Ahead of Lok Sabha 2019 polls, BJP must rethink Yogi Adityanath's brand of Hindutva politics
The dismal performance of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the five states that went to polls recently is a clear-cut reflection on the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath’s, brand of politics that the party leadership chose to let loose in the polls.
If insiders are to be believed, the party bigwigs were confident that unleashing the Yogi brand of hardcore Hindutva politics would give a surge to the BJP, at least in the Hindi heartland of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the party was entrenched for 5-15 years.
Evidently, it was banking heavily on the polarisation of the Hindu vote, hence, no stone was left unturned to blatantly forge a rhetorical divide between Hindus and Muslims. But the strategy failed to pay dividends — and at the end of the day, the BJP had to eat humble pie.
That the party’s focus shifted from 'development' to Hindutva was amply demonstrated when the party chose to give precedence to a rabble-rouser Adityanath over a development-oriented Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Adityanath beat not only Modi, but all other BJP campaigners in the number of rallies addressed in the poll-bound states. He crossed all records when he ended up with 74 rallies – 27 in Rajasthan, 26 in Chhattisgarh, 17 in Madhya Pradesh and 8 in Telangana.
On the other hand, Modi addressed just about half the number of rallies across these states. And to everybody’s surprise, he too was prompted to take recourse to Hindutva – raking up the Ayodhya temple issue, which he had consciously avoided in the 2014 Lok Sabha election that catapulted him onto the pedestal of power with a record number of seats.
How the Hindutva card fared in the five states now became visible at the end of the show on December 11.
The BJP lost in 70 per cent of the assembly constituencies where Modi addressed rallies and in about 64 per cent constituencies where star campaigner Yogi Adityanath went.
Even as Yogi’s strike rate proved to be marginally better than that of Modi, whose exposure in the election was far less than that of his protégé, the fact remains that the aggressive Hindutva politics played by the saffron-clad Adityanath failed to pay the desired political dividends.
Interestingly, while Modi had systematically maintained a distance from these state elections, Yogi Adityanath made it a point to push himself deeper into the battle for votes. Perhaps he was looking up to enhance his UP-centric profile to a pan-India presence that could come in handy to fulfill his national aspirations, which are no secret anymore.
After all, no sooner than the assembly results were out and analysts were still trying to figure out what led to the sudden fall of the BJP in the Hindi heartland, Yogi’s enthusiastic supporters in Lucknow put up hoardings and banners, emboldened with the slogan, “Yogi lao; desh bachao” (bring Yogi; save the nation). Quite curiously, these banners and hoardings were hastily removed no sooner than the chief minister was reportedly informed about these.
While Adityanath often proclaims that he believes only in 'development', a few glaring examples of Yogi’s divisive utterances will convey his obsession with aggressive Hindutva. "Maine Congress ke netaon ko batana chahta hoon, …ki bhaiyya tum logon ko Ali mubarak ho, humare liye to hain humare Banjrangbali” (I would like to tell Congressmen, you keep your Ali, we have our Bajrangbali), Yogi had reportedly declared at a rally in Ajmer as well as at some other places in Rajasthan.
Addressing a poorly attended rally in Telangana, where he made it a point to take on his bête noire, the AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, Yogi Adityanath reportedly said, “Agar Telangana mein BJP ki sarkaar banti hai to, mitron, main aapse keh sakta hun Owaisi ko yahan se waise hi bhagna padega jaise Hyderabad se Nizaam ko bhagne ke liye mazboor hona pada tha” (If the BJP comes to power in Telangana, I can assure you that Owaisi will have to scoot away from here in the same manner as the Nizam was forced to run away from Hyderabad).
While Modi was generally concentrating on his 'development' card and playing up his achievements, he could not resist the temptation of telling his audience in Rajasthan, “Aapko pata hai, jab Ayodhya muamla Supreme Court mein chal raha tha, tab Congress ke kuch Rajya Sabha sadasya wahan pahunch kar ye maang karne lage ki case ki sunvaayi 2019 Lok Sabha chunao tak nahi honi chahiye. Ab bataiye kya is tarah se nyayapalika ko raajniti mein ghasitna sahi hai?” (Do you know that when the Ayodhya case was going on before the Supreme Court, some Rajya Sabha members of the Congress party went there to plead that the case should not be heard before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Now, tell me, is it appropriate to drag the judiciary into politics in this manner?). However, what came as a huge shock was his allegation about the apparent intimidation of judges by the Congress leaders, with the added remark, “Judges are also scared of impeachment”.
Earlier, in the run-up to the polls, Yogi went about changing the names of towns carrying any Arabic (Muslim) tag. Starting with renaming Mughal Serai station as Deen Dayal Upadhaya Junction, he later scrapped both Allahabad and Faizabad to re-christen them Prayagraj and Ayodhya respectively.
Addressing a rally in Hyderabad, he then told his audience that if the BJP were to form the next government in Telangana, he would have the city renamed Bhagya Nagar.
More recently, while handling the Bulandshahr violence, one has seen how Yogi Adityanath’s focus was largely on 'cow-slaughter' rather than on the killing of an inspector of his own state police. Strangely, he sought to even term the cop’s killing as an 'accident' and 'cow slaughter' as a conspiracy.
As if all the Hindutva rhetoric at the election was not enough, two days before polling in Madhya Pradesh on November 27, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) held 'Dharma Sabhas' in Ayodhya, Nagpur and Bengaluru, followed by yet another in Delhi, where top RSS functionaries and VHP-associated sadhus participated in large numbers, only to raise the pitch for a special legislation to build the Ayodhya temple.
Considering that all of this could not impress the electorate which preferred to give an edge to the Congress that had been down in the dumps for years, perhaps it is time for the BJP leadership to introspect.
Whether they will stick to the 'development' rhetoric that took Narendra Modi to the pinnacle in 2014, or whether they should pursue the divisive Hindutva card, that has clearly failed to deliver so far, only time will tell.