How caste, religion and opportunity will shape 2025

This year will see a continued conversation and argument on the interplay of caste, religion and reservation that the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign and results placed on the national political stage.

- Prashant Jha

This argument will take place during the Delhi and Bihar elections, in Parliament, on the streets, in the media and on social media, and among politically affiliated diaspora groups.

The relative success of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc of parties in the general elections stemmed from fracturing the broader and more inclusive Hindutva tent that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had created over the past decade.

Just as in the 2015 Bihar elections, the non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forces relied on statements emanating from the saffron camp to suggest that a Narendra Modi-led government, in its third term, wanted 400 seats to change the Constitution and scrap reservations. The Opposition supplemented this narrative with the promise of a caste census, indicating it was in favour of a proportionate distribution of resources on caste lines.

The aim was to wean the other backward classes (OBCs) and Dalits off the BJP, and frame "upper castes" as the other. The BJP first denied that it had any intent to revoke reservations. It then went on the offensive and claimed that the Congress, if elected, would take reservations away from OBCs and Dalits and give them to Muslims.