If Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath is really made to resign – as is being speculated by a section of media – or offered the post of president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he would be the latest to join the long list of hardline champions of Hindutva ideology whose stature have been cut to size simply because they had not toed the line of top leadership of the party.
Shankarsinh Vaghela, Keshubhai Patel, Pravin Togadia, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharati, B S Yediyurappa etc all were dedicated and committed workers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), who had revolted against the top leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and thus had been expelled or forced to quit it.
Almost all of them, especially Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharati, were strongly associated with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement which led to the demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. Most of these big names formed their own regional party. Some of them later returned to the saffron party fold a few years later but found their stature greatly reduced. Uma Bharati has virtually sunk into oblivion.
The story of Pravin Togadia, (the then) international working president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, is somewhat different. For a couple of decades, he and Narendra Modi, were extremely close to each other. When Modi was banished by the then BJP government between 1995 and 2001 from Gujarat, he would take shelter in the VHP office, thanks to the cooperation of Togadia. Today, Togadia is the greatest critic of Modi. In 2018 he even accused the Prime Minister of conspiring to get rid of him.
Myth of BJP being a discipline party busted
The above examples of the past three decades of bitter infighting within the Sangh Parivar – apart from what is happening in UP now – are enough to explode the myth that the BJP is a cadre-based disciplined party.
The development in Uttar Pradesh, where a strong section of the BJP top brass is openly holding chief minister Yogi Adityanath responsible for the defeat of the party in the state should not come as a surprise.
In contrast, those leaders who have no RSS background or those who have come from other parties have not got embroiled themselves in a major tussle. Bureaucrat-turned-politician former Union minister Yashwant Sinha parted ways so did Shatrughan Sinha and Jaswant Singh.
No doubt, the last two leaders were associated with the BJP from the very beginning yet they did not have the image of being hard-boiled RSS cadres. Jaswant Singh was expelled from the party in August 2009 when in his book he held first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his deputy Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel more responsible for the partition of India than Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
Like the then BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani in June 2005, he too called Jinnah a secular leader. The Narendra Modi government in Gujarat then had banned the book. He, however, was later taken back into the party.
Yogi vs Modi-Shah
It is those who have been followers of the hardline Hindutva ideology since the young age, who have dared to challenge the top leadership of BJP and leave the party with a horde of supporters.
Yogi’s case is somewhat different. Unlike Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharati, Yediyurappa, and Keshubhai Patel he, if replaced, is likely to not form form any other political party in protest. He already has his Hindu Yuva Vahini, which he formed on Ram Navami day in 2002 just after the infamous Gujarat riots.
Post 2024 Lok Sabha election, the saffron party in Uttar Pradesh is heading for a major crisis. As those targeting Yogi also hail from RSS and are reportedly enjoying the patronage of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, there is little likelihood of quarrel blowing over in the near future.
Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who along with Manoj Sinha, was in the race for the post of chief minister after the historic March 2017 Assembly election victory is not going to be silenced soon. He still remembers as to how Yogi virtually usurped the post of chief minister in 2017.
The problem with the Modi-Shah duo is that in the last seven years Yogi’s stature within the RSS has grown astronomically. He was pressed into the election campaign in all the Assembly polls across India, not to speak of Lok Sabha election.
He was even sent to campaign in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election held in December 2020. So, he cannot be brushed aside so easily as the other leaders in the past.
The RSS has astutely promoted him as the future prime ministerial face of the BJP as he is 20 years junior to Modi. If the grapevine is to be believed and Yogi is compelled to succeed J P Nadda, who has been inducted into the Union cabinet and whose extended tenure as BJP national president ended in June end, it would be seen how powerful Yogi emerges in that post.
Yogi would certainly not like to be equated with Nadda or even his predecessor Amit Shah, who never misses any opportunity to claim that he was the architect of the 2017 UP election victory.
As the Gujarat lobby would like Modi to be succeeded by Shah, Yogi would certainly be facing a stiff challenge in future. In the name of wooing backward castes, who had deserted the BJP in a good number in the just concluded election, the Modi-Shah combine want to distract the attention of the common masses who hold them responsible for the poor performance not only in UP, but also in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal and several other states.
After the veiled criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi by RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat and his lieutenant Indresh Kumar last month, the divisions within the saffron family have intensified. Bhagwat even reportedly met Yogi in Gorakhpur, thus further fuelling the speculations that all is not well within the saffron party.
Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist.