Chandrabhan Prasad
In the recent Bihar elections, Nitish Kumar swept to power by playing MBC (Most Backward Classes) card. In Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, a shepherd by caste, is making waves. He is reviving AHINDA, a social coalition of MBCs, Dalits and Minorities. The AHINDA (Alpasankhyataru or Minorities, Hindulidavaru or Backward Classes, Dalitaru or Dalits) is fast turning into a household name. In UP, MBCs are tilting towards BSP, a possible sweep for the party should elections be held today.
Have MBCs arrived as a new political force to unsettle political arithmetic of the major political parties? MBCs belong to the larger Mandal block (OBCs), and they are at the bottom of the shudra/OBC hierarchy.
As traditional artisans and manufacturers, due to modernity/industrialisation, their occupations have turned redundant, and they are virtually rusticated from economic life of India.
Scattered as they are all over India, and divided into a host of caste-occupational group, they re not an independent political force so far. Their sufferings however, were deployed by the anti-Brahmin movement in the South to make a case for the movement.
During Mandal movement in the north, there was no way the OBC leaders could project Yadavs, Kurmis, Lodhs as the victim castes. Sufferings of the MBCs therefore, were deployed to paint Mandal as the document of social justice and emancipation.
Riding on MBCs' sufferings and pains, the OBCs came to power in South and the North. But, why are the MBCs fleeing Mandal block? One most known reason is that, the Upper OBCs have cornered most of the Mandal jobs, and political power arising out of that.
But, considering the fact that in both Karnataka and Bihar, the OBC quota is split, and MBCs share is separated. Yet, MBCs are angry at OBCs. The other reason is that the OBC leaders have not allowed the Mandal quota to be split into two as suggested by LR Naik, the solo Dalit member in the Mandal Commission.
What the self-consciously enlightened scholars, allegedly progressive as well, do not confess that they have completely misunderstood the anti-Brahmin movement of the South, and the Mandal movement of the North- in other words, movement of the Upper Shudras/OBCs.
As a matter of fact, Upper OBCs all over India seek to destroy hegemony of Dwijas/Brahmins. That is admirable. What is condemnable however is that, they seek to create hegemony of their own.
After having achieved that, the Upper OBCs seek a victim upon whom they can demonstrate their new status as a new ruling force. That's what upset Dalits, and soon, they abandoned anti-Brahmin forces in the South, and its equivalent Mandal forces in the North.
The MBCs however, have off late come to realise that the anti-Brahman movement in the South and Mandal movement in the North were all about dominance of a Upper OBCs, to whom, violence becomes a compelling social necessity, and that, this new ruling block can be more ruthless, medieval than the Dwijas.
For about a decade or so, the MBCs in absence of any platform of their own, have been voting erratically, and irrationally.
The only commonality they maintained was that they were voting against the traditional (upper) OBC blocks. So, in Karnataka, MBCs no longer wish to go along with Vokkaligas or Lingayats, in Siddaramaiah and AHINDA, they have found a rallying point.
In Bihar, despite the fact that Nitish's Kurmis as rouge a caste as Yadavs, MBCs still went with him as he was invoking the MBC card. Abandoned by Left, Right, Secular, Liberal, Socialist, even by Dalits, and brutalised by Mandal forces, MBCs have become political nomads moving around desperately in search of platforms. Regulated by the above two factors - abandoned by all, and brutalised by Upper OBC, a new social churning has occurred amongst them.
Now, they have begun thinking like a cohesive social block, and have probably realised their combined numerical strength. They are about 34 per cent in Bihar, and 26 per cent in UP, with similar patterns all across the country.
What Tsunami was to fishermen who couldn't figure out the water currents beneath, the Indian politicians are largely unaware about mobilisation and movement of MBCs.
Should a political formation give a call for the MBC empowerment, they would rally behind that en mass. Any takers for India social proletariats only next to Dalits?
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