Election Verdict: What’s More Important – Rozi-Roti or Ram Mandir?

While waiting for five Assembly election results on December 11, here is a strange statistic that should be worth some worry: in the hectic, bruising campaign, Yogi Adityanath addressed 74 public rallies in four states compared with just 31 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 56 by BJP president Amit Shah. Clearly Yogi Adityanath is now the electoral weapon of choice for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Just last year, for the equally hectic Gujarat Assembly elections, Modi had addressed 30 rallies in his home state.

What’s the difference between Modi and Yogi? The saffron-robed head of a math in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, who was elevated to the Chief Minister’s post in the state Uttar by Modi in March last year, is an unabashed Hindu militant, spewing fire and venom against Muslims with ease, and has no compunction in declaring that cow slaughter is a more important crime than a police official’s murder by an armed lynch mob of the Hindutva brigade, as happened recently in Bulandshahr. He speaks a language that Modi or Shah would – perhaps – like to use but hesitate. Perhaps they feel constrained by some nebulous concerns of propriety or fear the alienation of people.

Communal Strategy

Or, perhaps this is just a division of labour. Modi and Shah and various ministers stick to talking about ‘vikas’ (development) and achievements of the Modi regime, while their friend Yogi is free to go about mobilising people on the grounds of religious hatred.

This appears to be a more likely reason for Yogi’s increasing deployment in election campaigns across the country, although in Yogi’s own state of UP, there is a complete neglect of even the minimum governance that existed before him. Yogi is not worried about tending to the people of his state for he is enjoying the heady elixir of rabble rousing.

That Yogi is the weapon being honed for the tough general election that Modi and the Sangh Parivar face in 2019 becomes even more clear when one sees the manufactured ‘movement’ for building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. This move started earlier this year and has been formally blessed by the RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat himself in his key Vijayadashmi speech in October. Since then, there has been a flurry of activity as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has announced a series of congregations of Hindi saints and seers, the first of which was held in Ayodhya itself.

On December 9, the VHP organised such a congregation in Delhi where thousands of people were bussed in from 14 districts of Western UP and from Delhi itself. The speeches were frenzied, the slogans from the floor were incendiary. The demand was that the central government bring in a law to “build the Ram Temple” at the disputed site in Ayodhya. It was vacuous but heady stuff – something that the Sangh Parivar specialises in. Notably, the organisation of the event was under the control of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with its volunteers manning the whole venue and its second in command Bhaiyyaji Joshi addressing the gathering.

Last Throw of Dice

The rise of Yogi Adityanath on the one hand, and the rise of the Temple movement on the other, coincides in time -- and there is a reason for it. They are part of the shift occurring in the BJP’s approach to the coming Lok Sabha elections.

This shift is a last throw of dice by Modi and the Sangh Parivar to retain power in India. It seeks to mobilise people and legitimise his government by using the Hindutva message, since all the other tactics – indeed, his policies – have failed.

Modi had swept to power claiming to transform India by creating jobs, bringing in prosperity and development, inclusive of oppressed sections. In his nearly five years of rule, these promises have been betrayed and the people are angry. They have suffered a regime that talked big but delivered little. Unemployment is raging at a high mark, the economy is in shambles, farmers across the country are agitating against falling returns and indebtedness, workers and employees are constantly struggling against increased exploitation, wage freeze and privatisation. Corruption and black money are as pervasive as earlier despite the disastrous demonetisation. Goods and Services Tax has destroyed small businesses. All his much-hyped schemes and programmes like Make in India, Skill India etc. have come a cropper.

After spending the last few years extolling his ‘vikas’ agenda and his ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ (Together with all, Development for all) slogan, and failing to even keep the 30% people that voted for him in the 2014 elections, Modi and the Sangh Parivar are rolling out the rusted last weapon in the armoury – aggressive Hindutva, centred around the Ram Temple.

So, (December 11), the results of Assembly elections will not only give us a taste of how people judge Modi’s performance but also of how they receive this latest gambit. The verdict will be not only about BJP’s policies in the last four years (at the Centre and at the state levels) but also about how effective the poisonous propaganda unleashed by Yogi and the Sangh Parivar in the recent months has been.

Will the people who have joined together to fight for farmers and workers, and for jobs, and for women’s security – will they get diverted into the Ram Temple direction or strive to uproot the anti-people saffron rule? Tomorrow will tell.