3 months ago
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It is curtains down for the political vocation of Nitish Kumar, who was baptised into authorities done the Jayaprakash Narayan question successful the 1970s successful Bihar — a question that was itself a fusion of 2 families of politics, the Sangh Parivar and the Janata Parivar. The JP question marked the consolidation of OBC authorities successful the State, against the Congress dominance that mirrored, and entrenched, upper-caste societal hegemony.
OBC authorities successful Bihar has gone done galore churns implicit the past century. Three communities — Yadavs, Kurmi and Koeri — helmed the situation to upper-caste hegemony successful the State. Mr. Kumar is simply a Kurmi. After playing 2nd fiddle to Lalu Prasad Yadav wrong the Janata Parivar for galore years, Mr. Kumar broke distant to recovered the Samata Party successful 1994 — which aboriginal transitioned into the Janata Dal (United). After being successful the saddle for 20 years arsenic Chief Minister, helium is present set to participate the Rajya Sabha.
His exit from the cardinal signifier to the antechamber marks the decision of a societal and governmental process shaped done the enactment betwixt the Sangh Parivar and the Janata Parivar implicit the past half-century. With this, the extinction of the Janata Parivar appears closer; it is simply a triumph of the Sangh Parivar.
Mandal vs Kamandal
Politics successful the Hindi heartland has often been framed arsenic Mandal versus Kamandal — OBC assertion and autonomy opposed to the Hindutva propulsion for unity and bid among each Hindu castes. That has not been an wholly linear oregon binary antagonism. Mr. Kumar’s ain mentation of Mandal authorities has been successful confederation with Kamandal for astir of his career. Under Narendra Modi, the BJP absorbed that dynamic of rivalry, contestation and accommodation among castes and converted it into an intra-Parivar matter — the Sangh Parivar’s ain affair, alternatively than inter-party rivalries and alliances.
Caste assertions and rivalries person not ceased; they present play retired wrong the Parivar. The caller contention astir UGC guidelines connected tackling caste favoritism is simply a lawsuit successful point. The Janata Parivar, that sprawling ecosystem of caste groups organised arsenic competing and collaborating parties, is being retired. The Koeri redoubt successful Bihar — Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha — is besides nether unit to dissolve itself into the BJP.
The JP question and the Janata experimentation had aggregated each aggrieved societal groups against the upper-caste, Dalit and Muslim conjugation that sustained the Congress. The Sangh Parivar helped midwife the Janata Parivar, and some unneurotic bushed the Congress successful the heartland. The Ram Janmabhoomi question precocious Hindu consolidation, and the Bhagalpur riots of 1989 — which killed astir 1,000 people, overwhelmingly Muslim — deepened communal polarisation successful the State. Yet it was Lalu Prasad who outmanoeuvred the Sangh Parivar by stitching unneurotic Hindu subalterns with Muslims into an unbeatable societal basal for the RJD. The demolition of the Babri Masjid successful 1992 completed the decimation of the Congress, pushing its upper-caste supporters towards the BJP, and Muslims and Dalits towards the RJD.
Surging Sangh Parivar
The Mandal–Kamandal dynamic has played retired done aggregate cycles of fragmentation and consolidation of societal groups and parties, with the Sangh Parivar emerging much almighty astatine each stage. Lalu Yadav’s OBC basal unravelled, leaving him with lone Yadavs and Muslims by 2005, adjacent arsenic Mr. Kumar raided his camps for non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits. In 2005, the RJD was definitively toppled, and Mr. Kumar came to helm the BJP–JDU ruling conjugation arsenic Chief Minister.
Nitish initially resisted the emergence of Narendra Modi arsenic the nationalist person of the BJP, but soon yielded earlier the surging ally. Mr. Modi entered Bihar successful 2014 arsenic an OBC leader, occupying the precise crushed the Janata Parivar had claimed arsenic its own, leaving nary uncertainty that its state would yet beryllium cannibalised.
That process is present implicit — oregon astatine slightest the BJP believes so. A person from the OBC assemblage will, successful each likelihood, beryllium the adjacent Chief Minister, and the enactment has already deepened its seat with OBC leaders astatine each level. An upper-caste BJP person said, lone fractional successful jest, that BJP stood for ‘Backward Janata Party.’ Upper-caste supporters of the BJP person constricted options, and the enactment is consenting to crook to the spot of numbers that OBCs possess.
Caste dynamics are present being managed arsenic household disputes wrong the Hindutva universe. It is nary longer societal justness versus Hindutva, nary longer Mandal against Kamandal. It is societal justness wrong Hindutva — Mandal absorbed into the Kamandal. The guided brushed exile of Mr. Kumar marks a large milestone successful the continuing eclipse of autonomous societal justness parties successful India.
