Nitish Kumar has said that Ram Nath Kovind is an honourable man. Knowing that the Chief Minister of Bihar—whatever else he may or may not be—is himself an honourable man, we take his characterisation of Kovind at his word.

The point, however, is that when the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the redoubtable Amit Shah, made the public declaration of Kovind’s name as the ruling National Democratic Alliance’s choice for President of India, rather than emphasise Kovind’s honourable nature, Shah laid stress on two other aspects, namely, Kovind’s indigent background and, most of all, the fact that Kovind is a Dalit. Indeed, as many commentators have since remarked, Shah iterated this aspect of Kovind’s persona more than a few times. Contrary to the professed indifference of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to facts of caste, Shah does seem to have a healthy interest in the social formations of India’s Hindus. We recall how he had, some weeks ago, characterised Gandhi as a chatur baniya.

India’s finest social scientists have often reminded us that no community in the country is a homogenous mass. Be it savarna caste Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs, or Parsis, India’s polity has always been vibrantly contentious on ideological issues. This does not exclude India’s Dalits. Following the declaration of Kovind’s candidature, many reputed Dalit activists and academicians have pointed out that not all Dalits think the same way. They have further underscored the reality that Kovind’s name has never figured among such Dalit activists or intellectuals who have visibly striven to carry forward the Ambedkarite legacy, and that, coming as he does from an RSS background, it is hardly likely that he would be entirely free of a Brahminical slant on Dalit histories and Dalit issues of the day. This is perhaps why, despite being an honourable man, Kovind has not been heard much on the atrocities on Dalits in recent days, be it in Una in Gujarat or Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. If a sampling of Dalit voices since the declaration of Kovind’s name is any guide, it is doubtful that his stature as a Dalit is likely to cut much ice with the more articulate opinion-makers and activists among India’s Dalit population.

But this is not the total picture. We must credit the strategists of the Sangh Parivar with more acumen than meets the eye. A threefold purpose seems to have dictated Kovind’s choice: one, the Sangh strategy to divide North India’s Dalits along a Jatav/Chamar and non-Jatav/Chamar axis. Besides, being the more affluent among the Dalit community, Jatavs singularly and stridently subscribe to an Ambedkarite antagonism against Manuvad—namely, the Brahiminical principle of the chatur varna vyavastha that denies both social and other forms of equality to the Shudras at the bottom of the caste pyramid. It is a remarkable detail that, perhaps, only among the Jatav Dalits is the Ambedkarite thesis of “separatism” still held to be a guiding praxis for Dalit advancement. And only among Jatav/Chamar factions do Dalits pointedly exclude any worship of the reigning Brahminical triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh—gods who encapsulate the kernel of Brahminical forms of belief and worship.

The fact that Kovind is a non-Jatav Dalit is clearly a factor designed to draw into the Hindutva fold all such non-“dominant” Dalit sub-castes whose adherence to the Ambedkarite legacy—intellectual and political—is seen to be rather more negotiable than that of the “dominant” Jatav/Chamar Dalits. This, of course, is in line with the Sangh’s strategy of drawing away non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from the hegemonic control of the Lohiaite leaderships that still hold sway in the Gangetic plains.

Kovind’s potential contribution to this strategy is the second objective behind his nomination. Not many know that Kovinds are numbered among OBCs in the state of Gujarat where the likes of Hardik Patel have, for some years now been forging an intermediate caste mobilisation and agitation against the predominantly upper caste Sangh.

A third objective, much more obviously, is the calculation that tom-tomming Kovind’s candidature may help to paper over the many recent and continuing upper-caste pogroms against Dalits across the board.

A resurgent Dalit leadership, however, underlines many ironies in this hoped- for Sangh stratagem. Consider a recent headline that was almost coterminous with the announcement of Kovind’s candidature: Dalits in Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh who wished to meet the new chief minister were given soap and shampoo to wash themselves clean before the meeting with Yogi Adityanath. And when in a brilliant response, Dalits from Gujarat set out to gift a 120 kilogram bar of soap to Yogi to cleanse his mansikta (mindset/attitude), they were promptly held at Jhansi and turned back, while local compatriots in a Lucknow Press Club event were arrested under Section 144 for holding a meeting inside the club premises. Noticeably, Kovind is yet to say anything on these occurrences.

Clearly, as Dalit vanguards point out, Kovind is hardly likely to have much of substance to say on such brazen and blatant contradictions in the position of the Sangh vis-à-vis Dalit social realities qua the Savarna Hindu community.

One can hardly suggest that an astute man like Nitish Kumar would not be cognisant of these ramifications of Indian identity politics. If, therefore, he has chosen to support Kovind’s candidature, he must have been guided by considerations far more subtle than an average observer of social and political events may make out.

Meira Kumar, the opposition candidate who is sure to lose the presidential election, nonetheless has good grounds to proffer the argument that the battle is not merely a ceremonial one, but as such, bears on the seminal concerns of the republic. Is the idea of social justice and equality to be merely a cunning political gesture? Is secularism to be defined finally in terms of “nationalist” upper caste dominance? Is the cynical stratagem of divisive politics to be made a permanent feature of Indian electoral life, leading always to the continued rule by those who never fail to profess allegiance to the downtrodden but always end up serving their corporate masters?

Sadly, we do not have the tradition of presidential debates in India. One would suggest that it is perhaps time to start this practice, since we do introduce so much else of less worth from the mighty United States. The ruling device of deflecting and concealing contradictions would then meet the challenge of exposure on fact, and the electronic media would find new life away from jingoism and soap operas.

Nitish Kumar is a man of his word. Yet, being also a man of great intellectual subtlety, many would hope that he would still reconsider his declared choice of candidate. Were he to do so, his Brutus-like credibility could bring about reconsiderations among other factions who may not have given much moral or analytical thought to the issue.