West Bengal this time has witnessed an election marketing campaign replete with caste-based politics. Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have pulled out all stops to woo the almost 23.5 per cent Scheduled Caste (SC), 5 per cent Scheduled Tribe (ST) and 17 per cent Other Backward Classes (OBC) share of the state’s citizens to win a majority of the 294 meeting seats on provide, analysts say. The remaining spherical of the eight-phase polls is going down on Thursday with the counting of votes on May 2.
Eyeing a big share of Bengal’s Dalit and tribal votes, each BJP nationwide president JP Nadda and chief minister and TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee have individually promised the formation of a fee to incorporate castes like Mahisya, Teli, Tamul and Saha in the OBC class.
Though caste politics was current in West Bengal for many years, this time the TMC and BJP engaged in an electoral battle that was additionally blatantly divided on spiritual traces like by no means earlier than, observers say.
The causes behind the rising discontent among the many Dalits and backward courses are disparities in the implementation of the Mandal Commission report and alleged negligence in direction of the wants of the communities for many years. The Mandal Commission— arrange in 1979 by the-then Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s Janata Party authorities to think about the problem of caste-based reservation— recognised 177 OBC castes in West Bengal. But the state’s Left Front authorities underneath Jyoti Basu recognised 64 communities, together with 9 Muslim castes, as OBCs and supplied them 7 per cent reservation in 1993.
In 2010, the Left authorities created two totally different sections underneath OBC reservation: Category A and Category B.
In Category A, 10 per cent reservation was given to folks recognised as ‘more backward’ whereas in Category B, seven per cent reservation was granted to these designated ‘backward’, and it elevated the variety of Muslim communities in the OBC record from 9 to 53.
The TMC authorities, which got here to energy in 2011, persevered with the identical coverage. As a end result, right now, Category A has 81 castes, out of which 73 belong to the Muslim neighborhood, whereas Category B has 96 castes, of which 44 are Muslim.
From 1993 to 2020, the variety of Muslim castes has elevated from 9 to 117 (90 per cent of the whole Muslim inhabitants in the state), of which 65 have been added by the present TMC authorities in the previous eight years.
As per the Mandal Commission, which recognized 177 castes/communities as OBCs, solely 12 castes have been from the Muslim neighborhood and round 150 have been Hindu OBCs in West Bengal. Until now, solely 67 castes out of 150 have been included in the OBC record, depriving a majority of Hindu OBCs of the advantage of reservation, critics say. This gave the BJP a sturdy political platform to enchantment to a big Hindu Dalit vote base in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls the place the celebration put up a surprising present by successful 18 of the 42 seats in Bengal.
Apart from Bauri, Bagdi and Nashya Sekh, the Rajbongshi neighborhood of North Bengal and the Matua refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan are dominant teams that would determine the result on many seats. They are the 2 largest Dalit communities in Bengal whom each the TMC and BJP have tried to woo.
Such is the clout of the Matuas in Bengal’s politics that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited their famend temple in Bangladesh’s Orakandi, the birthplace of Matua religious guru Harichand Thakur, amid the polls.
Both the BJP and the TMC are attempting to venture themselves as saviours of Dalits rights and different backward communities in Bengal, which has 68 meeting seats reserved for SCs and 16 for STs.
The Left Front didn’t mobilise folks primarily based on their castes, say analysts. They dealt with castes in a distinct method by empowering decrease castes towards the social elite by calling them “class enemies”. This helped them retain power for 34 years but it had a devastating impact on the state’s economy as industrialists (mostly elites) moved away from Bengal due to labour problems as this working class was largely dominated by lower-caste people, analysts say.
Then in 2011, Mamata rode to power after winning the confidence of Matuas, Rajbongshis, Kamtapuris, Gorkhas, Santhals, Lodhas, Sabars, Nashya Sekhs, Mundas, Bagdis, Bauris and other underprivileged and tribal groups in Bengal.
Apart from the Muslim vote base, most political parties have realised that in the assembly polls, Dalits and other backward communities may hold the key to power.
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