New Delhi: On January 29, shortly after the Supreme Court stayed the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, that had brought anger against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from upper caste groups, its most loyal support base, Union minister Giriraj Singh put out a statement that he later deleted. In the deleted post on X, Singh had thanked the Supreme Court for putting on hold the rules that would ‘divide’ Sanatan dharma.“Heartfelt gratitude to the Supreme Court for putting a stay on the UGC Rules that were dividing Sanatan. This decision is important to protect India’s cultural unity and sanatan values. Modi’s government’s identity is sabka saath, sabka vikas and the indestructible unity of Sanatan,” he had written.Singh replaced the deleted post with one thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. Now he simply mentioned that the stay order had granted relief to the country’s students, teachers and educational institutions. “The identity of the Modi government is Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas along with unity, justice, balance, and the steadfast protection of constitutional values,” he wrote in the new tweet, removing all mentions of sanatan values and his government’s commitment to protect them.Singh’s two posts lay bare the BJP’s unease as it faced widespread protests from upper caste groups, resignations within its own party and its office bearers, and petitions filed against the Modi government’s own equity rules that were notified by the UGC under a court monitored process.Unwilling to alienate its core support base, but looking to protect its growing base among non-elite caste groups – as evidenced by the narrowing gap in its vote shares from the two – the saffron party has found solace in the Supreme Court’s stay order. During the hearing, the UGC, represented by the government of India’s top law officer, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, did not advance any defence of the regulations introduced by the government’s own UGC.The Supreme Court, while issuing a stay on the new regulations against caste-based discrimination, said that the rules were “vague”, “capable of misuse” and would “divide the country” if implemented. The same contention had been made by upper-caste groups through their days of aggressive protests on social media and on the streets, saying that the rules were discriminatory against them.The protests, the backlash and the BJP’s response – with no top leader making any statement save one from Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan assuring that the regulations will not be misused – has put focus on the tightrope act of the BJP’s Hindutva politics. While on one hand the BJP wants to subsume all castes under an umbrella Hindu unity, it also wants to pursue the Dalits and backward-caste groups to build a rainbow social coalition for electoral gains.Why the outpouring of upper caste angerThe new rules, notified on January 13, drew sharp reactions from groups claiming to represent upper caste interests, which said that the rules do not mention General Category or upper caste students, and thus inadvertently presume they were the oppressor, which may lead to them being harassed. They groups also claimed that no mechanism of redressal had been included in the nre rules for false complaints. According to them, the rules ended up as discrimination to answer discrimination.At the centre of the storm was Regulation 3(c) of the rules that “caste-based discrimination” meant “discrimination only on the basis of caste or tribe against the members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes” (SC, ST and OBC).Shyam Sundar Tripathi, district president of the BJP’s Kisan Morcha in Salon, Rae Bareli, one of the party leaders who resigned in protest in recent days, said to The Wire that “rules should be equal for everyone”.“If not today then tomorrow our sons and daughters in colleges may face false action. If someone proposes to them and they say no, they will face action. The rules should be equal for everyone, whether SC, ST, OBC or savarna. Does the general community not face discrimination? Those who are higher in number will discriminate against those who are fewer in number. Will discrimination not happen against savarnas?” Tripathi asked.Tripathi is among at least ten BJP office-bearers in Uttar Pradesh who resigned in protest this week. The party also faced criticism from its own Members of Parliament, protests within Uttar Pradesh and outside the UGC offices in New Delhi. Even its loyal right-wing social media following accused the party of supporting Dalits over the upper castes. Union minister Pradhan’s statement that the regulations would not be misused did nothing to assuage the anger.The fallout of the stay orderThe 2026 regulations trace their origins to a petition filed in 2019 by Abeda Salim Tadvi and Radhika Vemula, the mothers of Payal Tadvi and Rohith Vemula, respectively, who sought better implementation of the 2012 regulations and stronger mechanisms to address discrimination.The petition challenging the 2026 rules – which led to the stay order – contented that the protection to SCs, STs and OBCs against caste-based discrimination would divide the country on caste lines; that the regulations were not caste neutral and that upper castes should find inclusion in them. The court has accepted the contentions and said that it will examine, in March, the constitutional question that giving protection to SCs, STs and OBCs will segregate the nation.“The court has said that the 2012 regulations will remain in force in the interim but even those regulations provided protection only to SCs and STs. Section 2(d) of the 2012 regulations provide for complaints of discrimination by these groups – it does not mention the general category. If the concern is that protection to SC, ST is going to divide the country, then even the 2012 regulations do the same,” said Disha Wadekar, one of the lawyers who filed the petitions on behalf of Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi.The petition ran into 3,000 pages and included ten government reports including from the National Commission on Scheduled Castes, National Commission on Scheduled Tribes, the Thorat committee report as well as Right to Information responses to 10,000 universities that revealed that the 2012 regulations were not being implemented.Wadekar said, if the court is framing a question that protective legislation for SC, ST, OBCs will divide the nation on caste lines, then this brings into question any protective legislation including those meant for women, such as laws that penalise rape.“By this logic, rape laws or sexual harassment laws for women are going to divide the nation on the basis of gender, and disabilities laws will divide the nation on the basis of able-bodied and disabled people,” she said.Sociologist Satish Deshpande said to The Wire that the Supreme Court’s stay is “disappointing” and sends the “wrong message”. Deshpande said the 2026 regulations were bound to meet problems of implementation, as with any measure that goes against the power gradient of society, but the potential for misuse, which is there with any law, cannot mean that there should be no law.“This is really the new phase of social justice we’re entering now where we will be forced to deal with complex intersectionalities. There will be few cases of the ideal victim or even the perfect perpetrator, all neatly black and white, good or evil. Especially with the entry of the OBCs, the social justice struggle has entered a very challenging phase where groups that have been clubbed together under this very large and unwieldy label can be both oppressor and oppressed,” he said.“This concern of the upper caste that they might be discriminated against is the classic man bites dog story. Yes, it can happen, and occasionally does happen but what is the frequency and what is the preponderance of events in society? What are the power equations in society – that’s what we have to consider.”Data shows objections prejudicialWhile the opposition to the new UGC regulations focused on discrimination that upper caste students could face, the data that points in the oopposite direction is staggering. The UGC’s own data submitted to a parliamentary panel and the Supreme Court shows that caste-based discrimination complaints in universities and colleges jumped 118.4% from 2019-20 to 2023-24.In a written response in Lok Sabha in 2021, Union minister Pradhan had said that out of 122 student suicides in top institutions and central universities between 2014 and 2021, 68, or 55% were from backward communities – 24 were from SC communities, three belonged to the ST category and 41 were from OBCs.In August 2022, government data shared with parliament showed there was only one Vice Chancellor from the SC category and one belonging to the ST category across 45 central universities. Government data has revealed, as recently as last year, that 80% OBC, 64% Dalit and 83% Tribal professor-level posts are vacant in higher education institutions despite reservation mandates.One of the earliest reports that had studied caste based discrimination on campuses was constituted under Professor Sukhadeo Thorat in 2006, who was then the UGC chairman. The committee looked into the AIl India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and found SC and ST students were reporting discrimination not just in teaching but in evaluation, assessment and examinations, as well as social isolation in hostels and dining messes, and ragging with caste overtones.Other than the objections from upper caste groups, the 2026 regulations were also more widely criticised for being watered down versions of the 2012 provisions.Thorat told The Wire that the provisions suffered from limitations including leaving discrimination to be defined to equity committees, and covering a limited number of institutions. Further, while the provisions included creating such an Equity Committee, headed by each applicable institution’s head, with ten members, half from a reserved category (SC, ST, OBC, PwD and women), who would meet within 24 hours of a complaint, submit findings in 15 days, and initiate action in seven more days, Thorat said this would create a conflict of interest.“The objections to the [2026] UGC regulations are not based on realistic provisions [in them]; they are political, extra-regulatory, ideological and not related to the regulations. These regulations also covered individuals, which meant that a higher caste person could also seek redressal,” said Thorat to The Wire.“The regulations only said that SCs, STs, OBCs and women must be mandatorily represented [on equity committees]. That does not mean that general castes will not be a part of it. Even if one looks at the heads of universities, the majority of the heads of central universities are upper castes, who would head these committees. The objections were prejudicial.”The Hindutva conundrumAt the heart of the aggressive opposition to the new rules was the idea of Hindutva politics pursued by the BJP, which while essentially Brahiminical, sought to create a large Hindu umbrella under which Hindus of all castes would unite.Faced with the opposition’s campaign – alleging that if the BJP won 400 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it would move to end reservations – the saffron party ran a campaign of “ek hain to safe hain” (we are safe because we are united) and “batenge toh katenge” (we will be cut down if we split up).While the protests against the new UGC rules were mostly concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, it was also here that the BJP suffered its biggest reverses in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which many observers have said was a result of the opposition’s campaign charge against it. The BJP was brought down to 240 seats nationally, failing to win a majority on its own and now heads a coalition government at the centre. But the 2024 elections also showed that the BJP enjoyed continued support from the upper classes: the skew between its upper class support base compared to its support from the poor and lower economic classes narrowed compared to 2014. CSDS-Lokniti analysis showed that while its share from upper classes remained high at 31%, then 38% and 37% in 2014, 2019 and 2024; its share among the poor recorded an increase as well, from 24% in 2014 to 37% in 2024.Deshpande said that the upper caste backlash over the UGC regulations was a test of the BJP’s electoral balancing act that it has so far handled successfully.“This has always been the central question since the rise of Hindutva politics and its success in the past twenty years: Can the standard edition of Hindutva, which is essentially Brahminical, sustain an electoral balancing act which will require it to appeal to the large majority of lower castes while retaining its upper caste core? This has been handled successfully so far in electoral terms by the Modi regime, but that game plan cannot work forever,” Deshpande said.“Any plan is subject to the contingencies of historical events and changes in the levels of consciousness. They have been riding two horses all this while, and suddenly, it’s testing time. Can this regime continue to appeal to the large masses while at the same time signaling that its heart is in the right place as far as the upper castes are concerned?”“That’s what is happening and in that sense, this is the implicit pressure of riding two horses at once being made explicit.”This pressure has also become apparent in the silence of the BJP’s top leaders both on the backlash as well as the Supreme Court’s stay order.The BJP, though, is not new to protests. In 2018, there were widespread protests by Dalit groups following a Supreme Court verdict that was seen as an attempt to dilute some provisions of the SC and ST (Prevention of) Atrocities Act, 1989 through which it scrapped the requirement that the accused be arrested immediately, a provision that was restored by an act of parliament later that year and subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court.“The backlash is not new. Any time any protective legislation is brought, there is the concern of false cases, and backlash around it. With the Atrocities Act, the BJP had to then bring the amendment following the protests,” said Sumeet Mhaskar, a professor at O.P. Jindal University.“This [protest] is something that the BJP can manage. I don’t foresee any big shift against the BJP because no other political party is joining the upper caste anger. If any other political party was to capitalise on it, then one could see that little shift for the BJP. It could also be manufactured to protect their turf, to show that there was opposition to it,” he said.However, with the 2026 elections scheduled to be held in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam, of which the BJP is only strong in Assam, the electoral impact of the upper caste opposition is unlikely to be seen. The BJP’s turf states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat are only going to polls next year.“Suppose elections were to be held tomorrow in Uttar Pradesh or in any other state, this may have dented the BJP’s support base amongst upper castes because upper castes vote for the BJP in very large numbers. This is not particularly about the 2014 or 2019 Lok Sabha elections or after that, but even when the BJP was not a very big political force, like in 2004 and 2009 when it was in opposition. Even in these two Lok Sabha elections, upper castes voted more in favour of the BJP compared to the Congress,” said Sanjay Kumar, professor at CSDS.“It is true that the BJP now has expanded its support base enormously among various caste communities, but still, the upper caste remains the core support base of the BJP. Anger amongst upper castes about the new UGC rules could have damaged the BJP’s electoral prospects if elections were to be held in near future.”Note: An error in the spelling of Sukhadeo Thorat’s name has been corrected since publication.