Caste, class and the politics of disillusionment

Debates concerning caste-based politics have taken a significant turn in the wake of the decisive electoral victory of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in May. Caste-based political parties, notably the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh (UP), and the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) in Bihar, experienced an unprecedented electoral defeat at the hands of the 'grand Hindu coalition' forged by the BJP. Given the remarkable electoral routing of parties that once galvanised marginalised populations against upper-caste political domination, a nuanced explanation of how exactly this happened is vital. Indeed, how and in what ways did Dalit, Backward Caste (BC) and middle class interests coincide, and where lies the future of caste politics?

A post mortem
In order to form government in India, a party must gain more than 272 of 545 seats in the Lok Sabha. While the BJP won 282 seats, importantly (and somewhat counter-intuitively), it won 41 of the 84 seats reserved for Dalits, with the party's allies securing an additional ten of these seats. It also won 93 of the total 120 seats from the states of UP and Bihar (and vote shares of 42 and 29 percent respectively), which together form the political reservoir of Dalit and BC politics. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP took 27 of the 29 seats available, while it did not lose even a single of the total 25 seats in Rajasthan. Together these four states provided the BJP with over 50 percent of its Lok Sabha seats and ensured a single party-led national government – a first since 1984. Other significant electoral successes for the BJP occurred in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand where it secured 118 seats in total, with an average vote share of 44.4 percent.