Conversely, the great message of the Obama win is social inclusion. Allsections of American society, white, black, Hispanic, rich and poor voted forObama. His wonderful acceptancespeech embraced all Americans. That is the great failure of Indian politics.Far removed from the Gandhian-Nehruvian ideal we are today parties to exclusion.The BJP excludes minorities. The Congress is a pale reflection of its formerself. The regional parties appeal to specific caste/social groups within theirarea of influence. There is no one inspirational leader who can possibly unitethis country. Worse, even the rhetoric of politicians is about exclusion.
Parties like Lalu Yadav's RJD that emerged from the social justice movement are,by their very nature, opposed to the upper castes. Indeed, the nature of ourpolity and society divides, making it unlikely that we would ever see an Obama-likephenomena in India. Today, an older wiser Lalu is far more polite to allsections of society. I recall visiting him in Patna in the mid-90s at the heightof the Mandal movement. On a hot summer day, he sat on a charpoy in a vest.Standing in attendance were bureaucrats in jackets, sweating and clutching theirfiles while Lalu calmly ignored them and chatted with me. He was making thepoint that he had arrived in spite of the "machinations" of thebureaucracy that in those days he openly mocked as being "uppercaste".