New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) talks of making India “self-reliant” but is the party truly ‘atmanirbhar’ in the nation’s most important state politically, Uttar Pradesh? It’s pertinent to ask this as we approach the 2024 Lok Sabha election because despite the myths created about the BJP’s invincibility in the key northern state, which has no less than 80 seats, and the projection of the cult of Narendra Modi as the overriding factor in deciding electoral outcomes, the BJP has increasingly needed outside help since 2014.
Contrary to the perception built in mainstream media, the BJP has regularly felt the need to rope in newer allies and disrupt Opposition alliances to help it sail through a crisis or an election. In fact, since 2014, the BJP under Modi has not fought a single election in UP on its own strength. As things stand, the BJP has four declared allies and one supporting it from the outside. That makes its six parties in or supporting the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In the real sense, it is the BJP, and not its rivals, Samajwadi Party or Congress, which has created a mahagathbandhan.
This appears odd because the BJP, after a decade of rule at the Centre, including seven in Lucknow with a ‘double engine’ government, claims to have transformed the state and developed it beyond recognition from a BIMARU land to one where investments and employment flow endlessly; where roads, highways and airports are being built at an unprecedented pace; where labhartis (beneficiaries) of welfare schemes are content with life and those who, especially Muslims, cross lines are punished with bulldozers and bullets. The BJP also claims to have struck a deathly blow to “appeasement” on the basis of religion and caste and has presented the opening of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya as the greatest milestone of the Hindu civilisation in the last five centuries.
People attending the Ram Temple consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22, 2023. Photo: X (Twitter)/BJP4India.
The list is long. Here, we will trace the BJP’s journey since 2014 and analyse why, despite electoral success and claims of development, it is still jittery about relying on its own strength.
Also read: BJP Hobbled by NDA Trouble (and Struggle) in Key States
Last week, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath carried out the much-awaited expansion of his cabinet. He inducted four new faces. Two of them belong to newly-added allies of the BJP, Om Prakash Rajbhar (president of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party who returned to the saffron fold) and Anil Kumar (of Jayant Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal). With the addition of a Dalit, Brahmin and two OBCs (Rajbhar and Noniya Chauhan) as ministers, the saffron party balanced caste equations but also accommodated its new allies in the ministries. This has been the BJP’s trend in the state since 2014, when it emerged as a dominant force. The party has won back-to-back majorities in Uttar Pradesh state Assembly elections and cornered over 90% and 80% of the seats in the last two Lok Sabha elections, respectively.
Undeniably, a lot of the credit goes to the appeal of Modi, his superior communication skills, disruptive politics and the party’s management of large sections of the media to convert every aapda into an ausar (disaster into an opportunity) to attract votes. The BJP has also displayed superior strategies and narratives to polarise votes on caste and religious lines and manipulated Hindu sentiments, while attributing its own success to the dissemination of welfare schemes on the ground. On the other hand, the lacklustre Opposition parties have been constantly battling their collective political baggage, squabbling with each other over petty issues, and facing attacks and raids by central and state agencies. The Bahujan Samaj Party, through its seemingly neutral stance, has also benefited the incumbent.
In sum, the BJP looks to be in a dominant position. Why does the world’s largest party then need the support of smaller caste-centric political parties?
There are some possible answers for it. One, the BJP simply thinks it cannot perform so well on its own. It cannot ignore the aspirations of smaller backward caste-based parties that have emerged in the post-Mandal era because at its core it is still dominated by the so-called Upper Castes and viewed as one that furthers their politics. To sustain the support of these OBC communities in the long run, the party needs to appropriate their leaders. Modi might project himself as an OBC but the BJP understands that in the core Hindi belt, it will also have to appease regional caste satraps and promote credible, independent faces from within these communities. With the centralisation of power in the BJP, this becomes even more necessary.
The second explanation could be that the BJP is confident about winning but wants to gain territory further or at least retain what it has. At the same time, it wants to shut out possibilities of the main Opposition building a counter-narrative with the help of these smaller parties. It is not just about arithmetic but the expansion of its political hegemony in the post-Modi era.
Both explanations have merit.
This pattern of tactical opportunism took shape in the summer of 2014. It was remarkable that the BJP, which was banking on the so-called ‘Modi wave’, the Gujarat Model of Hindu polarisation and development and the glorious dreams of ‘Ache Din’ still needed an ally in that election. In 2014, when all the other Opposition parties contested individually, the BJP allied with the Apna Dal, a political minnow.
What’s noteworthy is that the Apna Dal, which had just a single MLA in the UP Assembly, got two Lok Sabha seats (which equates to 10 Assembly constituencies) as part of the deal. One of the seats, Mirzapur, abuts Varanasi, from where Modi contested. The benevolence was well-thought out, as it not only sent a positive signal to the Kurmi OBC community, the core base of the Apna Dal in Varanasi and Prayagraj belts, but more importantly ensured a smoother ride for Modi in Varanasi.
Anupriya Patel, today a minister in Modi’s government, was the sole Apna Dal MLA in 2014. She held the Rohaniya seat, one of the five that constitute the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. What made things interesting was that she had expressed her desire to contest the Lok Sabha election from Varanasi. Had she taken the leap, things would have become complicated for Modi because two out of the three constituents of Varanasi LS are rural and packed with Kurmi voters. Modi was already facing the challenge of Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal and also in the fray were the Congress’ RSS-bred candidate and five-time MLA Ajay Rai, and candidates from the SP and the BSP.
Anupriya Patel with Narendra Modi. Credit: PTI/Files
The BJP had to ensure a smooth transfer of OBC votes to supplement its core urban vote base. Modi eventually defeated Kejriwal by over 3.71 lakh votes. The Apna Dal won two seats, including Mirzapur (Anupriya Patel was the winner), which abuts the rural areas of Varanasi. The BJP won 71 seats, giving the NDA 73 out of 80 seats. The BJP was successful in marketing Modi’s ‘chai’ in the ‘cup and saucer’ of the Apna Dal (its election symbol).
The BJP’s journey in UP in the Modi era has not been a linear, vertical line but one full of experiments and timely alliances, with the sole intent of polarising voters and increasing vote share at any cost.
The first major challenge came in 2017, when the BJP battled a perception that, while it had won the general election with Modi as Prime Ministerial face banking on a national campaign against Congress, it would be a different game in the Assembly election. UP had rotated powers between the SP and BSP for the last three terms. The BJP lagged in the third position in the State Assembly with 15% votes and lacked a CM face with pan-UP acceptability or caste appeal and formula to match Mayawati or Akhilesh Yadav. To put itself in the picture, the BJP dismantled the main Opposition and contender BSP by luring away its leaders and MLAs and through demonetisation.
Seven months before the 2017 election, Amit Shah decided it was time to add another ally to push the narrative of non-Yadav OBC vs Yadavs and corner the controversy-ridden Akhilesh Yadav government. The second ally was the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, formed in 2002 by former BSP leader Om Prakash Rajbhar. The SBSP did not have a single MLA in UP back then even though it enjoyed the support of a section of Rajbhar, Arakhs and Bhars in the Ghazipur-Mau belt of Purvanchal. What made the SBSP more attractive was that for many years the Sangh Parivar has projected Suheldev, a mythical Bhar chieftain after whom the party is named, as a crusader against Islam and one who allegedly stopped the march of Salar Masud ‘Ghazi Mian’, a nephew of Mahmud Ghaznavi.
OP Rajbhar. Photo: Facebook/Om Prakash Rajbhar
By propagating Suheldev’s fable through a Hindutva lens, the BJP tried to pit Bhars and Pasis (a Dalit community that also claims ownership of the legacy of Suheldev) against Muslims. Over the years, since coming to power, the BJP has tried to further popularise Suheldev and dedicated memorials, stamps, a university and a superfast train from Ghazipur to Delhi to him. While inducting the SBSP into the alliance, the BJP, which harps about a no-tolerance policy against tainted politicians, ignored the fact that Rajbhar had in 2014 aligned with the party of jailed MLA Mukhtar Ansari, whom the saffron party refers to as a mafia.
The BJP’s 2017 campaign was a success as it defeated an incompatible alliance of the SP and Congress. The BSP, the main Opposition party in 2012, was reduced to 19 seats. The BJP’s alliance with the Apna Dal and the SBSP provided mutual benefits to all sides and further helped the BJP script a narrative that while the SP stood only for Yadavs, it was the voice of the remaining OBCs.
The backward castes are the most important voting segment in UP estimated to be around 45-50% of the electorate. The NDA won a thumping majority—325 seats in the 403-member Assembly. The Apna Dal grew further and increased its MLA tally from one to nine. The SBSP made a debut in the Assembly, winning four seats. Rajbhar was rewarded with a cabinet minister berth. Interestingly, both Apna Dal and SBSP can trace their origins to Kanshiram’s BSP. While Apnal Dal founder and Anupriya Patel’s father, Sone Lal Patel was a founding member of the BSP, Rajbhar was also an office-bearer before he broke off ties after differences with Mayawati.
The election win, however, presented the BJP with a quandary on whom to pick as CM. The party finally settled on planting Yogi Adityanath, then Gorakhpur MP, as the head of government in Lucknow. Adityanath’s saffron identity gave him a strong Hindutva persona and the ambiguity to downplay his upper caste identity to balance the aspirations of both upper castes and backward castes. With a monk espousing Hindutva at the helm, the BJP would not face the same pressure it would had it picked a Brahmin as CM (which would have antagonised OBCs) or an OBC (which would have irked the dominant and influential Brahmin lobby which has a disproportionate representation in judiciary, bureaucracy and media).
Adityanath offered them the balance. However, things did not go as per plan as the BJP and SBSP relationship started to show strains after Rajbhar took on his own government, often making unsavoury comments and demanding the sub-categorisation of the OBC quota. Rajbhar even exhorted his supporters to thrash BJP members. A helpful OBC ally in 2017, he had now turned into a hot potato for the BJP. But despite the provocation by Rajbhar, who even fielded rebel candidates against the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the saffron party did not take any disciplinary action against him and tried to appease him till the last moment.
The BJP sacked him as minister only after voting concluded, demonstrating that it did fear repercussions of acting against him in the middle of the elections.
In the 2019 election, the BJP under Modi was facing its greatest ever challenge from the grand alliance of the SP, BSP and RLD. The BJP’s ally Apna Dal, which was unhappy with the proposed division of the OBC quota by the Adityanath government, saw this as an opportunity to demand more seats from its ally.
However, even as the pressure was building on the BJP from both allies, the Apna Dal fell in line due to the atmosphere of charged nationalism following the Pulwama attack and tension with Pakistan. The BJP still had to compensate for the loss of Rajbhar. They found the alternative in another OBC leader Sanjay Nishad, president of the Nishad Party which claims to represent the interests of the fisherfolk and riverine communities.
Sanjay Nishad. Photo: Facebook/NISHAD Party
In 2018, it was Sanjay Nishad’s son Praveen Nishad who, contesting as an SP candidate, had defeated the BJP in a by-poll in the saffron party’s bastion Gorakhpur. Akhilesh Yadav hoped to replicate this formula in 2019 as the SP-BSP-RLD alliance was joined by the Nishad Party. While joining the anti-BJP front, Sanjay Nishad promised to fight the battle of 85 vs 15 (OBCs and Dalits vs the UCs). However, within a week of that agreement, the BJP, sensing trouble, managed to lure him away to its camp. The turn was so sharp that now, Sanjay Nishad described his alliance with the BJP as a “natural one” based on the bond between Lord Ram and Nishadraj, the boatman who ferried the former across the Ganga in the Ramayana. The Nishads, known by their various sub-castes such as Mallahs, Kewat, Kashyap and Bind, are spread across the state. Bandit-turned-politician Phoolan Devi was among their most iconic figures.
The BJP’s social arithmetic of Hindu castes, Modi’s appeal, internal contradictions between the SP and BSP, and a high-pitched campaign on Hindu nationalism were among the factors that helped the BJP and the Apna Dal win 64 out of 80 seats. The Apnal Dal won two. Sanjay Nishad’s son won on a BJP symbol.
Smaller caste-based parties such as the Apna Dal, SBSP and Nishad Party find it difficult to win seats on their own strength. However, when their scattered support bases are added to a larger party, such as the BJP demonstrated in 2017 and 2019, the result is a mutually beneficial one. This was the trick Akhilesh picked up and tried to implement in the 2022 Assembly election. In the last three decades, UP had developed a trend of voting out the incumbent and this was the challenge Adityanath faced.
How alliances change the overall contest was demonstrated in the 2022 election. Though the BJP and its allies AD and Nishad Party scripted a historic win, winning 273 seats with over 43% votes, the Opposition alliance of the SP and smaller-caste based parties including the SBSP, RLD and the Apna Dal (Kameravadi), the faction of the AD led by Anupriya Patel’s mother after she split from the BJP, put up a decent fight. The rainbow alliance of Akhilesh Yadav built on providing OBC castes their share in power won 125 seats with a decent vote share of around 36%.
Also read: What Might the Congress-Samajwadi Party Alliance Achieve in Uttar Pradesh?
More importantly, the alliance with OBC parties allowed the SP to shed the image of a party that only caters to Yadavs and started to develop a counter-narrative to the BJP’s mobilisation of OBCs and Dalits. In 2017, the SP had won just 47 seats. The collective vote of the SP, RLD and the SBSP, and the support of other allied parties, touching 36% was significant. In the 2012 and 2017 elections, when the SP and the BJP secured majorities, they got 29.15% and 39.67% votes, respectively.
The 2022 election result provided the BJP a glimpse of what challenges it could face in future. In Purvanchal, where the SP’s alliances were potent, the BJP scored a zero in many important districts despite large populations of Dalits and OBCs. For the BJP’s allies, the 2022 election proved beneficial. The AD increased its tally to 13 MLAs while the Nishad Party won six seats.
However, Akhilesh Yadav’s equations did not sustain after the defeat. Months after the result, Rajbhar broke off ties with the SP and after spending some time in the wilderness, joined the saffron camp again last year. Despite an acrimonious relationship during their last tenure, and Rajbhar making derogatory personal remarks against Adityanath and Modi, the BJP welcomed him back when it could have displayed moral courage and kept him at a distance.
The 2024 Lok Sabha was shaping up to be another grand battle between two alliances, INDIA bloc vs NDA, till the BJP managed to wean away the RLD. The RLD chief Chaudhary Jayant Singh, who had spent a decade fighting the BJP’s communal agenda in the volatile western region of the state, made the switch public on a day when the Modi government announced a Bharat Ratna for his grandfather, former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh. The RLD even settled for a lesser number of seats, two, as against the seven it had got under the INDIA bloc agreement, as it joined the NDA and subsequently earned a ministerial berth in the Adityanath cabinet.
Also read: What Does Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Return to NDA Mean for UP Politics?
Despite sweeping most of the seats in the west, the BJP must have been wary of the potential of a growing camaraderie between the SP and the RLD, which provided the agrarian population in the western region an alternate electoral equation against the BJP. Therefore, despite dealing with a problem of plenty in sharing power with its allies, the BJP was more than happy to break the SP-RLD alliance.
The BJP has already saturated its success ratio in the west. It outmuscled the Opposition in 2019 despite the combined strength of the SP-BSP-RLD. Therefore, the argument that the party inducted the RLD to retain its ground amid possible anti-incumbency is only half the story. The alliance will not help the BJP win any more seats than it did in 2019. The larger motive appears to be to reduce hostility in a region where the party, with the co-option of the RLD, would have little opposition. Ever since the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, the Hindus, especially Jats, in several districts have been hostile to the SP. The RLD was the SP’s bridge into the sugarcane-rich west.
The BJP not only wants to consolidate what it has gained since 2014 but also wants to prevent any counter-mobilisation of the Opposition and knows when to deliver psychological blows. An SP-RLD alliance in the west and an SP-SBSP alliance in the east would have definitely posed the saffron party bigger challenges in the present and future. By luring in Opposition parties, the BJP has also once again isolated the main Opposition SP and tried to project it as one that cannot be trusted as an ally. In fact, this narrative was placed in the Assembly earlier this year by Adityanath himself.
In the long run, by providing a share in power to these smaller allies, the BJP has created a favourable ground to build a relationship with their support bases and at the same time, appropriate their icons Charan Singh, Sonelal Patel, Nishadraj and Suheldev. The upcoming election results will determine how that takes shape.
