IN one way, caste has stalled communalism in UP. In another way, the caste which is co-terminus with class in India has voted against those who has denied it a better life. But there is no doubt that the election results reflect a strong opposition to the chauvinistic Hindu-inclined BJP which has also come to represent the upper half.

Yet, the state seethes with a strange mixture of apprehension and celebration. Apprehension is because the casteist criminals will return. If the cabinet of new chief minister Mayawati, leading the Bahujan Samaj Party, is any guide new criminals would replace the old ones. Celebration is because the corporate sector which had taken over Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party, once socialist, has been repulsed convincingly. The two leaders, Mayawati from the dalit (untouchables) and Mualayam Singh from the Yadav (the other Backward Classes), have won between them 303 seats in a 403-member house _ a two-thirds _ with the 56.5 per cent of the votes polled. Although both are arch rivals, their victory is a defeat for those forces which pulled down the Babri masjid, released a cassette to vilify Muslims and evoked little hope for a better future for the poor. Consequently, the BJP has been reduced to a rump with 50 seats, 38 less than the last time, with only 16.93 per cent of the votes polled.  

No doubt, Mayawati is way ahead of Mulayam Singh, 206 seats against 97 (vote-wise, the difference is mere five per cent). But both represent a phenomenon which may well counter the elements that are determined to demolish the pluralistic character of the Indian polity. This caste combination, with Muslims and poor Brahmins, may throw up a different type of identity that may demand a bigger slice in the cake. The combination may also become firmer by 2009 when the parliamentary elections are due. The Congress will be hard put to prove its credentials.

By raising Jai Ram slogan once again and by re-selecting Kalyan Singh who was the chief minister when the masjid was destroyed, the BJP threw down the gauntlet which the dalits, the other backward classes and Muslims picked up. The outcome has been the decimation of the Hindutva forces. Yet, there is no remorse or introspection in the BJP quarters for having taken a blatant religious and anti-Muslim stand. Murli Manohar Joshi, a party stalwart, wants more of Hindutva and regrets its "absence" from the party’s agenda during the polls. Maybe, he expresses the BJP’s reaction to its debacle.

Strange, a party which aspires to rule India has not yet realized that its sectarian, religious stand does not sell in the country which is proud of its diversities and identities. At one time it looked as if the BJP had felt the futility of making the secular India into a Hindu rashtra. This was when it placed its bigotry aside and came to power at the centre with the help of parties known for their faith in secularism.

It turned out that the BJP had only changed its tactics, not the ideology. The BJP, in its furtive way, went on chipping at India’s common heritage. Education was the worst sufferer. The fatal blow was the ethnic cleansing in Gujarat. The BJP’s defeat in the last election should have chastened the party. Despite its contribution to development, it lost because the Indian society, however divided, does not like its leaders to be parochial.

Still, both caste and communalism are not good for the country’s health. Both are divisive in their approach and both put India as such behind. Let there be plague on both houses. But what does one do when one of them is determined to break up the country in the name of Hinduism and its superiority? Caste has at least many layers contesting against one another.

Communalism is monolithic, passions and prejudices of one community brimming to the surface to the detriment of others. Communalism tends to be fascist in appeal while caste is often an assertion by the victims of discrimination and denial of level-playing field.

True, the caste and communal forces, arrayed against one another, have criminalized and corrupted the society. But the tyranny of Hindutva standard-bearers has forced backward classes and minorities to seek security even in tainted quarters. They look for cover under any party or combination which assures them a pluralistic atmosphere and economic betterment. It is a mockery of democracy to see Mayawati having nearly half of her ministers from among criminals, some charged with murder, rape, etc. People voting for her are appalled but they could not have gone to the BJP for its communal as well as classy approach. The Congress did not figure in their reckoning and polled eight per cent votes, one per cent less than before. The general election is two years away. The BJP or, for that matter, the RSS can still adopt a policy which believes in pluralism. If it could have Indian-ness as its ethos instead of Hindutva, it might emerge as an alternative.

India is not what the RSS foot soldiers represent, forcing their set of "morals." An art student at the university at Vadodara, Gujarat, was detained by the Narendra Modi government for exhibiting "objectionable" paintings. The RSS youth wing, Akhil Bhartiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP), destroyed the exhibition and had even the Dean suspended. In Bhopal, the ABVP reportedly killed a professor who objected to its rowdy-ism in student union election. The state government is that of the BJP. The RSS has torn a leaf from the book of Taliban. It is beginning to do the same things to Talibanise Hindus. It is setting into motion such forces which may one day become a Frankenstein. Pakistan knows it to its cost.

The Hindutva crowd forgets what India represents. Many years ago, Yehudi Menuhin, the outstanding violinist, told Jawaharlal Nehru in a letter:  "When I myself think of India, I think of a quality specifically Indian which in my imagination holds something of the innocence of the fabled and symbolic Garden of Eden. To me India means the villages, the noble bearing of their people, the aesthetic harmony of their life; I think of Gandhi, of Buddha, of the temples, of gentleness combined with power, of patience matched by persistence, of innocence allied to wisdom, of the luxuriance of life from the oxen and the monkeys to the flame trees and the mangoes; I think of the innate dignity and tolerance of the Hindu and his tradition.