Vice-Presidential Election: Congress OBCs Vs. RSS OBCs

In the context of the Congress OBC (Other Backward Classes) conference on July 25, 2025, in Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium, and the recent stand of Congress, particularly Rahul Gandhi, on the caste census, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chose as Vice-President candidate, (technically as the National Democratic Alliance candidate) CP Radhakrishnan, the present Governor of Maharashtra, with the suggestion of the RSS or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Now they have started a campaign that he is an OBC from Tamil Nadu in order to use this appointment to gain votes in Tamil Nadu. This is also to convey to Congress that they would promote OBCs from the South.  Radhakrishnan comes from Goundar community, which is a middle rung OBC caste.  

Tamil Nadu has been in the hands of OBC leadership ever since the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham) formed its first Government in 1967, except for some time during Jayalalithaa’s rule. The BJP wants break that Dravidian ideological rock bed by promoting an OBC person.   

It is a known that the BJP came to power on its own only with OBC support in a situation where the Congress lost OBC support in the post-Mandal period. The Congress party’s main support base till 2014 was Muslims, Dalits, adivasis and a section of upper castes. Its top leaders in governance were mainly from the upper castes

BJP-RSS Pretension of OBC Agenda

Historically, the RSS is known as an anti-Shudra agrarian force, without any ideological agenda to change the agrarian structure. It was always against land reforms. They opposed Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s land reform law in the early 1970s and openly supported princely states by opposing abolition of Privy Purses.

Even Narendra Modi was not known in his entire life before becoming Prime Minister, of taking a pro-agrarian OBC stand. He mostly worked with Gujarati business class support with an anti-Muslim ideology. The same ideology is deep down in his thinking and working process now. His pro-OBC rhetoric is basically electoral.     

After choosing Radhakrishnan as its Vice-President candidate, BJP also started a vigorous campaign that its Prime Minister is an OBC, and it has several OBC Central ministers and two Chief Ministers.  Thus, they are trying to counter the gradual shift of OBCs to Congress.

Interestingly its two Vice-Presidents— Venkaiah Naidu and Jagdeep Dhankar, were Shudra/ OBCs -- Kamma and Jat, respectively. Those castes are Shudra agrarian in their lived history. Both Naidu and Dhankar were humiliated and sent out. We all know that Naidu was not at all willing to take up that position leaving his cabinet post. He was the only somewhat known Shudra leader in that party, as he served as BJP president.

But the BJP-RSS forced him to become Vice-President and retired him before he attained the age of 75.

OBC Category and Shudraness

The OBC category came into being as a legal and constitutional category, which includes 90% of Shudras. A small section of them remained outside the OBC reservation when the Mandal Commission Report was implemented in the early 1990s. Even before that, when some states gave reservation to Backward Classes, some top end Shudra agrarian castes remained outside the reservation orbit with a view that such a tag to their caste would humiliate them.

The Kammas in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and Jats in North India remained outside reservations. In states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, all Shudhras are part of reservation.

Congress Relationship to Shudra/OBCs

Let us turn to Congress party’s history. The first ever tallest Shudra/OBC leader that emerged from that party was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He was the first leader to start an agrarian movement, Bardoli, against the British. In the South, a major Shudra/OBC leader who built mass farmers and toddy tappers movements against the British was Kamaraj Nadar. He was the tallest OBC leader in the country after the death of Patel. He could have become Prime Minister as president of the party, but Lal Bahadur Shastri was made the Prime Minister. After Shastri’s death, he allowed Indira Gandhi to become Prime Minister.

From Maharashtra, Y.B Chavan emerged as a great national leader. From Karnataka, Nijalingappa, a Shudra/OBC, was one of the top Congress leaders at the national level. They all challenged Nehru and Indira Gandhi and were leaders on their own merit, with an ideological vision different from that of Nehru and Indira Gandhi, and with a commitment to the Constitution.  

After the 1971 elections, Indira Gandhi did not allow any leader to emerge and hence the Shudra/OBCs started establishing their own leadership in different states and challenged Congress from outside. That gradually led to the weakening of the party.

The BJP-RSS combine has come out with a new image in 2014, that they will support OBC reservations and work for OBC welfare.

But in their hundred years of history, the BJP-RSS combine has not produced a single leader like Patel or Kamaraj Nadar from their organisation or party. Most of their OBC leaders were small, dependent leaders of no stature, who were given some visible political positions only after the Mandal period, more particularly after they started the Ram Temple movement.

No OBC leader from RSS or BJP is known for leading an agrarian movement. Every ideological issue was decided by the Brahmin leaders in RSS. The only leader, as the media now tells us, as the leader of decision-making capacity is said to be Modi, that too during his first term as Prime Minister. His second term onward, he is also going by the RSS direction.

The three farm laws that were meant to destroy the agrarian economy and hand over local markets from the Shudra/OBCs to monopoly industrialist houses were the handiwork of RSS. The strategy was planned by the RSS Brahmin leadership, and Modi implemented it because it helps his own corporate friends.

However, the farmers, who are essentially Shudra/ OBCs, fought and defeated the government agenda.

Rahul Gandhi Returns to Nehru Era

With his two agendas, Rahul Gandhi seems to have put the Congress on the Nehru era track. One is that he is fighting for a caste census at the national level and giving hope to the Shudra/OBCs so that they can play a critical national political role. Unless the Shudra/OBCs are part of the national party, they will just remain regional leaders. Now they hope to get a good position in the party and get the stature of Patel, Kamaraj Nadar, Nijalingappa, Y.B. Chavan and so on.

In the near future, the RSS-BJP combine will never give OBCs a position in the top leadership that can influence the ideology of the party or RSS. Whereas in the Congress, the Shudra/OBC leadership emerged and could compete with Nehru as Prime Minister. Sardar Patel and Kamaraj Nadar were such leaders. The RSS-BJP so far has not produced such Shudra/OBC leaders from agrarian bases. At best, they produced OBC leaders like Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharati, who played only anti-Muslim politics, that too from urban locations, with an anti-Muslim ideology.

To contest against BJP candidate CP Radhakrishnan, the INDIA bloc has chosen Justice Sudarshan Reddy from a Shudra agrarian background. He retired from the Supreme Court as a judge, and has a credible record of working to protect human and civil rights and constitutional guarantees all his life.

Recently, Reddy functioned as Chairman of the Independent Expert Group constituted by the Telangana government, to study the Socio, Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste Survey, in which this author served as Vice-Chairman.

The nation should not take the propaganda of the RSS-BJP structures and monopoly media by face value, that they will empower OBCs by putting a doll-like OBC activist as Vice-President by RSS leaders.     

The writer is former Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. The views are personal.