BJP GOES BACKWARD CASTEING NET WIDE

LED by Modi 3.0, for now, NDA 3.0 is a caste iron coalition.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

Narendra Modi, its smith and myth, is an ironsmith who has alloyed varna with karma to forge a government in the timeless furnace of India's social legacy. In spite of the activist legacies of Ram Mohan Roy, Vivekananda, Subramania Bharati and Narayana Guru, reformation is deformation. Caste casts a long shadow over our modern aspirations. Its social brutality has been sanitised, but the political expediency has been escalating election after election. Caste, not calibre, defines the contours of a ruling dispensation.

Last week, when new governments were installed in Delhi, Bhubaneswar and Vijayawada, the buzz was about the caste of the candidates inducted, not their achievements as public servants. The central government led by Modi for the third consecutive time is visualised as an ideal mix of continuity with change. But its ideologically inebriated promoters are sweetening it as a perfect balance of regional and caste confections. Conformist media sang congratulatory paeans to the number of Dalits, tribal, minority leaders and women who have new corner offices in various government buildings in Lutyens' Delhi. This excessive amplification of caste connections have undermined the merit of ministers and minimised their political status.

Flaunting caste as an essential qualification to get politically ahead is the best winning strategy in India's expanding political market. For example, last week the BJP scored big in Odisha, ousting the charismatic Naveen Patnaik who was 24 years in power. Undoubtedly, the BJP won partially by invoking Odiya asmita or pride because a former South Indian bureaucrat was ruling the roost and was perceived as Patnaik's successor. From Yogi Adityanath to Modi, BJP's high-octave question was, "Would you allow a Tamil babu to govern Odisha?"