Saving Adityanath is integral to Hindutva's future plan

The BJP-RSS combine does not believe in sacrificing its leaders on public demand with M J Akbar being the lone exception

Calls for the resignation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath over the heavy-handed attempts to cover up the Hathras rape and murder will have no effect. This is not the first time there has been public outcry against Adityanath’s governance. Two years ago his government was accused of protecting Hindutva activists who lynched a police inspector in Bulandshahar. That demand too yeided nothing.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) combine does not believe in sacrificing its leaders on public demand. The only exception was M J Akbar who had to resign as a minister. But then Akbar was an outsider and he had limited symbolic use in a Hindutva party. 

Although Adityanath does not come from the ranks of the RSS he will not be sacrificed. Instead he will be carefully ring-fenced and cultivated by his mentors as Hindutva’s new iconic leader. Uttar Pradesh with the largest Muslim population after Jammu and Kashmir is for them the most appropriate new laboratory of Hindutva.

Yogi Adityanath’s feral qualities seem to have attracted the RSS mandarins. They were bewitched by his aggressiveness against minorities and the social fear aroused by his communal militia, the Hindu Yuva Vahini. They deliberately chose him as Chief Minister of UP in 2017. 

His patrons and gurus, Mahant Digvijaynath and Avaidyanath, came from the Hindu Mahasabha tradition of Hindutva and won parliamentary seats on that party’s tickets. Even as the two Hindutva streams – of the Mahasabha and the RSS – came together during the Ram Temple movement, Adityanath continued to have uneasy ties with the BJP. He fielded a Hindu Mahasabha candidate who won against the BJP in 2002 in Gorakhpur, his pocket borough. In 2007, he threatened to field 70 candidates against the BJP before reaching a compromise. In 2009, he campaigned against BJP candidates. Even in 2017 his Hindu Yuva Vahini put up six candidates against the BJP although Adityanath distanced himself from the move. Incidentally, their central demand was that Adityanath should be projected as BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate. 

He was a Lok Sabha MP and did not contest the 2017 assembly election. News reports at that time claimed that the current deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, then the Mayor of Lucknow and not Adityanath was the party’s favourite as Chief Minister. 

Yet, the RSS imposed the untamed ochre-robed rabble rouser on UP. He has not disappointed them.

Could any other chief minister have razed to the ground the Rs. 30 crore house of five time Muslim MLA from Allahabad and known muscleman Ateeq Ahmad or the illegally owned properties of mafia don turned politician Mukhtar Ansari in Lucknow? Another Muslim leader who strode tall across the state during the Samajwadi Party regime, Azam Khan, current MP from Rampur, is cooling his heels in Sitapur jail with his wife and son, both MLAs, on charges of forgery and fraudulent land acquisition.

Adityanath arrested more than a thousand protestors and put more than 5,500 in preventive detention for protesting against the citizenship laws. Could any other BJP leader have proclaimed that his government would seek “revenge” on anti-CAA protestors and actually seize their properties? 

There can be no doubt that Adityanath has shifted the goal posts of Hindutva with unparalleled aggression. He has pushed a frightened minority population to the margins of the public sphere in UP and crushed its most aggressive politicians. 

Is it then safe to assume that Adityanath is being groomed as the Hindutva leader of the future perhaps even the frontrunner at the national level? Health issues of Union Home Minister Amit Shah may have disturbed the obvious line of political succession. Although Prime Minister Modi remains unassailable in the eyes of the BJP’s rank and file, they also adore Adityanath as a hardliner. He is only 48 years old – giving him 22 years on Prime Minister Narendra Modi – and has a long political career ahead. A rape in Hathras or Unnao will not be allowed to come in his way just as the 2002 Gujarat riots were not allowed to thwart the leadership potential of the then Chief Minister Modi.

Yet the RSS may not find it easy to bump him up to the top job should the opportunity arise. That role requires two essential qualifications. One, it requires a semblance of gravitas and intellectual sophistication (which, for example, the Iranian Ayatollahs have and the Afghan Taliban leaders do not). And, second, an internationally acceptable persona. Prime Minister Modi may not have passed these qualifications with flying colours but Adityanath ranks far below him. Even within India, Adityanath’s acceptance may not be as high given the ineffectiveness of his campaigning in the 2019 general election. 

For the time being though, there is much the RSS expects of him in UP alone. It is no secret that after the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, preparation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam, criminalisation of “triple talaq” among Muslims and starting the construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, two significant items remain unaddressed on the Hindutva agenda – a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and population control legislation. Both while sounding progressive – the first by doing away with religion based personal laws and the second by limiting family size --  in fact target the minority community.

The UCC has been on the BJP’s election manifesto and two attempts have already been made to introduce it as a private member’s Bill in parliament. That population control is a canker in even Prime Minister Modi’s mind was evident in his last Independence Day speech when he praised those with small families saying that population control is a form of patriotism. 

Yogi Adityanath will be needed to deal with the fallout of implementing both these policies. His savage use of state power has already cowed the minority community. To pursue that process further, he is needed in UP more than at the Centre. Meanwhile there is no harm in letting him dream of being a contender at the national level.

Twitter: @Bharatitis