What’s wrong with majoritarianism?” Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be asking. He responded to Rahul Gandhi’s invocation of Kanshi Ram’s slogan: “Jiski Jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni hissedari”. The PM predictably twisted this in the context of Hindu majority and suggested that it might boomerang on the Congress.
Distortion and rhetoric apart, this is a fair question that must not be buried under counter-rhetoric. It concerns the heart of the current political dispute about the INDIA coalition’s support for the caste census and its opposition to the BJP’s advocacy of Hindu supremacy. The question deserves careful consideration and a straightforward answer.
Two claims of equivalence are at work here. The first relates to two kinds of identity politics: one based on caste and another on religion. So, how is one form of identity politics better than the other? If we oppose communalism, how can we support casteism? The second is about two types of majoritarian claims: one based on the numerical preponderance of Bahujan (SC+ST+OBC) and the other on that of the Hindus. If Hindu majoritarianism is a threat to Indian democracy, how can Bahujan majoritarianism be kosher?
Identity politics isn’t the villain
The first question, regarding identity politics, has troubled both liberal and progressive thinkers for a long time. Mobilising people based on issues and interests is fine, they say, but appealing to their identity, derived from the accident of birth, is dangerous. It is an invitation to primordial instincts that are bound to turn irrational. Once the genie is out of the bottle, putting it back is impossible. Based on this reading, the politics of Mandal is as bad as the politics of Mandir. Supporting one and opposing the other is political opportunism. Or so goes the argument.
The trouble with this position is that ‘identity politics’ is not some peculiar deformity of politics. Drawing upon existing identities or forging new ones is the very essence of democratic politics. It applies not only to the mobilisation of caste or religion or race but also to women, regions, and nations. Identities are not given; politics is about getting people to identify with a collective. It always involves drawing as well as erasing boundaries. This applies as much to political mobilisation of Dalits or Hindus as it does to the attempts to mobilise farmers or students.
So, the problem is not with identity politics per se, but with the context and nature of mobilisation. We should be wary of any belligerent and exclusionary identity politics that draws very hard lines, uses the fuel of hatred to deepen those lines, and has the potential to incite violence and disruption. On all these counts, political mobilisation along religious lines is infinitely far more dangerous in India than any other form of identity politics. In a deeply religious society, divisions between religious communities tend to be very hard and exclusionary. Given the history of communal division, Partition violence, and subsequent riots, any mobilisation along religious lines is fraught with dangers of violence. There is no doubt that communal mobilisation of Hindus (as well as Muslims and Sikhs in many instances) has brazenly used hatred for mobilisation. For all these reasons, while democratic politics has been able to domesticate caste-based divisions, it has not quite succeeded in taming religious divisions. This places communal politics in a different league as the biggest danger to national unity today. There is no way it can be equated with caste based mobilisation, except through a duplicitous use of the expression “casteism”: it can refer to defence of caste supremacy but also to any struggle against caste based social inequalities.
At the same time, this serves as a note of caution for the politics of caste-based mobilisation. We need to guard against a tendency among some Bahujan politicians and intellectuals to draw rigid caste lines that do not recognise the existence of other forms of disadvantage and discrimination—of gender, class, and indeed jatis within the Scheduled Castes and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). We also need to be alert to the tendency of using an exclusionary language that can degenerate into caste hatred. A critique of Brahminism sometimes slides into an attack on Brahmins. And there are places in the country—some districts in Bihar, for example—with a history of caste wars where active mobilisation of castes can be inflammatory.
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Real majority’s rightful demand
As for majoritarianism, we must distinguish the rule of the majority from the tyranny of the majority. Modern democratic politics has accepted the principle of the rule of the political majority. But it comes with several caveats. First, it is a rule of the political majority, not of a majority community based on birth. No one can be permanently excluded from the possibility of being part of the political majority. Caste politics has allowed for unlimited permutations and combinations that create a majority—Bahujan or Ahinda or AJGAR or a Dalit-Brahmin-Muslim coalition, to name a few. Religious mobilisation, especially that which leads to a Hindu-Muslim divide, does not leave that possibility and thus creates permanent exclusions.
The second caveat is that majority rule in a democracy cannot be absolute rule; it must respect certain limits. It cannot deprive the minority of basic rights and entitlements, or else they would lose any reason to accept the rule of the majority. That is why our Constitution—like any other democratic constitution—lays down some inviolable rights for religious, linguistic, and caste minorities. The problem with the politics of Hindu majoritarianism is that it seeks to deprive religious minorities of these basic entitlements—freedom of religion, equal treatment before the law, and indeed equal citizenship. This is the tyranny of the majority. Caste-based politics, even in its worst forms, does not demand second rate citizenship for the upper caste Hindus.
Finally, a majority cannot lay claim to everything; it cannot violate basic proportionality. Bahujans sharing power and opportunities in proportion to the population share is a crude principle, but it does not violate the basic democratic compact. When Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath talks about 80-20, he is not claiming 80 percent of the state’s resources for 80 percent of the population; he is striving to deprive the remaining 20 percent of anything at all. That is also the sub-text of the PM’s response to caste census.
This is the fundamental distinction between the claims on behalf of the Hindu majority and the Bahujan majority. Both these claims involve overlapping social groups: overwhelming proportion of the Bahujans are Hindus and most of the Hindus are Bahujans. Yet the two banners represent radically different types of politics. Bahujan politics seeks to visibilise the invisible majority by forging unity among those who are clearly disadvantaged, and lack power, resources, and opportunities that are anywhere close to their share in the population. This is not a matter of perception; it is a hard fact. The SC, ST, and the OBC together constitute anywhere between 70 to 75 percent of our population. Yet there is no sector of our public life—be it politics, bureaucracy, or business—where they occupy even half of the national resources. The Hindu ‘upper caste’, on the other hand, control anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of positions, despite their number being 20 percent or less. The Bahujans do not seek to control everything. If and when they do so, their claims would become majoritarian. At this moment, they represent a disadvantaged majority that demands recognition, dignity and no more than a due share.
Their claim cannot be equated with that in the name of the Hindus, who by no stretch of the imagination suffer from under-representation (anything less than 80 percent) in any walk of life. Besides, we must not allow a tiny minority of privileged caste Hindus to masquerade as Hindu majority.When the black majority in South Africa claimed their due share as the majority, they were not being majoritarian but were simply reclaiming democracy. Similarly, a demand of proportionate share for an invisible and disadvantaged majority must not be conflated with exclusionary and aggressive claims to absolute power for an already empowered community. The latter, politics of Hindu majority, is majoritarian domination and is antithetical to democracy. The former, politics of Bahujan majority, is a quest for dignity that is integral to the realisation of democracy. We must never conflate dignity with domination.
Yogendra Yadav is a political scientist and national convener of the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan. He is also a co-founder of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. He tweets @_YogendraYadav. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)