar committee report was selectively leaked to the media within the months earlier than the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, enabling the BJP to wean away a considerable share of non-Yadav OBC votes from the SP and non-Jatav Dalit votes from the BSP.

Three years have handed and but the Kumar report has not been applied, even because the BJP, out of the blue, launched 10% reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections, basically comprising the higher castes, in 2019, with out even conducting a survey. If all this isn’t trickery, what’s it then?

For a actuality verify, ask your self: Why hasn’t the BJP subcategorised the higher castes for the EWS reservation, as the 2 committees did for OBCs and Dalits? That is simply the query the Pasmandas ought to ponder over as a substitute of being spellbound by the magic present the BJP has mounted for them. When the BJP can trick different subaltern social teams, why would the destiny of Pasmandas be any totally different?

The writer is an impartial journalist. The views are private.