Mandal-Kamandal 2.0

The decision taken at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that caste enumeration will be part of the upcoming census exercise represents a tectonic shift in the BJP’s politics.

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It not only suggests the saffron party is ready to hijack the main poll plank of the Congress and its allies - the RJD and the SP -, but also to make it an integral component of its Hindootva politics. This is a variation of what was once known as the Mandal-Kamandal politics which was a combination of Dalit politics unleashed by the Mandal Commission report and the Hindootva ideology of the BJP, In 1979 the Morarji Desai-government appointed a commission under the chairmanship of Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal, who was then the Member of Parliament from Madhepura constituency in Bihar. The commission was entrusted with the task of identifying socially and educationally backward classes in India. In its findings the commission identified a total of 3,743 different castes and communities as backward on certain parameters. These castes comprised nearly 52 per cent of the country’s population. The commission proposed the idea of giving 27 per cent reservation to these backward castes/classes in public employment along with SCs and STs.