The alliance against BJP’s hegemony
Updated On: 02 October, 2023 07:35 AM IST | Mumbai | Ajaz Ashraf
Congress’s vociferous demand for a caste Census ideologically aligns the party with OBC groups and enhances I.N.D.I.A’s capacity to take on the BJP’s alliance led by upper castes
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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi acknowledges supporters during a public meeting in Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh, on September 30. Pic/PTI
The Congress has laid the foundation for building a viable “anti-hegemonic” alliance through its unequivocal support for holding a caste Census and carving out a quota within the quota for women in legislative bodies. The anti-hegemonic alliance, as academic Arun R Swamy defines it in his essay Political Mobilisation, aims to unite powerful political actors against a greater power that exercises or seeks to exercise hegemony over them.
The greater power relies on what is called “sandwich alliance” to acquire hegemony. The sandwich alliance, Swamy says, “unites the extremes of a power hierarchy against those in the middle.” In India’s graded power hierarchy, the upper castes and Dalits constitute the two extremes. In the middle are the Other Backward Classes, a category comprising a wide array of castes, each suffering from a varying degree of backwardness. Elite groups among the OBCs try to stitch an alliance for snatching power from the hegemon. This is the reason why Swamy calls them counter-elites or out-elites.
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