It has been generally believed that the BJP is a party of the upper castes. This, it seems, is a development which made it a party of the dwija castes - ever since the implementation of the Mandal award and he upper caste vandalism which followed it. it is further said that this consequence came about because the BJP became a champion of the upper castes and, to protect their interests, it ... opposed the Mandal report ... all this led to a rapid expansion of its social support and this largely, though not entirely, came from the savarnas ... However, in accepting all this, what has not been known at all is the class base of the BJP support.

The BJP, while being an upper caste party, is much more an upper class party, and in a more consistent way. If we divide the electorate into four class categories of very poor, poor, middle classes, and the rich and then look at the BJP's support base (as the Centre for Study of Developing Societies does on the basis of survey data collected in 1996 after the parliamentary elections), we get some, extremely revealing pictures. Though its support is always higher among the upper castes, it systematically goes up even among the other castes and even among the tribes as the income levels of those who make up these social groups go up.

Even among the Dalits ... the support for the BJP grows up more and more as the income goes up. Among the SCs who are very poor, about 11% support it, compared to 19% of the poor. When we look at the middle classes among the SCs, the support goes up to 25%. But what is really surprising is that about 41% of the tiny section of the rich among the Dalits, support it.

The story is the same everywhere. Let's look at the upper castes. As high as 29% of the very poor among them support the BJP; among the poor it goes up to 45 %; climbs to nearly 50% among the middle classes, and shoots up to as high as 57% of the rich among the upper castes, The remaining 43% of the rich voters among the upper castes get split among all the other parties including the Congress ..

Among all the caste groups, the shift of votes in favour of the BJP is least pronounced in case of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). But (the shift) is quite steady, though not dramatic. Let's look at the figures: 24% of the very poor among the OBCs vote for the BJP; it goes up to 26% in case of the poor, to 31% in case of the middle class OBCs, and climbs to 35% in case of the rich OBCs.

19% of the very poor of the tribals vote for the BJP; the poor support it to the extent of 25%; 25 % of the middle classes too support the BJP. But, then, the party has the support of 44% among the rich who form a very small fraction of the tribals.

However, Muslim votes are an exception to this general pattern. Muslim vote for the BJP is class-neutral but exhibits a slightly erratic pattern. Only two per cent of the very poor among the Muslims vote for the BJP; among the rich also only two per cent of the votes go to that party. But about three per cent of the poor vote for it; among the middle class Muslims the BJP support is nearly four per cent. All this goes to show the fear and apprehensions the Muslims have with the bJp due to the general perception among them that the latter is a Hindu chauvinist party ..

Given all these figures, it is time to more seriously analyse the class character of the BJP as well as to look