New Delhi: In October, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chose Bhajanlal Sharma, a Brahmin, to fight from the party’s Sanganer bastion, there were protests and pushback from sitting MLA Ashok Lahoti’s Vaishya community.
But according to sources, it was no accident that Bhajanlal — the party’s four-time general secretary and now the BJP’s first Brahmin Chief Minister in Rajasthan since Hari Dev Joshi in 1990 — was chosen to contest from the seat. It wasn’t just aimed at marking a “generational change”, said sources, but was also an act of social engineering done with an eye firmly on next year’s general elections.
The gambit worked. The 56-year-old Sharma, a first-time MLA, beat Pushpendra Bhardwaj of the Congress by over 48,000 votes.
Brahmins are the third-most numerically strong community in Rajasthan after Jats and Rajputs, and constitute 8 percent of the state’s population, sources told ThePrint, adding that they hold sway over 30 assembly seats.
With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections looming, the sources said the party sees Brahmins as major influencers and key to its Hindutva push in the Hindi heartland, especially in light of the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya scheduled for January.
But a senior BJP leader from Rajasthan, who wished to not be named, told ThePrint it was a political necessity to pick a Brahmin CM because of “competing caste interests” in Rajasthan.
“In Rajasthan, Gurjars and Meenas have a conflict, so the party can’t name either a Gurjar or a Meena CM. Jats have some reservations with the state’s Rajputs. Vasundhara Raje served as chief minister because she branded herself as a Jat bahu.” he said. “So the only caste-neutral community in Rajasthan are the Brahmins.”
But it’s not only the CM’s position where the BJP’s strategy to balance caste equations is at play with an eye on 2024. It can also be seen in the party’s deputy CM choices — Diya Kumari, a Rajput, and Prem Chand Bairwa, a Dalit leader.
According to the party estimates, Rajputs form 9 percent of Rajasthan’s population and, within the SC/ST block, Dalits account for 17 percent.
What also worked in Bhajanlal Sharma’s favour, according to party leaders, is his association with the Sangh Parivar and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since 1990. Bhajanlal, a former student activist with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) who eventually joined the BJP Yuva Morcha and even became its president, has served as general secretary under four state BJP chiefs — Ashok Parnami, Madan Lal Saini, Satish Poonia, and the incumbent C.P. Joshi.
In 2010, when the now BJP president J.P. Nadda visited Bharatpur for a religious event, Bhajanlal was the party’s district president and helped organise the tour, party sources said. Likewise, he also worked with Union minister Amit Shah on the BJP’s 2021 election campaign in West Bengal, they added.
According to BJP MLA Kalicharan Saraf, Bhajanlal has “good chemistry with former chief minister Vasundhara Raje and became a consensus choice for the party.”
“He served during the tenures of Ashok Parnami and Madan Saini — a Vasundhara man. He even continued during Satish Poonia’s tenure and wasn’t removed even when C.P. Joshi was made Rajasthan BJP chief in March this year,” Saraf, an MLA from Rajasthan’s Malviya Nagar, told ThePrint.
Also Read: Royal, Rajput, and not Raje— why BJP is placing its bets on Diya Kumari in Rajasthan
Brahmin, ‘organisational man’ — what worked in Bhajanlal’s favour
Between 1990 and 2023, the BJP ruled Rajasthan four times — under Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (1990-1992, 1993-1998) and later under Raje (2003-2008, 2013-2018). Interspersed is the Congress rule under Ashok Gehlot (1998-2003, 2008-2013, and 2018-2023).
While Shekhawat and Raje were Rajputs, Gehlot was an OBC leader. This was a stark departure from the time before — between 1949 to 1990, the state had five Brahmin CMs, with the last one, Congress’s Hari Dev Joshi, serving his third term for a brief 90 days between December 1989 to March 1990.
According to a BJP functionary, the Mandal politics, which was at its peak in 1990, caused Brahmins to lose their position in the state’s power structure — the number of Brahmin MLAs went down from 60 in 1949 in the first assembly to 16 in the 15th assembly in 2018. Meanwhile, Rajputs like Shekhawat and Raje continued to occupy top positions, the functionary said.
The BJP has always counted Brahmins among its core votebank. Indeed, the party has pushed more and more Brahmins into organisational roles over the years in Rajasthan — of its 15 state presidents so far, seven, including incumbent C.P. Joshi, were from the caste group. In the 16th and the latest assembly, 10 of its elected 115 MLAs are from the community.
According to party sources, by appointing a Brahmin CM, the BJP hopes to balance the caste equations in the state. At the same time, by naming Raje loyalist Vasudev Devnani as the state’s next speaker and taking her the opinion into account to select the party’s next CM, the party has allowed her to have a say even while ensuring that the doors to the chief minister’s position are firmly closed for her, the sources said.
This is significant, not only because the party refused to project her as the state’s CM candidate, but also because, according to the sources, the party disregarded her objections to fielding Diya Kumari, reportedly viewed as Raje’s “replacement”.
Arun Chaturvedi, a former state BJP president and another Brahmin leader, described Bhajanlal as an “organisational man who worked in whichever role was assigned to him”.
“His low profile and his reputation as a simple worker as well as his age and caste helped him to rise to the top post,” Chaturvedi, who had appointed the CM-elect as the district president of Bharatpur in 2010, told ThePrint.
Kirodi Lal Meena, a Meena leader and an MLA from Sawai Madhopur, told ThePrint that Bhajanlal knows the state and the organisation well.
“Bhajanlal has worked with four state presidents. He knows the organisation very well, has travelled to every part of Rajasthan, and knows the state’s politics. He fits into the CM bracket well,” he said.
Eye on 2024
The BJP’s act of balancing caste equations appears to be operable in the states of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh as well. The party picked tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai to be its new CM in Chhattisgarh — a state where tribals account for 32 percent of the state’s population. Likewise, in Madhya Pradesh, where the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) are estimated to form 52 percent of the state’s population, it chose OBC leader Mohan Yadav as its CM.
Its choice of deputies in these states is similarly influenced, party leaders told ThePrint.
According to a central BJP leader, the party has been championing backward and marginalised castes ever since the Narendra Modi regime was voted to power in 2014.
“Ever since Modi’s arrival on the national scene in 2014, it has been sharing power with backward castes who were previously ignored by the system,” this senior leader said. “In Bihar, Renu Devi, who was made deputy chief minister, was from the most backward class. Similarly, Hari Sahni (currently the Leader of Opposition in Bihar’s legislative Council) was from the fishermen’s community. Keshav (Prasad) Maurya as deputy chief minister (in UP) is another example. Empowering the common worker and backward castes has given the BJP such a mandate in Rajasthan.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Tribal vote swings to BJP in 3 states, decisive in Chhattisgarh victory