Shades of Social Justice

AS BIHAR GEARS UP for the Assembly election, public spaces like tea stalls and dhabas are abuzz with talk of politics. Most people praise the JD(U)-BJP government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with phrases like “Sarkar ne kaam to kiya hai (The government hasworked)”. Some say this election will be a contest between two sets of mobilisation discourse: on the one hand, it’s a combination of development, Hindutva, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance credibility and Bihari pride as raised by BJP and JD(U). On the other hand, there is caste and religious mobilisation as the fallout of the Waqf legislation as well as insufficient employment and human development as argued by the alliance of RJD, Congress and the Left.

This makes the Bihar election a contest of two models of social justice: one built around caste-based reservations and the other being the Samagra Samajik Nyaya (holistic social justice) model that BJP has helped evolve over decades. The election will, in fact, map the trajectories of social justice politics that emerged from the ideas of BR Ambedkar before and after independence.

Ambedkar’s social justice model was holistic, addressing various historical injustices, based on birth and other factors, rooted in Indian society. It dealt with vertical and horizontal inequalities by critical evaluations of cultural, historical and economic injustices. The second social justice model was that of Congress, as conceptualised by Jawaharlal Nehru. It was a meritocratic model and critical of reservations. In one of his letters to chief ministers, Nehru wrote in 1961: “[I] don’t like reservation in any form. Especially, reservation in jobs. I am against any such step that promotes inefficiency and takes us towards mediocrity.” Nehru and Congress, thus, picked up on some of the measures Ambedkar had proposed and tried to limit social justice around socio-economic inequalities.

The Lohiyaite social justice model emerged in reaction to the Nehruvian-Congress model and emphasised the emancipation of the victims of inequality through caste-based representation. Conceived by Rammanohar Lohiya, it was reinvented by parties like RJD and SP. Today, the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress has left the Nehruvian libe and adopted this caste-based representation. It’s an effort to appropriate Ambedkar’s model but Congress’ dependence on it may overlap with RJD’s model of social justice.

The next model of social justice to emerge was the Bahujanwadi through Kanshi Ram and BSP, which too focused on caste-based representation. Again, this was partly Ambedkar’s model which, in its totality, had tried to respond to various inequalities with multiple strategies, historical, cultural, religious, political, and so on.

Since all these models of social justice propose incomplete solutions to a complex problem, BJP began working on a holistic model that has evolved through RSS’ social experiments and Modi’s social politics, combining the ideas and methods of Ambedkar, Swami Vivekananda, and other visionaries. Modi had created a unifying social justice model with his initiatives as Gujarat chief minister. As prime minister, he drew upon those socially empowering experiments and combined them with Ambedkarite experiments, adding various inclusive initiatives of the Sangh. This model uses vertical and horizontal ways to deal with social inequalities and relate caste-based injustices with the landscape of Indian poverty. This is the Samagra Samajik Nyaya model which proposes multiple social justices by insuring religious inclusion, social participation, developmental share, and caste-based representation for the backward.

The Bihar Assembly election will be a battle of narratives between these social justice models. Parties may mobilise public opinion by raising caste identities, reservations, development, institutional and religious rights, etc. These will set the text and context of the election.

The contest will raise another question: Are wegoing to offer a holistic solution to India’s social injustices as Ambedkar had wanted? Or will we package a sensational identity-based mobilisation as the future of social justice politics? Political parties should choose wisely because Ambedkar and the people of India are watching and waiting.

Ambedkarite experimentsBihar politicsBihar’s Assembly electionNarendra ModiSamagra Samajik Nyaya modelsocial justice