Polarisation at work in UP

Julio Ribeiro

Yogi Adityanath is presently in his element. He is busy needling the voters who address their fathers as ‘abba jaan’! Often in the past, he has gone beyond mere needling, for the Muslims are his ‘bete noire’.

Tackling Covid, and now dengue, is not what interests him. These are unnecessary interferences in his ‘divine’ task of ridding his state of what he considers to be pests, criminals, beef eaters, cow killers and, above all, jihadi terrorists.

In my city Mumbai, I know many Muslims, some at the top end of society and many more at the low end residing in slums. The latter I got acquainted with more intimately when I returned home from Romania where the only Muslims I met were either diplomats or locals who waited at diplomatic dinner tables, including my own. They were in great demand, despite their penchant for sampling the wines, fortunately after the guests had departed.

My friends, largely from the Race Course, do not seem to be too concerned with religion. I am not sure if they prayed, even when their horses were in the race! My humbler friends, who formed the nucleus of the mohalla committees, formed after the 1993-94 riots to foster communal harmony and peace, were busy during most days eking out a living! They could spare no time on hate, like the Yogi seems to have, particularly at election time.

Speaking of elections, due in UP in the next six months, I thought he had spread enough vitriol that appealed to listeners who had no difficulty in blindly accepting the words that emerged from his mouth. Unfortunately, the farmers and Covid-19 have combined to deny him the walk-over he had banked upon.

The resulting uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the 2022 Assembly elections had forced him to fall back on hate and communal division to recover lost ground. Will the ploy succeed? No one can tell at the present moment. But, God forbid if it does, it will not be good for the country. A divided country is a sure recipe for disaster. If the minorities, who constitute 20 per cent of the population, are reduced to second-class status the country will have a sizeable chunk of permanently alienated citizens. And to these the ones in power will have to add a constantly floating number of the temporarily alienated, like farmers of Punjab, Haryana and western UP and castes aspiring to be downgraded in official rankings in order to corner jobs, besides the political power that comes with sheer numbers.

A communal divide has existed in UP, as it did in Mumbai, for centuries. It was dormant till elections were held and political parties vying for power appeared on the horizon. The accusation against the Congress of appeasement of minorities has found traction with the voting public.

I have often tried to analyse this accusation. The Muslims are one of the three groupings (the two others being the SCs and STs) in our society that are economically and educationally backward. If the Congress or any government of the day had pampered them in the sphere of education or health, I would support that ‘appeasement’ with my eyes shut. But the Congress party only gave in to demands of concessions to religious beliefs that no secular democratic government should concern itself with.

Religion is a personal belief. It concerns only the believer and his or her understanding of creation and the afterlife. Why should the State get involved? Rajiv Gandhi made his biggest political blunder when he conceded the maulvis’ demand to undo the mischief of the Shah Bano judgment. The State should govern justly and fairly without getting involved in religious matters. It should make it a pillar of State policy to keep ‘miri’ and ‘piri’ separate.

Yogi Adityanath has stretched credibility by alleging that those who address their fathers as ‘abba jaan’, the Muslims, were the only community that was provided with rations before 2017, the year he became the CM! Rations from fair-price shops are available to the poor at reduced rates. Since Muslims, SCs and Adivasis are the poorest, community-wise, it may be that Yogi saw more Muslims and Dalits in ration queues before 2017 when he was out on the streets fighting for power. That position would hold firm today also, but Yogi is confined most of the time to his chair in the ‘mantralaya’ and may not have noticed this. But the damage has been done. People are gullible. They believe what the ‘great leaders’ tell them!

My friends in UP and my associates in Mumbai who hail from UP tell me that Yogi has a large following in the state. As CM, he has performed creditably in curbing ministerial corruption and keeping senior bureaucrats on their toes. Of course, he has not been able to control low-level corruption in the revenue, police and other departments, but that has not been achieved in any state of India. Yogi created a flutter at the start of his reign by ordering the police to shoot criminals on sight. He has mellowed somewhat as wiser men have counselled him of its dangers.

He has floundered in the fight against Covid. He has been inattentive to the inroads made by dengue. He has obviously not given health infrastructure the attention it needs. This may not affect his fortunes at the hustings because the BJP’s counter-propaganda machinery has been tested and proved more than worthy. It can make black into white and vice versa!

What could mar his prospects, though, is the farmers’ agitation. The farmers were with him in 2017. They will not oblige this time round unless he mollifies them to an extent he may find impossible to do. And then, there are also the bodies that floated down the Ganga and landed on the banks of Bihar!