Brahmin unease could reshape Uttar Pradesh's political landscape

As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) slashes and burns determinedly through Opposition party thickets, many predict that after the decimation of the Trinamool Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena group, it will be the Samajwadi Party (SP).

Assembly elections are due in Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2027. 

Last week, Sanjay Nishad, a minister in UP, said more than two dozen SP members of the Lok Sabha from UP (of the 37 members from the party) were in touch with him, ready to cross the floor. UP BJP Vice-President Keshav Prasad Maurya, not normally given to hyperbole, also dropped hints that 25-26 members of the Lok Sabha could leave the SP soon. But the most categorical was UP Panchayati Raj and Minority Welfare Minister Om Prakash Rajbhar, whose Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party is an ally of the BJP. In a nudge-nudge wink-wink style he referred to a son of baaghi (rebellious) Ballia who would lead the charge to drive the flock to the BJP. Ballia is called baaghi because Mangal Pandey, the hero of the 1857 revolt, was from the district. The SP MP from Ballia is the mercurial and outspoken Sanatan Pandey. 

Of course, Mr Pandey has denied the claim. But Mr Rajbhar’s logic is interesting. He says Mr Pandey’s revolt has been prompted by discontent arising from a consultation with Brahmin leaders held by party chief Akhilesh Yadav earlier this month. As the Assembly elections draw closer, Brahmin identity politics in Uttar Pradesh is seeing a resurgence. A number of political, cultural and administrative developments in recent months point to this. 

In January this year, more than 50 sitting BJP members of the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council (MLAs and MLCs), all Brahmin, met for a sahabhoj (community meal) at BJP MLA P N Pathak’s house in Lucknow. The meeting was seen less as social interaction and more as collective political assertion. It followed the UP Police’s “misbehavior” with Brahmin boys at Kumbh. Most of these boys were followers of Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, a Shankaracharya who has been an outspoken critic of some policies of the UP government and against whom FIRs (first information reports) have been registered for violating the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act. He has also spoken about the misappropriation of funds by the administrators of the Ayodhya Ram Temple. 

The tension between the Brahmins and Kshatriyas in UP since Yogi Adityanath, a Kshatriya by birth, became chief minister has been the BJP’s worst-kept secret. Since 1990, when the National Front government declared it would provide 27 per cent reservations for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) for jobs in government and the public sector, the Brahmins in UP reacted politically by switching allegiance en masse from the Congress to the BJP. Despite the BJP’s clear tilt towards the OBCs, they remained wedded to it except when they supported the Bahujan Samaj Party in 2007 and the SP in 2012, the latter to a lesser extent. In 2017, as many as 58 Brahmins were elected on the BJP ticket after an estimated 82 per cent of the community voted for the party. However, the SP was the first to spot Brahmin support for the BJP slipping through the cracks after the formation of the Yogi government. From promising to restore a public holiday to commemorate Parashuram, the mythical Brahmin known for his animosity towards the Kshatriyas, and raising his statue (2020), the SP began an outreach to Brahmin organisations and leaders. 

Although the BJP is not overly worried about the Brahmins turning away from it — after the decline of the Congress in UP they have few options — it is concerned about a drop in levels of cadre motivation and the damage caste-based internal dissonance could do. The public rebuke of UP BJP chief Pankaj Chaudhary, who belongs to the OBCs, to those who organised the sahabhoj was the first manifestation. But while the BJP might frown on caste assertion, it can’t do much about competition. 

A word about Sanatan Pandey. He describes himself as jhagralu (quarrelsome) and is known to have publicly threatened district magistrates if they don’t do what they are supposed to do. He defeated Neeraj Shekhar, former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar’s son, in Ballia in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but before that, had faced a string of electoral defeats. He has a diploma in civil engineering and was junior engineer with the UP government till he joined politics and contested Assembly elections in 2017 (he came third) as an SP candidate. He has had excerpts of his speeches in the House expunged for the use of “unparliamentary language”. So maybe not a poster boy for parliamentary democracy. But he’s considered an able defender

of baaghi Ballia. Could such a combative personality really lead a sizeable group out of the SP into the BJP? He could have help. But what these moves tell us is that a caste recalibration is simmering just below the surface in UP.