Paper Details

Name: Kumaraswamy T
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume-12, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 29-133
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17200832

ABSTRACT
This article on issues and conflict between Ambedkarite consciousness and Hindutva over
religion, politics and society has become even more violent with the intrusion of state power.
The paper stress on the Bharatiya Janata Party‟s relations with the Dalits are tense and
complex. For the party, Dalit assertiveness has become hard to comprehend. The BJP is
showing an interest in accommodating Dalit groups, but it knows that this embrace is not
palatable for its core supporters. The BJP in its strongholds in northern and western India has
been seen as a party of the urban middle class, the Banias, and a section of Brahmins. Over
time, the party also brought the Other Backward Classes and the Most Backward Classes
within its fold. With the retreat of socialist politics, the rural neo-rich from the backward
castes began feeling marginalised in national politics and moved towards Hindutva politics.
From the 1970s to 1990s, this community purchased rural land at a much faster rate and
emerged as a landed community. On the one hand, this affluent group appears to be part of
the new political leadership for post-Mandal Hindutva politics; on the other, being the landed
community, it is also perceived to be the oppressor of Dalits in everyday rural life.
Communalisation and saffronisation of public spaces is a new strategy adopted by the BJP to
mobilise each Dalit caste individually by evoking its unique caste identity. The party
reinterpreted and recreated the cultural resources of Dalits at the local level, including their
caste histories and heroes, with the aim of saffronising the Dalit psyche and memory,
ultimately transforming them into sites for political control. The local heroes of various
castes, particularly Dalits, have been selected by the party in different regions for
incorporation into one unified Hindutva metanarrative.
Keywords: Ambedkarite consciousness, Hindutva, religion, politics, society, state power,
Bharatiya Janata Party’s, Dalits, Other Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes.