By Yogesh Maitreya,
A day afterthe Delhi Assembly Election results wereannounced, Indian media has started to exercise its usual prejudiced, hegemonic commentary and telecast over AAP’s win. Meanwhile discriminatory practices (continuously reported by Marathi dailies like Samrat and Mahanak) in Indian villages on the caste lines or even in its urban pockets have been neglected as usual by ‘popular media’ as if AAP’s victory has resolved issues related to most marginalised sections of society or of all Aam Indians. In this process public imagination fed by Delhi’s election result, has further created a biased perception towards AAP in people’s mind.
On the same day, ‘The Asian Age’ had headlines declaring: AAP Demolishes Caste, Class Divide . Another news report completely ignores and kills the role of caste and class existence in AAP’s Delhi win by saying: It was billed as a big class battle but the sensational triumph of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) shows it engineered multiple alliances and swept across class, regional, and caste segments. And it did so by using a narrative of development and welfare for all . The ‘using a narrative of development and welfare for all’ suggests a shaky interpretation of AAP’s strategic dimensions behind wining Delhi Assembly.
The news headlines suggest new phenomena which if perceived from a subaltern perspective, give birth to an ideology which would erase the ‘caste consciousness’ among people, especially dalits/bahujan/ adivasis, on which their struggle is based and helps them understand nuances of political grounds in Indian polity. If ‘caste conscious-politics’ in India which AAP deliberately interprets as ‘caste-politic’ is demolished by the creation of artificial concept such as ‘AamAadmi’ subaltern politics, their electoral share, political participation and upward mobility would crumble.
And this is distortion of politics in India, because Caste is the basic unit of Indian social and political life and, if this would not be the constructive/creative basis of political party or electorate politics with sufficient participation of Dalit/bahujans, then the representation in political sphere will continue to be dominated by upper castes with their easy access to political domain, manufacturing dalits/bahujan/adivasis as mere objects for social/economical issues on which the agendas can be created. AAP’s leadership and its members’ caste locationsbest suggest this. The clever sidelining ofdalit/bahujan politics by media is the example which explains methodological stands the media has against sensitizing subaltern voices as well.
The popular imagination, constructed by media, of Indian politics across the parties, focuses on high-caste voices rather than critically important dalit/bahujan arguments. During the election campaign, AAP and BJP were projected as sole contenders that completely negated the existence Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Here, it seems that only high-caste profiles are brought before people through the means of TV or news papers. On the other hand, AAP’s victory demonstrates the power of democracy and not of AAP’s so called ‘casteless’ identity which erodes the identity-locus of people of marginalised caste.
Aam Aadmi similar to Marathi Manus: manufactured consent
During 1960s suddenly ‘Marathi Manus’ identity was constructed by Chauvinist leader Bal Thackeray who later established Shiv Sena (army of Shivaji) in Maharashtra that went on to dominate Municipal Corporation and state politics in Maharashtra. ‘Marathi Manus’, the identity based on linguistic dialectics, was first understood and seriously reflected by Dr. Ambedkar in his another magnum-opus ‘States and Minorities’. Dr. Ambedkar stressed upon the creation of states on the linguistic lines. He however projected the then Bombay and now Mumbai as a very different case since there was no single language which could have defined itself as aboriginal language of Bombay.
When Bal Thackeray assumed that the creation of some kind of identity was necessary to initiate his political innings, he devised the ‘Marathi Manus’ identity, which is a complete antithesis to Dr.Ambedkar’s idea. South Indians became the imaginary enemy of ‘Marathi Manus’ who according to Thackeray were snatching away jobs from Marathi people, the sons of the soil. Since people who speak Marathi in Maharashtra hail from across castes, and have very different cultural genealogies, they felt solidarity under the consolidated ‘Marathi Manus’umbrella manufactured by Thackeray. This, in turn, distracted low-caste people who fell victim to this manufactured idea. ShivSena later turned out to be a dynastic party whose second-generation leadership shifted to Thackeray’s son.
When AAP was launched in 2012 with the prime agenda of corruption and being the party of ‘Aam Aadmi’, the people who were forced to imagine that politics is gutter, had found some consolation in the concept of ‘AamAadmi’. I argue, that this is similar to what Marathi people in Bombay then found with the idea of ‘Marathi Manus’ amid the political and economical upheaval which was the state construction and not of any community for another. The rage of people has been used into a creative force for the political innings in both the cases of Shiv Sena then and AAP now. In both the cases, leadership was exercised by Savarna leaders, Bal Thackeray, a CKP Brahmin and Arvind Kejriwal, a Baniya. It must be noted that Arvind Kejriwal was a man who was also behind the youth for equality campaign in post-Mandal period which vehemently opposed the reservation for the ‘Other Backward Classes’ that culminated in savarna boy conflagrated himself.
This created lots of anti-dalit/bahujan feeling among people who had naïve views over reservation which can only be described as ‘cultural killing’ of dalit aspirations to mobilise. In both cases, what has happened is that the locations of caste and its proportion in political participation sidelined and, the imaginary idea of identity has constructed as a prime focus of political arguments. Social/economical issues in India can be best understood with the lens of caste and the party which deliberately engages itself into being ‘casteless’ deconstructs the reality of Indian life into forceful uniformity which is a myth in India, yet we find that AAP has been propagating the same with their held notions of being ‘party of casteless politics’.
India, in past 6 decades, has changed its political language. Yet what hasn’t changed is the over whelming representation of the upper-caste in central politic which defines the course of public affairs. In both the cases mentioned above, SS then and now AAP,dominated by savarna population in which caste as a sociological locus of politics has always been invisiblised. This clearly shows that upper-castes are not interested in taking notice of caste’s role in Indian politics, otherwise; it would pose a great challenge to their overwhelming representation in political game and marginalisation of dalit/bahujan in it. By the creation of mythical idea such as ‘Marathi Manus’ and ‘Aam Aadmi’ the subaltern imaginary which can conceive the politics through their own locations got distorted and cheated into electoral politics through Savarna agencies. AAP, as per the news feeds, is looking forward to contest Municipal Corporation elections in Mumbai. Undermining the specificity of the caste population, especially dalit/bahujans and their issues and propagating ‘Aam Aadmi’ image would only help create a refined political fantasy in which issues and problems specific to the specific communities would certainly get overshadowed. This means the caste reality of Indian life would again be concealed by the idea of ‘Aam Aadmi’ whereas as in India, dalit/bahujanhas a distinguished place and needs specific attention that is impossible with the ‘casteless’ language of AAP.
(Yogesh Maitreya is doing his M.A in Criminology and Justice (2013-15) from TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.)