Students of India's politics often marvel at the resilience of the country's people, the bulk of whom have been made into living parts of the great Indian political experiment – pampered, mauled and often disfigured, and yet surviving to tell the tale of how democratic traditions are deeply rooted. Nothing characterises this saga better than the politics played out in the so-called Hindi heartland, the densely populated area of eastern Uttar Pradesh (Purvanchal) and Bihar. It seems as though every time national stalwarts of various hues reinvent political tradition, these 'heartland' dwellers are selected as the guinea pigs.
First it was the Hindutvavadi-based movement for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya; then it was the caste-based agitations against the Mandal Commission's recommendations on reservations. Now, with the ports in the west and south on the verge of becoming success stories in a seemingly booming economy, the latest refrain is whether the rest of India should be forced to carry the burden of the impoverished, lawless heartland. It is as if the Indian population has suddenly woken up to the reality of this perennial economic 'drag'.
What keeps being overlooked, is the fact that, even while the heartland remains 'backward' in certain regards, it is also constantly sending its people out, by the millions, to every nook and corner of the country. There, they undertake much of the labour that other communities shun, and contribute to economic vibrancy from a lowly posting. At the same time, however, the worry has been stoked that these migrants will swamp the host identities and cultures. Earlier this year, the tirade by Maharashtra Nav Nirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray, with regards to such economic migrants to Bombay, raised a host of fundamental questions about this kind of identity-based politics and the skewed perceptions about the heartland and its people. The migrants from the heartland, unlike others, tend to dominate and show their political muscle, the junior Thackeray asserted.
The longstanding question is whether the heartland has truly dominated the Indian political landscape since Independence. Psephologists would certainly have us believe so. But when discussing this issue, analysts have long given too much weight to numbers over processes. With UP and Bihar accounting for nearly a fourth of the total Lok Sabha seats before the bifurcation of both, after all, the presumption was that whichever party carries the heartland rules the country. Such a premise, of course, has been proven false in both numerical and substantive terms. Not only has the share of the two states in the total number of seats declined; political forces at the Centre and the two states have been at loggerheads with each other. If the political configurations at the Centre versus in UP and Bihar over the last two decades were compared, one would see a stark distinction: the Congress party as a largely spent force in both of these states, yet still occupying power in New Delhi for substantial lengths of time. Nonetheless, the widespread perception of UP and Bihar being the 'kingmakers' continues.