Assembly election results: Why BJP must ensure Yogi Adityanath leaves India alone, and stays in UP
On the evening of March 18, 2017, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced Yogi Adityanath, arguably the biggest Hindu hardline leader, as the chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, the party made it clear that it wanted to 'reward' its Hindu voters.
This, after the party fought the UP elections on the issue of development and the promise of better law and order.
In doing so, the BJP made the same mistake that many of its detractors make — believing that the party rode to power in 2014 not because people wanted development, but because they wanted a 'Hindu India', one imagined by the Sangh ideologue Veer Savarkar.
Fast-forward to 2018.
Adityanath presided over the politically significant losses in the Lok Sabha bypolls in Phulpur and Gorakhpur. The twin losses, especially that in Gorakhpur, from where Adityanath was a five-time MP before vacating the seat in 2017, failed to make the BJP realise that people can’t eat and drink Hindutva — they want development and good governance.
Instead, the BJP started sending Adityanath as a frontrunner wherever there was a possibility of a matter of faith to be indelicately used for political expediency.
Instead of tempering bigoted statements, the BJP apparently decided to increase the dose of hate-filled remarks. Adityanath did not disappoint the party, but he sure disappointed its voters. The coarseness of his political discourse triggered an instinctive recoiling, drawing BJP supporters away from the party.
Disappointed voters are impossible to ignore. They make their presence felt by voting parties out of power, just as easily as they express hope in leaders by voting them in.
Adityanath addressed 74 rallies across four out of the five Assembly poll-bound states now, with the maximum – 26 – being in Rajasthan.
Prior to this, the BJP had used Adityanath in Karnataka, sensing an opportunity to deepen fissures on the issue of the Lingayats being categorised as a separate religion.
The party could not form a government in the state.
It is imperative to dig into Adityanath's own past (since he himself loves digging into history and even mythology) to understand why he is nothing but a liability for his party.
Before taking over as chief minister, Adityanath had several criminal cases against him. Some of the charges included rioting, attempt to murder, carrying deadly weapons, endangering life or personal safety of others, unlawful assembly, trespassing on burial places and criminal intimidation.
He once likened Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed and asked him to go to Pakistan.
In 2015, Yogi Adityanath said that those who oppose yoga can leave India.
Come 2018, in Telangana, he said, “If BJP comes to power, I assure you [Asaduddin] Owaisi will have to flee from Telangana the same way the Nizam was forced to flee from Hyderabad.”
The implication of where he wanted Owaisi to go was not lost on anyone.
A man so insistent on making Indians leave India should now be told by the BJP to leave the rest of the country and confine himself to UP.
And there too, he needs to be told to focus on governance for whatever time remains of his term. He should then confine himself to the math of which he is a mahant.
Savarkar’s ideology, that believed Muslims in India should be treated as ‘negroes’, is no longer endorsed even by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) because the inherently Indian culture of inclusiveness has rejected the notion.
It is for this reason that India is rejecting Adityanath in state after state.
Adityanath symbolises failure — while he never tried to hide his hate for the minority community, he has nothing to offer to Hindus as well.
What sort of a chief minister can suggest that for him, and the official authorities under him, a cow’s life takes precedence over that of a human?
The disconnect between Adityanath and the people he is supposed to govern came to the fore in the way he dealt with the family of late inspector Subodh Kumar, slain by a rioting mob in Bulandshahr. A man touring the country, asking for votes for his party, has the victim's grief-struck family travel from Bulandshahr to Lucknow just to hear them out.
The photo of that meeting was a reflection of Adityanath’s coldness towards victims of the violence that has been kept simmering by politicians like him.
In Madhya Pradesh, Adityanath said, “Congress can keep Ali, Bajrangbali is enough for us (BJP).”
The results must remind him of how wrong he was, not just about this particular election's outcome, but also about India as a whole.
The BJP should spare this country Adityanath’s hate. Please limit him to UP with strict instructions to just govern and please keep mum.
Otherwise, the BJP would find it difficult to be voted back to govern.
Also read: My questions for the BJP, and why I think it has lost its way