The crisis in Dalit-Bahujan politics

The political mobilisation of Dalit-Bahujans in India is in the midst of an epistemic crisis. Given the extremely skewed social power between dominant castes on the one hand and internal divisions of sub-castes within the Dalits and the Other Backward Classes on the other, identity politics, demanding more representation without an accompanying social and economic development agenda, seems to have been an attempt to short-circuit the humongous gap in power. Kancha Iliah Shepherd, a bitter critique of the Hindutva brand of politics, and Hinduism too for its deep seated discriminatory practices, celebrated Narendra Modi becoming the first OBC leader to take office as Prime Minister. Dalit-Bahujan politics is caught between extending representation by joining various political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party-RSS combine, on the one hand, and demanding separate and autonomous spaces like that of Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi which undercuts the possibilities of secular political parties, on the other. One way out is for secular political formations to offer more leadership positions to those coming from the Dalit-Bahujan communities along with including a robust social agenda and knowledge systems internal to such communities.