UP Elections: BJP has Moved on from Fighting Polls on Development Plank

The second phase of voting in Uttar Pradesh is over, and campaigning is on for the rest of the schedules. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh has made and is still making tall claims about development in the state since it came to power in 2017. It also asserted that it successfully controlled the Covid-19 pandemic and successfully carried out the vaccination drive.

However, the party is sticking to its old image of being a proponent of Hindutva and the Hindus. Besides, the party leaders are once again making vitriolic statements.

Is the BJP wary of contesting and winning the elections only on the development plank?

As the elections in Uttar Pradesh neared, finishing touches were hurriedly given to the development projects that had started since 2017, so that these could be inaugurated just ahead of the polls.

The projects included new expressways, airports, hospitals and modification of ancient temples. Most of the projects were to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Both belong to the BJP, which is keen to project its image as a party dedicated to development.

But as the projects were being either completed or inaugurated with much fanfare, as is the case of Kashi Vishwanath Corridor Project, something sinister was taking place behind the smokescreen of development.

In the name of Dharam Sansad or religious parliament, saffron-robed Hindu monks and nuns congregated from December 17 to 19 in Haridwar in the neighbouring Uttarakhand and called for genocide of Muslims and making India a Hindu nation.

The videos of the speeches stunned those who have a strong belief in a secular India. It was only after people from different professions and backgrounds – former military officers, lawyers, members of the civil society, and students angrily reacted that authorities in Uttarakhand took action against the speakers of the religious parliament.

Tempers on both sides had not even cooled when, just over a month later, on January 29, Hindu monks once again met at Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh and clamoured for India being declared a Hindu state.

Neither the prime minister nor the chief ministers of the two BJP-ruled states have condemned these calls for genocide of Muslims.

As the Dharma Sansad issue was still simmering, the hijab row erupted in Udupi district in the southern state of Karnataka when some female Muslim students in the hijab were denied entry to their college in December. The issue has deeply divided hijab’s proponents and opponents. The Muslims are saying they have the right to wear hijab and Hindu hardliners want it banned in places of education. Repercussions of the issue are being felt throughout the country, including poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

As campaigning picked up in Uttar Pradesh, a video became viral in which Amit Shah was heard purportedly telling leaders of the Jat community that Jats and the BJP shared the legacy of fighting the Mughals.

\ “Who sponsored the Dharam Sansads? Which party will gain the most if there is a call for genocide of Muslims or a complete ban on hijabs or the home minister saying the BJP and Jats fought against the Muslims?” asked a veteran journalist of Delhi who wants to remain anonymous.

It was the movement for the construction of a temple in Ayodhya that furthered the BJP’s fortunes. As the temple’s construction began on August 5, 2020, the state government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced a slew of projects in Ayodhya worth billions of rupees. Construction of an airport and modernising the railway station in Ayodhya is on the anvil. Express highways are also under construction that will connect the town with other parts of the country.

Uttar Pradesh is home to several Hindu shrines that attract millions of Hindu pilgrims from every part of the country. Varanasi for the Hindus is one of the holiest cities, and at present, it is represented by PM Modi in Parliament. The Kashi-Vishwanath Dham project was one of Modi’s dream projects, and its work began in March 2019. The project costs Rs 340 crore and was inaugurated by the prime minister with much fanfare in December last year.

The Delhi-based journalist said, “Modi, while inaugurating the corridor, said, ‘In our country, if Aurangazeb came, then Shivaji also rose.’ What’s the meaning of that statement?”

Close to Varanasi is another major shrine -- the Vidhyachal Shrine in Mirzapur district. In August 2021, the state government declared that it would develop the shrine on the lines of Kashi-Vishwanath Corridor project at the cost of Rs 300 crore. It was named Vindhyachal Corridor Project and was touted as the dream project of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. The foundation stone for the project was laid by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

“The state government is doing everything to appease the religious Hindus,” commented a journalist in Lucknow who works for an English daily.

During the monsoon, male Hindu devotees, known as Kanwadiyas, collect water from different sources and offer it in far off Shiva temples. They cover the distance from the source of the water to the temple on foot.

“A helicopter of the state government showered flowers on Kanwadiyas trudging on highways. In a video that went viral, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is seen waving at the devotees. In another viral video, a senior police official was seen massaging the feet of the kanwadiyas,” said the journalist.

As the elections neared, BJP leaders also started raking up the issue of the construction of a temple in Mathura at the spot believed to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna.

Manoj Tripathi, a political analyst in Kanpur, said, “The BJP can’t face the electorate on the issue of development alone. Unprecedented inflation was witnessed as the BJP came to power at the Centre and in states. Prices of petrol and diesel have gone up. Then there are the issues of joblessness, mismanagement, and deaths when the second wave of Covid swept across the state. The law and order situation is also not good. Hence, the BJP leaders are raising issues that are dear to Hindus instead of fighting only on the plank of development.”

He said, “The BJP once again has polarised the society so much that I am no longer comfortable visiting the Muslim districts of Kanpur. I was not jittery earlier.”

Tripathi said the BJP would not gain much by raising the issues of Hindutva as those have already been much exploited. He added that the BJP has been able to polarise the voters only in the Hindi-speaking belt of India. “The party suffered a crushing defeat in West Bengal and always loses in the southern states except for Karnataka,” he said.

Cow is another issue to which the Hindus are emotionally attached. For setting up cowsheds for stray cows in the state, the Uttar Pradesh government has spent Rs 1,154 crore since 2017, according to official records.

The Yogi Adityanath government claims to have checked cow slaughter and has opened hundreds of cowsheds in the state for stray or abandoned cows and bulls. But the cowsheds are proving to be insufficient to shelter all the cows, and the stray bovines have destroyed standing crops in rural areas across the state.

Adityanath tweeted on January 24, “Hum log na gay katne denge, na kisaan ki fasal nasht hone denge (We will allow neither slaughter of cows nor destruction of crops).”

SK Dwivedi, former Head of the Political Science Department in Lucknow University, denied that the BJP was scared of fighting the elections only the development issue. “Development has taken place in the last five years. The question is why the BJP is raising the issues related to Hindutva or Hindus? Because they have always been the core issues of the party,” he opined.

“What was BJP’s prime issue earlier? Construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. It is now being constructed. Then the central government abrogated Article 370. The party may do something about Uniform Civil Code in the months to come. So it is wrong to perceive that the BJP has given up issues related to Hindus only in the name of development,” Dwivedi said.

About the vitriolic speeches and tweets of the political leaders, he said the standard of decency in conversation had vanished.

Yogi Adityanath had tweeted on January 30, “Ye jo garmi abhi Kairana mein aur Muzaffarnagar mein kuch jagahon mein dikhai de rahi hai na…

Mai May aur June ki garmi mein bhi Simla bana deta hoon… (The aggressiveness that you see in Kairana and Muzaffarnagar… I make them cold like Shimla even in the heat of May and June.)”

Dwivedi said, “In a democracy, will the Samajwadi Party not attack the BJP or the Bahujan Samaj Party? Will the BJP not attack the Samajwadi Party or the Congress or the Bahujan Samaj Party? But there has to be a level of decency, and it is missing.”

Narrating a decades-old incident that Dwivedi had witnessed in Lucknow, he said, “Chandra Bhan Gupta was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was giving a speech when there was a power outage. Vajpayee’s supporters started shouting slogans, ‘Chandra Bhan Gupta murdabad.’ Vajpayee chided the workers and asked them to shut up. Now, Chandra means moon and Gupta means hidden. Vajpayee, in his inimitable style, said, ‘When the moon is hidden in the chief minister’s name, what can you expect in that state?’”

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.