Politicians’ face masks have been a big hit during this general elections. Photographs of children, women and men wearing these masks at poll rallies got noticeable space in newspapers. Going by photographs splashed in media, most of these masks bore the faces of Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi and L K Advani.
None of the four needed their masks to be worn by people to feel good about their own popularity. These masks were needed by local politicians to hide the failure in governance or their duty as elected representatives and divert the attention of people, who now had once-in-five-years chance to fasten accountability.
India has achieved much in the last 62 years since gaining independence but the ills of casteism and poverty continue to plague it and cast a shadow on most of its developmental strides.
The main architect of the Constitution, Dr B R Ambedkar, participating in one of the debates in Constituent Assembly, had poignantly said, “Henceforth, the politicians cannot blame the colonial power for the ills of the country, but only themselves.”
Whom can people blame for the ills of casteism and poverty having a vice-like grip on society and the masses? Politicians? Could be.
Politicians across party lines have always worn the mask of eagerness and professed their commitment to decimate casteism and the social division it has caused. But they have indefinitely carried forward the provisions of reservation that was meant only for a very limited period. They have also e n g i n e e re d many horizontal expansions of reservation to broadbase its benefits.
If that is true, why have parties selected candidates for this election on the basis of their caste so as to enable them to reap a good harvest of votes? Why have political parties attempted to mask the candidate’s individual standing by his caste?
Is it permissible for politicians to talk about high ideals in Parliament and Assemblies and do just the reverse. Probably this is why, the Supreme Court in Ambika Prasad Mishra vs State of UP [1980 SCC (3) 719] had said, “Legislatures must act on hard realities, not on g l i t t e r i n g ideals which fail to work.” A year later, in its judgment in Akhil B h a r at i ya Soshit Karmachari Sangh (Railway) vs UOI [1981 SCC (1) 246], a fivejudge constitution bench of the SC said, “The politics of power cannot sabotage principles of one man, one value.”
It went on to quote from the famous book ‘Asian Drama’, in which author Gunnar Myrdal wrote, “At election times, caste groups function as political vote banks whereby the ballots of their members are joined to the candidate with a party label. For this reason alone, local political bosses have a vested interest in preserving the social and economic status quo and exploiting it as a matrix for political action.”
How far our political system has addressed the root cause behind continuance of casteism, except for carrying forward reservations, does not need an honest field survey by a sociologist. As long as political parties do not get over this obsession with caste and its relevance in the electoral battlefield, there is little that can be done at the macro level to free this country from the vice of casteism. That is, when will they take off their caste masks and perform as true believers in the country’s capability?
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