This time, the phrase, which Modi has hijacked for electoral gains, is the ‘extremely poor’, or the Mahadalit. Only yesterday, Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta on behalf of the Modi government submitted before the seven-judge Constitution bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud for sub-classification of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, so that the “more deserving among the disadvantaged communities” can receive reservation benefits, rather than the “creamy layer”.

As Nitish Kumar had done in 2007, Modi too in a very shrewd manner has tried to split the Dalit community along class lines. During the last ten years of BJP rule, RSS and Modi did not raise this issue and always projected Dalits as a component of the greater Hindu community. It was their strategic move to subsume the creamy layer of the Dalits, who were feeling annoyed in the company of the broader dalit class. Modi, while pleading for sub-classification, has made one tactical addition of describing this section as ‘creamy’, a word borrowed from the OBC narrative that evolved in 1991 while the matter was being heard by the court. Presently, the concepts of sub-classification and creamy layer are applicable only to the OBCs.

Modi has just started asserting that the Mahadalits have been denied the right to equality of opportunity and social and economic mobility of the backward classes. An insight into his move would make it explicit that it is purely an electoral move. Though a section of the Dalits of Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan voted for the BJP in the recently held assembly elections, they are gradually shifting away from the BJP.

The saffron ecosystem treats the Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, a dalit leader, as a major potential threat. Modi’s move which was impelled by the RSS is driven by the information that the poor Dalits are against the rich Dalits who enjoy the patronage of RSS and Modi. The neo-rich amongst the Dalits are siphoning the benefits extended to persons more in need of the said benefits.

Large number of atrocities and killings of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh and other Hindi-speaking states has further alienated the Dalits. They strongly nurse the feeling that in Modi’s reign, they would continue to face feudal repression and daily brutalization.

Dalits have also come to harbour the notion that RSS and BJP would systematically abolish the reservation gains they have been granted after decades of mass struggle. Creation of this impression primarily owes to the statements of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and scrapping of scholarship for poor SC-ST students by Modi government. For poor Dalits, education is an instrument for empowerment, and as it turns out, Modi-RSS isn’t keen to educate Dalit children and youth at all.

SG Tushar Mehta told the court that the 2020 five-judge Constitution bench ruling in the Davinder Singh case had justified the need for sub-classification of the SCs and STs to remove the creamy layer. He also said: “The lack of sub-classification perpetuates the zone of inequality within the reserved category and stops the State from framing appropriate policy in this regard.” Obviously in this backdrop, the question arises who had asked Modi not to initiate the steps to empower them.

With Nitish back to NDA and Modi conferring Bharat Ratna on Karpoori Thakur, an impression was gradually gaining ground in the BJP that the Dalit vote had been secured. But this is not the whole truth. This remains to be a distant dream, an illusion. Recently, some Dalit leaders held a seminar and shared a common perception that Dalit would be the worst victims of the RSS and Modi government’s long-term agenda. The participants also held the view that in case Modi wins the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the RSS will force him to turn Manusmriti into the guiding manual for administration and the Dalits would lose their political identity and constitutionally guaranteed security.

Nitish introduced the Mahadalit policy in 2007 after the Bihar State Mahadalit Commission recommended inclusion of 18 scheduled castes (SC) in the category. It is an amalgamation of over 21 SCs now and an important voter-group in the polls. During the past 14 years, the Bihar government has introduced many schemes on paper for them, like housing, scholarship, educational loans and school uniform programmes, and even land for the communities through the Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission. However, in reality these often failed to reach the actual beneficiaries in the Mahadalit community.

Research by Archana Singh from the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy in JNU and Pushpendra Singh from the department of Humanities at IIT Roorkee found: "The scrutiny of the development schemes introduced for the Mahadalit communities in our study area shows that the changes among the Musahars are very slow and need the urgency of policy reform, particularly on monitoring, the study concluded.”

They were made to settle in the places, which were away from the areas where the community has lived for generations and did not suit their need. The government adopted a mechanical approach. They suffered from social exclusion and untouchability at their new places. Ironically, most of the schemes were mostly only on paper. The state of school education, both in terms of quality of teachers and even buildings, has come down.

The ‘Mahadalit’ is not a constitutional term. Ram Vilas Paswan was opposed to the term and kept Paswans, also a Scheduled Caste, out of the Mahadalit category in the early days of the categorisation. According to the 2011 Social Economic and Caste Census, a total of 17,829,066 (88.82 percent) Scheduled Caste households are currently living in rural Bihar, while only 2,245,176 (11.18 percent) are in urban Bihar.

The Mahadalit voters in Bihar are crucial voting bloc for the JD(U)-BJP combine. However, on the ground, their anger is palpable because, despite the sub-categorisation, they have not received the promised benefits from the government. Modi’s move of sub-classification too is more politically oriented than to truly benefit them.

The hurry in bringing out this issue simply underlines the fact that RSS and Modi are not sure of Dalit votes, and this is purely an attempt to lure them to vote for BJP. The Dalits who constitute the major bulk of migrant labourers have not forgotten the ill-treatment meted out to them by the Modi government as well by the Nitish Kumar administration in Bihar during the peak Covid period. Thousands of migrant workers from various SC communities came home during the lockdown battling many adversities, often simply by walking to their villages, and yet were forced to return because there were no jobs in their states. At home, they were dependent on the NREGA work, which was also not provided to them as the Modi government did not make available the required fund.

In Bihar, the Dalits are mostly with the Left parties, especially with the CPI(ML), which had spearheaded armed struggle in the state for long against the tyranny of the feudal landlords. In the 2020 assembly election, they had contested on their own and won 12 out of 16 seats they fought for. This was the gift from the Dalits. They were not the part of the Mahagathbandhan. Obviously, the Dalits of Bihar have their own choice and priorities. And it would be not easy for RSS and Modi to entice them through their new tactics of splitting the Dalits on the rich and poor line. (IPA Service)