Caste emerges bigger than Hindutva in UP poll

Apart from the re-emergence of OBC politics, what is frustrating the BJP’s Hindutva strategy is that the Muslim community in UP, despite all provocations, has not reacted in an angry and counter-provocative manner. As a consequence, there is no evidence of Hindu vs Muslim tension in the state, which would have helped the BJP.

Edge for SP: Akhilesh Yadav’s poll rallies are far bigger than those of Modi or Yogi. PTI

Sudheendra Kulkarni

Former close aide to ex-PM Vajpayee and Founder, Forum for a New South Asia

No state capital in India has erected a more magnificent monument to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar than Lucknow, the city of nawabs. When Mayawati became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 2007, she gave Lucknow a new look by building large red-stone memorial parks on the banks of the Gomati river in honour of not only Dr Ambedkar, but also of Kanshi Ram, her mentor, and herself.

On an early morning walk a few days ago near the river front (impressively beautified by Mayawati’s successor Akhilesh Yadav), I started a conversation with a roadside chaiwala. “What is likely to happen in the UP elections?” I asked him in Hindi. He stonewalled my question with a set answer: “Can’t say. Wait until March 10, the counting day.” Then, after a long pause, he made a revealing comment: “Remember, no incumbent government in UP has been voted back in the past 40 years.”

The BJP, of course, is making all-out efforts to win a second term for the Yogi Adityanath government. Will it succeed? All the responses I have heard in Lucknow, Kanpur, Rae Bareli, Azamgarh and Varanasi can be clubbed into two categories.

One, it’s a tough contest and even if the BJP returns to power, its seats will come down significantly from its 2017 tally of 312 MLAs (in an Assembly of 403). The BJP supporters, too, concede this.

Two, the Samajwadi Party’s alliance is winning and Akhilesh Yadav will be UP’s Chief Minister again.

At the risk of being proved wrong, I venture to say that the chaiwala will be proved right. The most important factor going against the BJP is that its politics of Hindutva, which had yielded rich dividends in the 2017 Vidhan Sabha elections, and also in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections in UP, is not having the same appeal on the voters this time around. Caste identities have again emerged as the dominant influencers, frustrating the BJP’s attempts to polarise society along communal lines by consolidating its Hindu vote bank.

The electoral influence of caste has never been absent in UP. It increased considerably after the advent of the Mandal politics in the late 1980s. This is how the Samajwadi Party (with the Yadavs as its main support base, along with Muslims) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (with the Jatavs as its main support base, along with other Dalit castes and a section of Brahmins and Muslims) gained power and kept the two national parties — the Congress and BJP — at bay.

The Ayodhya movement led by the BJP partially succeeded in suppressing the caste factor and bringing non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits under the Hindutva appeal. Indeed, even a section of the Yadavs and Jatavs supported the BJP in 2014, 2017 and 2019.

However, the situation in 2022 is quite different. Akhilesh Yadav has put together an impressive coalition of OBC castes and also wooed a section of the BSP’s non-Jatav supporters. The fact that Mayawati has become inactive in this election (amid fears that the Modi government could reopen corruption cases against her) has helped the Samajwadi Party become the main challenger to the BJP.

It is not that the BJP is not trying to play Hindutva politics by whipping up anti-Muslim sentiments. Yogi gave ample evidence of this by saying that this is an election of “80 per cent versus 20 per cent” (the Muslims in UP constitute nearly one-fifth of its population). But apart from the re-emergence of OBC politics, what is frustrating the BJP’s Hindutva strategy is that the Muslim community in UP, despite all provocations, has not reacted in an angry and counter-provocative manner. As a consequence, there is no evidence of Hindu vs Muslim tension in the state, which would have helped the BJP.

In addition, barring the BJP’s core voters, its bid to retain power is strongly countered by the unprecedented price rise, severe unemployment, the government’s mismanagement of the Covid crisis during the second wave, the effect of the kisan andolan (particularly in western UP) and the problem of stray cattle, which has arisen due to the ban on cow slaughter.

The decline in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity, which had worked wonders for the BJP in the previous elections, is a new development in UP elections. Some of his speeches in rallies defy logic. For example, at a rally in Hardoi, he cited the recent court verdict in the 2008 Ahmedabad bomb blasts and said, “Have you seen the election symbol of the Samajwadi Party (cycle)? The terrorists planted bombs on cycles in busy markets. I am so surprised, why did they use cycles?”

Akhilesh Yadav has clearly become the star of this election in UP. His election rallies are far bigger than those addressed by either Modi or Yogi. Moreover, unlike in 2017 when he was facing many problems within his family and party, he has now taken complete control of the Samajwadi Party.

Another leader has begun to catch the people’s imagination in the state this time — Priyanka Gandhi. Her public meetings and road shows are attracting huge crowds. For the first time after nearly four decades, the Congress under her leadership is showing signs of revival. The party will surely increase its vote share, although it may not improve much from its pathetically low tally of seven MLAs in 2007. But if Priyanka continues to work at the ground level in UP, she can spring a surprise in the next Lok Sabha elections.

In case the BJP loses in UP — and it is not going to do well in Goa, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur either — there will be a dramatic change in the national politics. The people in UP will begin to look up to the Congress, as the only other national party, with hope in the next parliamentary elections. A slogan doing the rounds in UP is this: Bayees mein Akhilesh, Choubees mein Congress (Akhilesh in 2022, Congress in 2024).