Chhattisgarh: Has BJP govt’s policies driven SCs to the Congress fold?

By Parivesh Mishra

Raipur: Ahead of the two-phase assembly elections in Chhattisgarh next month, the BJP has a new problem on hand. The Scheduled Caste voters are gradually drifting away from the party. It has reason to worry. The SCs constitute 12 percent of the state’s population of 2.5 crore and 10 out of 90 assembly seats are reserved for them. However, they have a significant presence in over 50 constituencies. If they vote in a strategic manner, they could provide a decisive tilt to the election results.

In the elections of 2008, the BJP had won five out of the 10 SC seats. The Congress had got four with the solitary seat going to the BSP. It would be wrong to see the significance of Scheduled Casts votes only through the prism of the reserved seats though. The party has managed to displease the Satnami community, which constitutes about 65 percent of the SCs and wield considerable electoral influence beyond its geographical location, the plains of the Mahanadi. And Congress’ Ajit Jogi is using the discontent to the hilt. What compounds the BJP’s problem is the weakening hold of the BSP on the Scheduled Caste community. The party kept the SC votes away from the Congress.

Before we go into the present political equations, here’s the back story of the SC community in the state. Chhattisgarh has a social history marked by a number of socio-religious movements initiated by sects such as the Satnam Panth, the Kabir Panth and the Raidasis. Numerically the strongest among them, the Satnam panth emerged by incorporating a major section of the dalits in the second decade of the nineteenth century, led by Guru Ghasidas. The community constituted a little less than one sixth of the total population of Chhattisgarh. But since the spread was essentially confined to the plains of the river Mahanadi in the middle third of the state, the impact their density made on the social scene was much stronger than the numbers suggest.

In the early decades of the 20th century the followers of Satnami sect got involved in the freedom movement. The Guru led them to the path of Mahatma Gandhi. Immediately after independence, Mini Mata became the member of the Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket winning a by-election following the death of her husband Agam Das, the then Guru and a descendant of Ghasi Das. Mini Mata went on to become an icon of the Satnami politics. The political leadership of the community remained firmly with the Guru family and through them with the Congress even after the death of Mini Mata in an air crash in 1972. Her descendants, however, failed to keep the followers together. Social and economic changes made members of the community look for other options.

This was the time, in early 1980s, when Kanshi Ram entered Chhattisgarh with his formula-DS4 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti) and caught the imagination of the young among the community. The seeds of the Bahujan Samaj movement were sown in the plains of Mahanadi in Chhattisgarh. It is no coincidence that Kanshi Ram, the founder of the BSP and the mentor of Mayawati, chose this part of the then Madhya Pradesh to venture into electoral politics and fought the first election of his career in 1984 from Janjgir Lok Sabha constituency in Chhattisgarh.

The Congress’s loss was BJP’s gain. The consolidation of the BSP made a dent in the hitherto Congress vote bank and directly helped the BJP increase its share of seats in the 1990s. Though BSP generally failed to hold on to its herd of 2-3 MLAs it did manage to alter the results in many more constituencies, to the discomfort mainly of the Congress. In the last five years or so the BSP has seen the exit of its founder member and main organiser in the state, Dau Ram Ratnakar, from the party. Mayawati loosing clout (and access to funds) in UP didn’t help the party. The delimitation of seats in 2008 also disturbed the electoral arithmetic of the BSP in many Satnami dominated constituencies. The hope amongst the dalit youth of the BSP vehicle ever making it to the goalpost of power kept receding. The election of 2008 significantly saw a substantial section of the community vote returning to the Congress.

This, however, is not the only worry for the BJP. After the creation of the new state, the proportion of various communities in the total population changed. This resulted in a new government directive reducing the reservation limit for the SCs in the government jobs from 16% to 12%. It has now snowballed into the single most important factor for the SCs to gather under various social and political umbrellas away from the BJP. The Congress lost no time in promising a return to the 16% level if voted to power. The voice of the votaries of the BJP present within the community has turned feeble at a time crucial for their party.

The dalits in the state have failed to throw a leader from within the community. Arjun Singh was the first leader of any political party to identify an opportunity. It was he who resurrected Guru Ghasi Das amongst the non-Satnamis during mid 1980s, around the time when the Guru’s descendants had started frittering away the inherited clout and hold over the community. Ajit Jogi carried the trend forward and focused in his attempts to fill in this slot of community leadership after he took over as Chief Minister in 2000. A series of community fairs were organised and schemes launched targeting the SCs in his three year reign. He made an announcement of erecting a tower “taller than the Qutub Meenar” at the Girodhpuri, the birth place of Guru Ghasidas.

The construction of the 77 meter high ‘Jait Khambh’ did start and got completed during the BJP rule but by then the issue of reservation had come to the fore and the BJP ministers were not allowed entry to the Girodhpuri when a ceremonial inauguration was attempted by the government.