Politics Of The Invisible: Inside BJP's Non-Dominant Caste Strategy And It's Shortcomings

When the National Democratic Alliance secured a landslide victory in Bihar's November 2025 Assembly elections, winning 202 of 243 seats and establishing a commanding three-fourths majority, it marked more than just another electoral triumph. It represented a crucial landmark in a three-decade-long political experiment: the political mobilisation of non-dominant communities behind the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its allies.

The BJP emerged as the single-largest party in Bihar for the first time, winning 89 seats. Its ally, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), secured 85 seats, its best performance since 2010. Together with other NDA allies, the coalition crossed the 200-seat mark whilst the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which had dominated Bihar politics for decades through Yadav consolidation, collapsed to just 25 seats.

This victory was not accidental. It was the result of patient, deliberate organising among communities that had been neglected by dominant caste politics, a strategy the BJP has replicated across Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Jharkhand with varying degrees of success.

Bihar: The Non-Yadav OBC Mobilisation

For decades, Bihar's political landscape was defined by caste-based intermediaries. During the Congress era preceding the Mandal churn of the 1990s, the Indian National Congress relied on upper-caste mediators, figures like chief ministers Jagannath Mishra and Bindeshwari Dubey. Archival data from the 1960s and 1970s show upper castes accounting for over 50 per cent of INC legislators, supported by their dominance in civil services.

In regions like Magadh-Shahabad and the non-tribal plains of Palamu, Hazaribagh, and parts of Ranchi, Rajput and Bhumihar dominance ensured not merely electoral mobilisation but also a bulwark against caste-based militias.

The INC's decline after these communities withdrew support created a vacuum that was filled not by caste-neutral politics, but by a new dominant group: the Yadavs.

Following the fragmentation of the Janata Dal and the consolidation of power by Lalu Prasad Yadav, the Rashtriya Janata Dal institutionalised a new caste order. Yadavs, comprising over 14 per cent of Bihar's population—the highest percentage share among any backward caste—emerged as the new dominant community.

In the 1990 Assembly, Yadavs accounted for 63 MLAs; by 1995, this jumped to 86. The following year's parliamentary elections saw 13 Yadavs out of 24 backward-caste MPs elected from then undivided Bihar, far outnumbering any other community from the OBC group.

This process, termed 'Yadavisation' by Indian Express editor Santosh Singh, saw figures like Sadhu Yadav, Subhash Yadav, Pappu Yadav, and Surendra Yadav gain prominence. Whilst upper-caste political dominance was broken, the state's everyday interface with society remained mediated through caste-based local elites, now overwhelmingly Yadav OBCs rather than upper castes. Colloquially, Yadavs came to be known as 'forwards among backwards'.

“With Lalu Yadav on the horizon, it was also a pragmatic choice for the BJP in state. Senior BJP leaders like Kailashpati Mishra were swift in identifying the future of state politics” said Vishal Tiwari, Editorial Consultant at Bharat Express

The BJP, symbolically shut out when Lalu Yadav stopped L.K. Advani's Rath Yatra in Samastipur, recognised that it could not compete by simply replicating the dominant-caste model with a different community. Instead, it spent decades cultivating non-Yadav OBC blocs—Kushwahas, Kurmis, Koeris, and Nishads—communities that felt squeezed by Yadavisation.

Leaders like Sushil Kumar Modi, Prem Kumar, Ram Deo Mahto, Ganga Prasad, Rameshwar Chaurasia, Jagdish Prasad, Tarkishore Prasad, Hukum Dev Narayan Yadav, Nand Kishore Yadav, and Nityanand Rai emerged as the party's backward faces, embedding the BJP in districts where backward politics had become synonymous with Yadav control. The outreach to Nishads through Captain Jai Narayan Nishad proved a low-capital, high-yield investment in riverine and fishing communities.

On the Dalit front, the party laid groundwork through figures like Kameshwar Choupal, who led the placement of the first brick for the Ram Mandir and is honoured as the first Kar Sevak. Leaders like Sanjay Paswan, Kameshwar Paswan, and Bhagirathi Devi became prominent Dalit faces in the Bihar BJP.

Above all, what drove the BJP's project to organise non-Yadav OBC communities in Bihar was its alliance with, and the face of, Nitish Kumar. Kumar hails from the Kurmi community which enjoys only a miniscule proportion of the total population of Bihar. That was partly the reason why his politics sought to bring together multiple 'backward' communities rather than focus on a single group.

There was another development parallel to this. With time, the BJP's strategy in Bihar became more explicit about labharthi (beneficiary) politics, which would later become the template for post-2014 national expansion.

Since 2014, the party's welfare-centred approach at the central level has proved crucial in pulling Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) under its fold. CSDS surveys from the 2014 General Elections and the 2015 Assembly Elections showed that the NDA, without Nitish Kumar at that point, led in preference among EBCs.

The 2025 Assembly election was the most recent and arguably the strongest vindication of this approach. However, neither the road behind nor the one ahead can be described as 'smooth'.

Whilst the BJP has been working to organise non-Yadav OBC communities behind it, there is currently no leader from these groups who can claim popularity across the state of Bihar.

Whilst Samrat Chaudhary's elevation after the 2025 victory has seen stature increase in the government, it remains to be seen if there is a simultaneous increase in his popularity and acceptance as a pan-state leader.

Uttar Pradesh: The Main Arena

If Bihar proved the model could work, Uttar Pradesh was where it was perfected.

In the decades preceding the 1990s, figures like Kamlapati Tripathi and Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna drove the Congress dominance in the eastern and central parts of the state with charismatic appeal, bureaucratic reach, and local authority. Western UP's agrarian belt meanwhile was shaped by Jat social and economic power, with Chaudhary Charan Singh leading his Bharatiya Kranti Dal through mobilisation of khap networks, cooperative institutions, and land-owning peasantry.

By the 1990s, the primary challenge to the BJP came not from the Congress but from the Janata Dal and its successors, who were seeking to organise the 'middle castes', and Kanshi Ram's BSP, who too was organising the Dalit and non-Yadav OBC communities in support of his outfit.

At such a time, the BJP sought to aggregate those communities left at the edges of each dominant bloc: Kurmis, Mauryas, Lodhis, Sainis, and especially non-Jatav Dalit communities like Pasis, Kolis, and Valmikis. Remember too that the 'upper caste' vote had begun to shift to the BJP in significant measure by this time.

In the post-2014 phase, Uttar Pradesh represented the most mature version of the BJP's experiment. The arc that began with Kalyan Singh in 1991 was fused with welfare delivery on an unprecedented scale.

Welfare, law-and-order, and centralised governance worked together to bind multiple caste groups into a massive support base.

“The difference between BJP’s rise in UP and Bihar is that in UP, BJP rose independently of its national status. While in Bihar, its growth was parallel to the national growth” said political analyst Siddharth Rai

Haryana: The 35 Versus 1 Formula

In Haryana, the political divide preceded the arrival of the BJP in the state. This was the state of '35 communities versus one'.

The INC had embedded itself within Jat agrarian power structures by relying on influential Jat leaders. These leaders held authority over cooperative banks, mandi committees, irrigation departments, and rural credit networks. During and after the Green Revolution, they translated this institutional control into political power. Chaudhary Bansi Lal, a Jat leader from Bhiwani who served multiple terms as Chief Minister between 1968 and 1977, spearheaded this effort.

The narrative of '35 versus one' crystallised around Bhajan Lal, a Bishnoi whose family migrated to Rajasthan during Partition, who presented himself as representative of 35 biradaris fighting against 'Jat domination'. Active journalists from that era subtly acknowledge that the 'us vs them' approach of Bhajan Lal overflowed to routine administrative work as well.

'When Bhajan Lal was chief minister, he asked officers to write "J" or "Non-J" (Jaat or non-Jaat) on files. If it was for the benefit of non-Jats, he would swiftly approve it, whilst if it was for Jats, the file would be delayed as long as possible,' said a senior journalist who requested anonymity.

In such a context, the Jat voters in Haryana galvanised under formations like Bansi Lal's Haryana Vikas Party, Devi Lal's Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), and finally under the INC led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Their reassertion remained framed under farmers' rights and rural development, which helped the community gain support from other groups as well.

The BJP in Haryana was led for long by Dr Mangal Sein. Sein, a seven-time legislator from Rohtak, often hailed as the headquarters of Jatland, helped consolidate the party's spine among Punjabis, Banias, and urban trader communities, particularly in the Rohtak and GT Road belts.

After his death in 1990, the BJP adopted a tactical alliance approach with the 'Lals'—primarily Devi Lal (and later Om Prakash Chautala) and Bansi Lal. The 1990s and early 2000s saw it oscillate between being a junior partner to Bansi Lal's Haryana Vikas Party and Chautala's INLD. These alliances provided much-needed footing.

Using them, the party quietly expanded its base among urban traders, Punjabi refugees, Banias, Sainis, Gujjars, Rors, Dalits, and Ahirs—communities that often complained of being marginalised.

The shift towards a 'non-Jat' consolidation accelerated after the BJP-INLD alliance permanently fractured in the mid-2000s. 'What the BJP did was follow Bhajan Lal's playbook and, with its own organisational strength, the 35 vs 1 tussle was significantly amplified,' said senior journalist Jag Mohan Thaken.

In the industrial corridor of southern Haryana, Krishan Pal Gurjar built significant influence among Gujjars and migrant backward classes, integrating them into a newly urbanising structure that bypassed traditional rural strongholds. The BJP also successfully penetrated Dalit pockets, especially Valmikis, comprising 20-25 per cent of the state's Scheduled Caste population, by elevating local intermediaries.

Veteran Valmiki leader Suraj Bhan and later Rattan Lal Kataria in Ambala, Yamunanagar, and the GT Road belt provided a bridge to communities that felt politically invisible within both the Congress and the INLD.

The elevation of Manohar Lal Khattar in 2014—who was replaced by Nayab Singh Saini in 2024—broke the two-decade-long automatic association between Jat dominance and state authority. Electing a non-Jat chief minister in 2014 was crucial in accelerating the Ahir community's support towards the BJP. Rao Inderjit Singh became the face of this shift after his switch from the INC to the BJP in February 2014.

However, after nearly 11 years in power, the fresh challenge for the BJP is managing the rising political aspirations of this very 'non-dominant' support base.

Jharkhand: The Risky Bet on Non-Tribal Leadership

Jharkhand presented a unique challenge. Unlike Bihar's Yadav dominance or Haryana's Jat preeminence, Jharkhand's political identity was fundamentally tied to tribal autonomy, the very justification for the state's creation.

During the pre-statehood period, tribal politics was managed by the INC through selective co-optation rather than structural empowerment. Leaders like Jaipal Singh Munda and his Jharkhand Party were absorbed into the national framework through the promise of a separate state. In reality, Munda's entry symbolised inclusion whilst real administrative and economic power continued to rest with district-level elites aligned with the INC.

Unlike the divided Jat leadership in Haryana, the Jharkhand area of Bihar witnessed the emergence of a solidified and unequivocal tribal voice in the form of Shibu Soren. The Santhal Pargana—especially Dumka and nearby constituencies—became his fortress. Soren's strong position was crucial in BJP tribal faces like Arjun Munda and Babulal Marandi being reduced to margins even after their key roles in the state's formation.

The BJP's challenge in Jharkhand was different from UP and Bihar. The party faced the problem of growing parallel to the movement for a separate Jharkhand. Its initial expansion in the tribal belt came through the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, which was later eclipsed by leaders like Shibu Soren.

The party did have breakthroughs with cadre leaders like Kariya Munda, who represented the Khunti Lok Sabha constituency—the home turf of Jharkhand Party icon Jaipal Singh Munda—six times, and Babulal Marandi, the first chief minister of the state, who defeated Shibu Soren in his home constituency of Dumka at the peak of Soren's popularity. However, none of their popularity proved as durable as that of Soren.

The parallel expansion plan consisted largely of catering to OBCs such as Kurmis, Mahtos, Telis, Yadavs, Goalas, Kahars, and a growing urban working class around mining and industrial towns like Dhanbad, Bokaro, and Jamshedpur. These communities, many of them migrants from the Bihar plains over generations, were economically indispensable but politically peripheral in a discourse that equated Jharkhandi identity with tribalness.

The BJP was provided space among these groups by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) itself, which, despite being founded by Binod Bihari Mahato, Shibu Soren, and A.K. Roy remained largely confined as a party of Shibu Soren and tribals. The BJP's preference for pre-1932 Khatiyan holders speaks volumes about how far it could travel to court OBCs—especially Kurmi-Mahatos, the largest OBC bloc.

One crucial aspect of the party's outreach to non-tribals was that it did not go overly aggressive against the Soren family, as such a strategy would alienate fence-sitting tribals due to their iconic image. This restraint—keeping gates open rather than burning bridges—differentiates the BJP from other formations. In Bihar, Lalu Yadav's rule ended up alienating upper castes through bad-mouthing; the BJP avoided this even with groups that did not vote for it.

In 2014, the Jharkhand BJP went outside the tribal-centric frame altogether by installing Raghubar Das, a non-tribal OBC, as chief minister. In a state whose fundamental existence lies in providing a differentially integrated region for tribals, the decision signalled that tribal identity would be respected but would no longer monopolise political legitimacy.

'If you look at Raghubar Das Ji, he has been an organisational man from the beginning, which is why our party picked him. It is not in our party's DNA to pick identity as a hallmark for any post. Social background matters, but along with that being an organisational man, having support from the cadre, being easily approachable, good management skills and being a seasoned problem solver are other criteria with which we choose government heads,' said Mrityunjay Sharma, head of election management in BJP Jharkhand.

Whilst the BJP attempted to balance this through schemes and tribal outreach through top-tier representation, the JMM was swift to capitalise on it.

The BJP's loss in Jharkhand in the last Assembly election suggests that in states where identity is constitutionally entrenched—where 'tribal' is the foundational justification for statehood—bypassing that identity carries costs even sustained delivery cannot overcome.

The Mechanism: From Recognition to Delivery

For most of the pre-2014 phase, the BJP was either out of power or forced to rely on coalitions merely to remain in the game in both the Centre and many state capitals. During this first arc, the party's politics depended more on recognition and protection than on delivery. It projected itself as a force that would not allow the new Mandal-era elites to simply inherit the gatekeeper role once played by upper castes.

It spent this period building booth committees, pracharaks, second-line leaders, and local faces who carried little social dominance but deep organisational loyalty. The party offered them tickets and posts not because they could deliver large voting blocs, but because they could be shaped within the discipline of the organisation. It was a politics of delayed gratification, asking these aspirational groups to trust that their time would come.

This trust factor was bolstered by occasional positive performance, such as the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the national level. Despite lacking the fiscal reach or administrative penetration of the post-2014 state, Vajpayee's government quietly established the BJP's reputation as a party that could govern without surrendering the state to local barons. The emphasis on highways, connectivity, telecom, rural roads, and basic infrastructure mattered disproportionately to small farmers, migrants, traders, and lower-middle classes seeking escape routes from stagnant village hierarchies.

That changed decisively after 2014. With 282 seats in the Lok Sabha, the BJP entered its second phase with the legitimacy and mandate to deliver on its promises. The Direct Benefit Transfer of housing, sanitation, electricity, cooking gas, food security, insurance, cash, clean water, and health was enabled through the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile trinity. Welfare became not merely a policy choice but the party's central political technology, designed to reach households directly, bypassing the traditional intermediaries who had long controlled access to the state.

To grasp this transformation, consider the perspective of a poor beneficiary. In the 1990s, when media persons travelled to a poor settlement in Bihar to gauge interest in a George Fernandes rally, they were met with responses like, 'He is not a Block Development Officer (BDO). Why would I attend the rally?' For ordinary citizens, whoever in higher authority interacted directly with them became 'the state'.

With this socio-psychological structure, when a Pasi woman in eastern UP or a Kushwaha farmer in Bihar received housing, toilets, cooking gas, or cash transfers without needing the local strongman's recommendation, the fundamental equation of rural politics shifted. Where earlier one needed the recommendation of the local boss to secure a ration card, a house, or a connection, one now needed an Aadhaar number and a bank account. The state was no longer accessed through a patron; it became accessible despite the patron.

For a Kurmi, Kushwaha, Maurya, Lodhi, Saini, Pasi, Kori—and hundreds of such communities in UP and Bihar—a non-Jat cultivator or a Valmiki in Haryana, an OBC and tribal family in Jharkhand, the experience of governance increasingly came not through the village strongman or the caste elder, but through a distant yet dependable and approachable central authority. The state, not the local patron, finally guaranteed the dignity which was long promised.

'This is called the politics of exclusion. And I am not saying it negatively. It is the strategic exclusion of the intermediary to facilitate the direct inclusion of the invisible,' observed political analyst Siddharth Rai. Welfare was thus not only redistribution; it was a quiet reconfiguration of social power.

'By capitalising on valence politics, the BJP has recast itself as a credible problem-solver on widely agreed public concerns, a strategy that has simultaneously lowered resistance to and normalised support for its core ideological agenda.' he added 

The Arithmetic After the Revolution

The BJP's long march through the Hindi heartland has rewritten the rules of Indian politics, but it has not ended the game. What the party achieved across these states was not the elimination of caste—a claim as naïve as it is empirically false—but the demotion of caste from political sovereign to political variable.

The party successfully demonstrated that elections could be won without surrendering the state apparatus to dominant caste networks, that OBC politics need not mean monopoly by one single caste group, that Dalit mobilisation could exist outside the dominant sub-caste within the Dalits, and that tribal states could be governed by non-tribals if paired with sufficient welfare delivery.

Communities that had been told for generations that advancement required their caste's regional party to win began discovering that advancement could come from a centralised state with no local caste base, provided that state delivered consistently and directly.

Yet recent election results expose the model's limits. Jharkhand's loss suggests that in states where identity is constitutionally entrenched, bypassing that identity carries costs even sustained delivery cannot overcome. Haryana's narrow victory demonstrates that dominant castes do not simply accept electoral demotion; they adapt and counter-mobilise.

Even within the non-Jat bloc, demands from Ahirs for chief ministerial representation suggest that aggregating non-dominant castes is easier than managing their aspirations once they taste power.

These limits point to a fundamental tension. The BJP built its base in the states discussed above by promising direct state access, reducing the salience of local hierarchies; but as previously marginal communities gain confidence and stability—as Kushwahas, Kurmis, Mauryas, and Ahirs move from supplicants to stakeholders—they begin demanding what dominant castes always had: not just welfare, but power. Not just houses, but chief ministerial chairs.

The Bihar 2025 victory—with Samrat Chaudhary, a Kushwaha, as Deputy Chief Minister—represents one answer: sufficient representation to satisfy aspirations without destabilising the organisational structure. But this balancing act will only grow more difficult.

The deeper question is whether the BJP has fundamentally transformed caste politics or simply discovered a more efficient way to play the same game. The evidence suggests both.

On one hand, it has proven that power need not flow through traditional hierarchies. On the other hand, it has not eliminated caste from politics; it has redistributed caste's political value.

What remains clear is that the project is incomplete and its durability uncertain. Coalitions require maintenance, welfare requires fiscal sustainability, and organisational discipline requires constant reinforcement against the centrifugal forces of caste ambition.

Moreover, the model invites adaptation by rivals. Regional parties have learned they too can deliver welfare directly, fragment dominant blocs, and appeal to marginalised sub-castes. The Samajwadi Party's improved UP performance in 2024, Congress's Haryana resilience, and JMM's Jharkhand victory (even Mamata Banerjee's approach to politics and government) all suggest opposition parties are developing counter-strategies, combining welfare with stronger identity appeals, rebuilding caste coalitions on more inclusive lines.

The Bihar 2025 landslide demonstrates that the arithmetic can still work brilliantly. Whether this model can be sustained as welfare shifts from extraordinary to ordinary, as beneficiaries shift from grateful to demanding, and as opposition parties learn to combine identity mobilisation with their own direct-delivery mechanisms, remains the central question of Hindi belt politics in the years ahead.

The arithmetic was brilliant. But arithmetic, as every politician eventually learns, is not the same as algebra—and in politics, the variables never stop changing.