by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
There is little doubt that the assembly election results in the mega-state of Uttar Pradesh, and the emergence of Yogi Adityanath as chief minister in its aftermath, has left the commentators spellbound! And that includes your faithfully. Two enigmas stand out to be resolved.
The first one is about the electoral numbers. How did the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi crush the state’s age-old caste divides under its wheels to clock 41 per cent plus votes for its alliance? Micro-scrutiny of the poll results isn’t done yet, but a cursory glance of the tallies makes it clear that the BJP won support from Upper Caste, OBC and Dalit—all building blocks of the electorate known to psephologists, except just one group, Muslims. Or that is what the intention was, as it is the visible exclusion that supposedly triggered the spectacular consolidation of non-Muslim votes.
However dramatic, the phenomenon is not unprecedented. Pretty much the same consolidation of votes across caste happened in Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections, with the BJP plus wresting 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats and 43 per cent of popular votes. Poll pundits attributed it to a bagful of ‘factors’, including Modi promising a ‘new deal’ and inclusive growth. But, assembly elections being considered different from general elections, and most of Modi’s economic promises still taking shape, nobody expected the mandate to be repeated to a tee. The enduring enigma, therefore, is: how did Modi repeat his electoral charm after almost three years, and that too after a rather lacklustre performance of the economy?
The second magic, that of the appearance on stage of Yogi Adityanath, the 45-year-old Mahant of the Gorakhnath temple, as the new chief minister is indeed spellbinding. The Yogi did not come on the stage spontaneously. There was an inscrutable silence of seven days, until the curtain was raised to present this unexpected mascot of aggressive Hindutva in his trademark saffron attire. Those who could be lying bleeding in the backstage included Manoj Sinha, minister of state with independent charge of telecom, long whispered as the “boss’s choice”, and Keshav Prasad Maurya, the party’s Uttar Pradesh chief and a dynamic OBC leader. Modi being an OBC himself, Maurya’s name too was riding the whispering waves for being consistent with the party having sharply targeted the state’s non-Yadav OBC’s during the campaign.
The final choice of Yogi Adityanath has raised a serious doubt about who is the real magician? Some of the capital’s media know-alls have jumped to the conclusion that the ‘Prospero’ of the act could be none other than Modi. But then what about the heartbreaks in Modi’s circle of favourites (Maurya complained of chest pain and required hospitalisation)? And why the long pause of seven days? However, as far as the BJP, and its mentor, the RSS, are concerned, decisions are taken by a small group so shadowy that few in the party would get to know it beforehand. Informed guess is, therefore, the only torch to flash in the dark tunnel.
In this respect, the key element is what Walter Anderson, co-author of The Brotherhood in Saffron, a seminal work on the RSS, has described in a recent newspaper interview as the Sangh’s “character building and Hindutva enterprise”, which, as he pointed out, is “very different from his (Modi’s) political objectives and those of the BJP”. While Modi, as the ace of the saffron family, has never been out of sync with the RSS and its Hindutva enterprise, the latter is also a continuous process of history, with the hunt for new crusaders continuing without a pause. The RSS paradigm is to look at India as a people on a march to see the primacy—not just equality—of Hindutva restored as it reportedly was till the conquest of India by Muhammad Ghori in the 12th century AD. In fact Modi must have read the calendar two hundred years earlier, with the Ghazni attacks in the 10th century, as he spoke of “twelve hundred years of slavery”.
Adityanath shares Modi’s anti-Muslim outlook, a term that RSS ideologues mildly call vichardhara. The Yogi and his Hindu Yuva Vahini have been dreaded as the eastern Gangetic valley’s unrivalled Hindutva Klan. The term “love jihad”, and its sharp communal nuances, are the Yogi’s contribution to the riot-torn state’s divisive lexicon. On becoming chief minister, his first moves against the “illegal” abattoirs, rounding up the “Romeos”, or “Majnus” etc may be part of electoral promises. But there is a philosophy behind such promises too. While advocating “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” the Yogi announced another bold step no BJP leader did in the past including Kalyan Singh or Rajnath Singh. The Yogi introduced a cash dole of Rs one lakh to those Hindus visiting ‘Kailas Mansarovar’ and announced the setting up of ‘Kailas houses’ at NOIDA & Ghaziabad on the pattern on Haj House at Lucknow. So what if there is a delay in the construction of Ram Temple even after the advent of Modi in Delhi & Yogi in Lucknow.
The RSS probably looked at the Hindutva march as a relay race, with Modi, a brilliant runner but already 65, requiring a future replacement. Maybe that’s the reason why Manohar Parrikar was picked up as the poster boy of the Modi cabinet. His early over-zealousness—such as blasting a smugglers’ boat on the suspicion that it could be an enemy vessel—points in that direction. But Parrikar lacked Modi’s stamina and so he had to be returned hurt to Panaji as emergency-landed chief minister of Goa. Adityanath is the RSS’s new choice of “Modi No.2”.
The saffron-clad priests of Hindutva have reason to be in a hurry. Dr. K.V. Hegdewar founded the RSS in 1925 as, after serving a term in jail during Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement, he lost faith in Gandhi’s ahimsa and his “idea of India” that included Muslims who invaded India and converted millions into Islam. If the RSS is determined to get India’s founding faith reset before its centenary in 2025, it is sure to make the choice of Modi No.2 so unorthodox.
(The author is National Editor, Lokmat group)
