The gin-rum divide

Little did Suraj Bhan know that his role was merely to remain in the Raj Bhavan, enjoy the comforts of life and indulge in occasional homilies

The swapping of the gubernatorial posts in Lucknow and Shimla can be seen in two ways: a promotion for Vishnu Kant Shastri and a demotion for Suraj Bhan. Now forget for a moment their names and focus on their caste identities and the exchange of seats will become at once — promotion for a Brahmin and demotion for a Dalit. That Bhan is peeved is apparent from his post-transfer remarks. Of course, all Raj Bhavans, whether in Shillong or in Shimla, are ostentatious and the occupants have access to all the necessary creature comforts. Even so, governorship of the geographically and demographically largest state in the country is not the same as that of one of its smallest. This explains why Bhan is loudly resentful while Shastri is silent.

The reasons that compelled the Vajpayee government to transfer Bhan will never be revealed. All that is known is that the government did not approve of his proactive role. But what was he proactive about? Ever since Bhan was picked up for the job, he has been showing an interest in things Dalit, which many saw as pursuing an agenda. It is a problem all those in similar positions face. After all, it was his Dalit background that encouraged the BJP to select him for the job. Once such a person is in the job, he naturally feels compelled to do something for his community. That is what President K.R. Narayanan sought to do when he jotted in the file on judges’ appointment, “Eligible persons from SC/ST categories are available and their under-representation or non-representation would not be justifiable.”

The President was pilloried for his “proactive” role when all he did was to make a meek attempt to uphold the Constitutional principle of affirmative action. Similarly, Bhan did nothing more than trying to ensure that the Dalits’ interests were protected and they did not fall by the wayside. Unlike some other upper castes in the post who imposed their fads on the way the Raj Bhavans were run and who spirited away costly carpets and artefacts, the worst that can be said about Bhan is that he did not remain a rubber stamp. Nor can it be anybody’s contention that he was a bad governor; if he was bad in Lucknow, what guarantee is there that he would be good in Shimla?

Whether the government succumbed to the pressures of the Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, who the BJP sees as a potential ally in the next election, and who has not been happy with Bhan appropriating her Dalit agenda, or whether it wanted to give a free hand to Chief Minister Rajnath Singh, the action against Bhan has compromised the party’s Dalit credentials. That it happened when a Dalit heads the party may appear incongruous to those who are not aware of the difficulties the Sangh Parivar traditionally had on the Dalit question. Just as the Congress which did not become pro-Dalit because it was once headed by a D. Sanjivayya or a Jagjivan Ram – easily the tallest Dalit leaders after B.R. Ambedkar – the BJP did not become one by the tokenism inherent in Bangaru Laxman’s appointment as party chief.

But unlike the Congress for whom the Dalits and minorities were vote banks, the Parivar had a fundamental problem in accommodating the Dalit viewpoint. For Jyotiba Phule, the first to articulate the Dalit philosophy in the latter half of the nineteenth century, who believed in the Aryan invasion theory, the original inhabitants of the land were Adivasis, who comprised the sudras and the atisudras. He believed that it was only through deceit that the daitya King Bali was defeated signalling the downfall of the indigenous inhabitants. (Suraj Bhan seems to have touched a raw nerve when he pleaded with the RSS chief to have the Ramacharitamanas freed of its caste bias as if it was within the latter’s capacity.) Thus the “other” in Dalit literature stands for the upper castes. But when the votaries of Hindutva sought to define nationhood in terms of pitrbhumi and punyabhumi, with a view to confining the Muslims and Christians to the “other”, the more orthodox among them had difficulty including the Dalits among “us”. Ultimately, it was compulsions of adult suffrage that forced them to change their views.

It is not that the Parivar has not made any efforts to attract the Dalits into its fold. Indeed, many of them fell for its charms not because it espoused the Dalit cause but because they wanted to move up the societal ladder. Sociologists describe it as Sanskritisation. Small wonder that Satyanarain Jatiya, the tallest Dalit leader the BJP has produced, took his oath in Sanskrit when he was elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly for the first time. As he admitted in an interview, it was the lure of Sanskrit that brought him into the RSS fold. But then the BJP could not wait till the Dalits felt similar compulsions to join the party. Hence, ways had to be found to incorporate the Dalit icons into the BJP pantheon. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find a portrait of Ambedkar beside Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’s on the BJP platform although the former had rejected Hinduism and wrote a critique of the religion, which could not be published in his lifetime. In order to appropriate him, arguments that he rejected “alien” religions like Islam and Christianity and plumped for an “indigenous” one are advanced. Yet, the party’s Brahminical worldview does not always remain suppressed as was found when V.P. Singh unleashed the Mandal weapon.

The panic it caused in the party forcing Advani to mount the Ayodhya Rath which eventually resulted in the withdrawal of the BJP’s support to the V.P. Singh government showed how Brahminical the party remained despite all its protestations of sympathy for Dalits. Today, if the party is no longer afraid of reservations and is willing to extend its benefits to any community that claims itself to be backward, it is because in their heart of hearts the party leaders know that sooner than later reservations will lose all meaning because of the increasing withdrawal of government from most sectors of the economy. Those who believe that the party has come a long way since the Mandal hysteria would do well to check with any senior leader how the party views the Mandal recommendation that reservation should be extended to the private sector, particularly those concerns which depend on the government or the public sector banks for any assistance.

Unfortunately for Bhan, he thought that all that glitters was gold. Little did he know that his role was merely to remain in the Raj Bhavan, enjoy the comforts of life and indulge in occasional homilies. He failed to realise that when it comes to the crunch, a party which supposedly lays great store by its Dalit links would not bat an eyelid before replacing a backward chief minister with a Rajput and a Dalit governor with a Brahmin. And to complete the troika, have a Brahmin to head the party! A more savvy Dalit in Bhan’s place would have realised like the Dalit writer who found in Delhi two classes of people – the gin drinkers and the rum imbibers – that the divide is too fundamental in the BJP to disappear so soon.

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