In 2017, soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party cruised to an unforeseen electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh, it had taken the party’s high command over two weeks to anoint Adityanath as the chief minister. The saffron party was torn between an Other Backward Class chief minister and a firebrand yet ‘upper’ caste Hindutva leader who could steer its ideological apparatus.
After all, the BJP’s recent successes in India’s most-populous state were driven by the large-scale support of a majority of non-Yadav OBC communities and non-Jatav Dalits. Not choosing one from these under-represented communities as its state leader could have backfired. It eventually hedged its bet on Adityanath, a Rajput leader, hoping that the head of the Gorakhnath Math could still bring a range of OBC and Dalit groups under the Hindutva umbrella. Adityanath, known as ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat (emperor of Hindu hearts)’ among his supporters, was believed to have a popular appeal cutting across different caste groups despite his ‘upper’ caste identity.
Immediately after being anointed as the chief minister, Adityanath distanced himself from his vigilante organisation, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, and firmly placed himself in the inner compartments of the BJP, so much so that he began to be regarded as prime minister Narendra Modi’s natural successor by a large section of Hindutva proponents. He was sent to spread the BJP’s anti-Muslim rhetoric across the country. There has been no election since 2017 when Adityanath’s name was not among the party’s star campaigners. His popularity rose further after he led his party to yet another rousing victory in the 2022 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
However, the crushing defeat of BJP in Uttar Pradesh at the hands of Samajwadi Party-Congress combine in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls has left the saffron party in a bind. It may also have kickstarted a power struggle within its structure.
A costly lack of restraint
Adityanath enjoyed popular support for bringing some kind of order in the otherwise chaotic political system of UP. He employed extrajudicial measures like alleged staged ‘encounters’ of criminals and the so-called ‘bulldozer action’ against accused. He also empowered the police to crack down unapologetically on dissenters and protestors, even while patronising the Hindutva fringe organisations to indulge in its anti-Muslim vigilante work.
Although his highhandedness was received as a relief by a majority of Hindus in UP, this lack of restraint has now come back to haunt Adityanath. His actions are being scrutinised by common people, as his government has earned a reputation of going selectively after the poor and powerless, a large number of whom belong to OBC, Dalit, and Muslim communities. On the other hand, his government is being perceived as favouring upper caste groups at all levels.
Akhilesh Yadav’s slogan of unity among peechde, Dalit, and alpasankhyak (PDA) has been successful in cementing such a perception, especially with him openly espousing his own OBC identity and pointing at Adityanath’s social identity.
Such has been the caste-based polarisation in the state that the BJP ended up losing even the Ayodhya Lok Sabha constituency despite the fact that its campaign centred around the successful construction of a Ram Temple.
What of social justice?
UP has had a long history of rivalry between Hindutva and social justice politics.
While parties like SP and Bahujan Samaj Party have constantly raised issues of social justice and caste equality, Hindutva groups have attempted to consolidate Hindus across caste lines on polarising issues like the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. However, a strong political consciousness among OBC and Dalit groups had been instrumental in fending off the BJP, until Narendra Modi, an OBC leader, came into picture.
Since 2014, Modi made it a point to consolidate non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav Dalit communities to transform the BJP into a mammoth political force in UP, while raising the Hindutva pitch as a uniting force. But his gains are now on the verge of a collapse as a large section of the UP’s electorate is increasingly seeing Adityanath through the lenses of their respective social identities. The saffron-clad Adityanath, to many, is not a Hindutva firebrand anymore but only a political representative of the Rajput community.
The way things have turned around for the BJP in UP immediately puts Modi’s equitable social representation formula and Adityanath’s Hindutva politics at odds with each other. Aware of such a churning in the state, Adityanath was given little room to select BJP candidates in the Lok Sabha polls – something that was construed as an example of the rivalry between the UP chief minister and the Union home minister Amit Shah at the time.
Hindutva or social justice?
However, the situation is far more complex than a simplistic understanding of a war of succession.
The BJP is actually at a crossroads to choose between its social representation formula and its ideological foundation, Hindutva. Having an OBC, a Dalit, or even an Adivasi chief minister is the best possible scenario for the Modi-led BJP, as the arrangement amalgamates both its old and new elements. But that is not the reality in UP.
To wrest control of the political narrative, the BJP will have to win a perception war measured in the terms and regulations of social justice politics, not Hindutva. That seems highly unlikely with Adityanath at the helm.
Meanwhile, Adityanath may be fighting his battle within the Hindutva ecosystem by launching a series of communal controversies in his state. One example is how disputes were raised around mosques in Sambhal, Badaun, and many other small towns of UP soon after the BJP faced unexpected losses in UP in the Lok Sabha polls. Similarly, various fringe Hindutva groups, after a short gap, have once again become active in their anti-Muslim campaigns. Low-intensity communal clashes are being reported from UP almost on a daily basis.
But all such desperate attempts to win favour may only prove to be futile as long as Adityanath clings to the image of an upper caste leader. Until he sheds it, the BJP may have to make some really hard decisions soon amidst a reshaping of the Mandal-Kamandal binary in UP.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
