InDepth | Haldwani Purification Row Has Given A Political Opening To The Congress

The Congress alleged that those who performed it had links to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), claiming it exposed their “anti-Dalit mindset”.

The Congress is using the purification episode in Uttarakhand to seek answers to the question of Dalit dignity, caste discrimination and constitutional rights at a time when the party is trying to wrest back a constituency that has largely eluded it. Speaking in Parliament, Kharge demanded the arrest of those behind the alleged purification ritual. Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda rejected the allegation that the BJP had organised the ritual, saying the party did not support such activities.

Condemning the incident as an insult to Kharge as a Dalit leader, the Congress said that the act amounted to the practice of untouchability—which is a crime under the Constitution. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi held a press conference in Delhi on the issue where he said was not interested in any politician’s refusal to speak on the incident. “The prime minister’s silence reflects his ideology and we have no interest in whether Mayawati has responded to the matter,” Gandhi said. “We are only interested in what happened to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and it was illegal. We want a first information report [FIR] registered under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.” However, days after the incident, Uttarakhand BJP president and Rajya Sabha member Mahendra Bhatt defended the ritual, saying that “the place was polluted with slogans”.

In a turn of events, a case was lodged against Gandhi two days later at Haldwani police station following a complaint by Vinod Kumar Arya and Amit Kumar, who are associated with the Shri Ram Sena Dharmarth Seva Sangathan. The two men alleged that Gandhi had used objectionable words referring to the Scheduled Caste (SC) community while commenting on the incident. Police have booked Gandhi under sections 196 and 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 3(1)(q) of the SC/ST Act.

What began with Kharge’s rally has now drawn Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra into the arena, followed by a nationwide mobilisation after the FIR was registered against Gandhi. All India Congress Committee in-charge for Uttar Pradesh, Rajendra Pal Gautam, says the Congress is waiting to see whether an FIR will be registered against those responsible for the incident. He points out that a case had instead been registered against those who spoke out against it. “We won’t let them get away with it. People are angry,” he stresses. The timing is significant. Uttarakhand, UP and Punjab are all heading to the polls in less than seven months.

On September 4, Bengaluru police filed a zero FIR over the alleged shuddhikaran incident. For the Congress, this row appears to test both its social-justice narrative on the ground and to put the BJP government on the defensive. “Those who are in the Opposition will look for issues. Since an FIR has been registered against Gandhi, it will give them extra traction,” says political science professor Shashikant Pandey of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow. However, for the issue to translate into electoral gains, the Congress would need a strong ground-level organisation, he adds. The Congress needs a fresh narrative to retain the new voters it gained in 2024. Without that and a new or stronger leadership, Dalit voters could instead be drawn towards the BJP’s beneficiary-focused politics, says Amitabh Tiwari, political strategist and founder of Vote Vibe, a research outfit.

What the Numbers Say

In UP, where Dalits account for around 21 per cent of the population, which is more than 4.13 crore, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has traditionally dominated the vote, particularly among the Jatavs. But the BJP has made major inroads among several SC communities in the last two Assembly elections, including Chamars (Dhusias, Jhusia, Jatavs), Pasis (Tadmali), Dhobis, Koris, Khatiks, Valmikis and other non-Jatav SC communities, says D.R. Sahu, president, Indian Sociological Society.

According to the post-poll data from various sources cited by Sahu, 32 per cent of non-Jatav SC voters and eight per cent of Jatavs voted for the BJP in 2017. In 2022, the BJP’s support among Jatavs rose to 18–21 per cent, while its share among other SC communities climbed to 41 per cent. The Samajwadi Party (SP)won just three per cent of Jatav votes in 2017, rising to nine per cent in 2022. Its support among other SC communities increased from 11 per cent to 23 per cent over the same period.

In 2017 and 2022, the Congress could not mobilise support from the Dalit communities. The equation shifted in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, partly due to the SP-Congress alliance’s ‘samvidhan khatre mein hai’ (the Constitution is in danger) campaign, where they warned marginalised communities that a massive victory for the BJP would mean the end of reservations and democratic protections by the Constitution.

The BJP secured 24 per cent of Jatav votes, compared with 25 per cent for the SP-Congress alliance and 44 per cent for the BSP. The BJP also struggled to retain its support among non-Jatav SC communities. It secured 29 per cent of their votes, against 56 per cent for the SP-Congress alliance and 15 per cent for the BSP, says Sahu.

In Uttarakhand, of the close to 19 per cent SC population in the state, in 2017, the BJP had a larger share of the Dalit vote at around 37 per cent, compared with roughly 23 per cent for the Congress. By 2022, however, the Congress won around 48 per cent of the Dalit vote, while the BJP’s share fell to around 26 per cent.

The Lokniti-CSDS data in 2022 indicate the Congress received around 49 per cent of Dalit votes in Garhwal, compared with 38 per cent for the BJP. In Kumaon, the Congress lead was considerably wider: around 64 per cent of Dalit voters backed Congress, while only around 22 per cent supported the BJP. In the Maidan region, however, the BJP retained an advantage, with around 37 per cent of Dalits voting for the BJP against approximately 25 per cent for Congress.

The Kumaon figures are particularly relevant to the current Haldwani controversy because Haldwani is one of the principal political centres of the Kumaon region.

Punjab, which has around 33 per cent of Dalits, does not vote as one unified political bloc. Among both Dalit Sikhs and Hindu SCs, the Congress was the largest beneficiary in 2017, but by 2022 the support had waned and instead, they had begun to support the Aam Aadmi Party. A few of them have over the years also voted for the Shiromani Akali Dal.

A Vote of Consequence

Seen together, these shifts underline why the Dalit vote has become increasingly important to the BJP’s and Congress’ electoral calculations. The BJP victory in 2014 was to some extent attributed to their success in consolidating across castes and gaining the support of both Dalits and other backward class (OBC) to create a broader Hindu electoral coalition. That consolidation widened in 2019. But, by 2024, a sizeable number of Dalits and OBCs, fearing constitutional changes, returned to the Opposition and the INDIA bloc.

This had led many in the Congress to realise that it needed to build a sizeable and reliable Dalit vote bank in every state and prevent the BJP from reclaiming their hold on these communities.

Pal Gautam, who is the Congress SC department national chairperson, surmises the controversy could resonate beyond Uttarakhand and become an issue in other states as well. “With only six months left before the elections, the Congress will continue to raise its voice,” he says, adding that both Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and other BJP leaders had justified the incident.

Former BJP national general secretary Dushyant Gautam says, “It won’t affect the BJP at all. Slogans were raised, so how can people raise such slogans near a temple? People were simply cleaning the place.” But, referring to the havan, he says that it had no connection with the BJP or the Dalit community. He pointed out that some of those who performed the havan were themselves Dalits. “When Gandhi raised the issue, it was purely political, and in the process, he defamed the Dalits who performed the puja. The BJP has nothing to do with it. Congress is in no position to criticise. Have they forgotten how they have treated Dalit leaders in their party, including Sitaram Kesri?” Gautam asks. Kesri, however, was not a Dalit. He belonged to the Teli community, which is classified as an OBC in Bihar.

A.K. Verma, director, Centre for the Study of Society and Politics, Kanpur, says that the Haldwani incident was unlikely to significantly affect the BJP’s support. “What we should remember is that in the 2024 election, the BJP/National Democratic Alliance retained its 44 per cent vote share in UP, which was higher than the vote share of the SP (34 per cent) and the Congress (9.5 per cent) which were in an alliance. These are peripheral issues, rather than substantial politics,” he says.

There is unease within the BJP because this has come close on the heels of the Cockroach Janta Party-led protests which led to the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Gandhi’s protest in front of the PM’s residence and his protest to get an FIR registered for firing of pellets on student protesters in Delhi on July 20.

Dalits, Upper Castes and BJP

In January 2024, the BJP had to face criticism about the University Grants Commission’s equity rules meant to address caste discrimination in higher education, including protections for SC, ST and OBC students. But the upper castes claimed that the guidelines unfairly targeted them. When these were challenged in the Supreme Court, the BJP government said these were put on hold as there were indications that the guidelines had angered their core constituency, the upper castes.

Aware that there was anger within the party’s core constituency, Nadda was forced to meet a delegation which was part of the reservation hatao andolan, whose main demand was the removal of caste-based reservation . Long before this, in 2016, the death by suicide of Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula became one of the biggest political flashpoints around caste and higher education during the government’s first term. The political handling of the case allowed the Opposition to portray the BJP and its student wing as insensitive to Dalit students.

Although the BJP has faced challenges concerning the Dalit issue in the last decade, the Congress has struggled to convert that into electoral victories. Even in Uttarakhand, where it is in a direct contest with the BJP for power, the Congress has struggled to turn public anger over such issues into sustained anti-incumbency against the ruling party. But the issue gives the Congress a narrative similar to the one that worked for it in several states in 2024.

“Specifically in Uttarakhand, it could give the Congress the impetus to revive its traditional vote bloc of Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims, particularly with a Brahmin serving as state Congress president. There is also a historic rivalry between Thakurs [Uttarakhand CM] and Brahmins,” says Tiwari.

The Congress needs victories in 2027 to show that the social coalition it built with the SP in 2024 can translate into state-level power. Such wins would bring what it has lacked for years: some power, organisational growth and crucially, momentum. These would also test whether the party can convert discontent with the BJP into votes for itself.

“More than 55 per cent of non-Jatav Dalits backed the INDIA alliance in the 2024 election,” says Vote Vibe’s Tiwari. “This group had largely supported the BJP between 2014 and 2022, after having previously been aligned with the BSP. They now appear to be moving towards the Congress and the SP.”

With the ‘Constitution is in danger’ narrative having run its course, Tiwari says the issue could help both parties consolidate the non-Jatav SC vote while also making inroads among the Jatavs, who appear to be drifting away from the BSP. For the BJP, these Assembly elections are crucial as it seeks to maintain momentum after the setbacks over the student protests. The party is also looking at its larger ambition of securing a two-thirds majority in Parliament to be able to pass the Delimitation Bill and the Women’s Reservation Bill. A string of Assembly wins would help the BJP to enter the 2029 Lok Sabha elections from a position of greater political strength.

The Haldwani ‘purification’ row may not decide an election, but it has given a political opening for the Congress and the BJP is watching. The Congress has to manage to convert its focus on Dalit issues into votes and the BJP must hold together the Dalit and the OBC sections it has brought into its wider Hindu coalition without alienating its traditional support base.

Ashlin Mathew is senior associate editor, Outlook