A new Brahmin-first party in UP symbolises a growing disquiet among BJP’s core voters

Since February this year, an office space in Lucknow’s Sapru Marg has become the home of an audacious political experiment. Every day, a handful of men gather here and brainstorm how they can subvert the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Curiously, the men admit to having been BJP voters all their lives. They are mostly Brahmins, the privileged caste group that is a core constituency of the Hindutva party.

“The BJP was our party,” says Rajesh Shukla, a businessman who is a regular visitor here. “It has now been hijacked by backwards.”

The businessman was referring to other backward classes, or OBCs, a collection of castes that make up nearly half of UP’s population. Traditionally, the BJP has been seen as a party catering to upper-caste Hindus. Its earliest political architects like Deendayal Upadhyaya, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi were Brahmins from UP.

However, over the past decade, it has won two consecutive state elections after successfully wooing OBC and Scheduled Caste voters.

This strategy might now come with a cost. The upper castes, especially Brahmins, feel that they have lost ownership of a party they considered their own. “Brahmins were the pillars in the house of BJP,” said Rajendra Nath Tripathi, the leader...

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