The Bahujan Samaj Party: Between Social Justice and Political Practice

Abstract

The Bahujan Samaj Party’s concept of social justice consists of two interconnected aspects: horizontalisation of the vertical social order and democratisation of the undemocratic political order. Following a critical examination of these two aspects, this article makes two arguments. First, by encouraging the Dalits and other lower castes to claim their respective caste identities, the BSP’s activities around the caste question are aimed at the horizontalisation/equalisation of caste rather than its annihilation. Second, by adopting the method of caste-based distribution of seats in political representation, the BSP has shown a means to bring the hitherto socially excluded and politically oppressed castes into the process of democracy, thereby laying a path by which to democratise the undemocratic order. Yet, this method of distribution also leads to the exclusion of castes with small number of population from the democratic process. The article also attempts to explore the reasons for the failure of the BSP in the 2012 assembly elections. It argues that it was the sub-quota politics of the Congress that forced Muslims to shift their loyalties from the BSP to SP, and that shift, in turn, led to the subsequent electoral debacle of the BSP.