U.P. Election 2022: Adityanath’s Biggest Competitor Was Not Akhilesh Yadav

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is confident that after the Bharatiya Janata Party wins 300+ seats, Akhilesh Yadav will be forced to “flee abroad”. Columnist Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar says a near-death experience has convinced him that those forecasting a BJP victory could be “off the mark”.

And some liberals insist on seeing the U.P. elections as a referendum on hate.

I’m one of them but even I don't cling to the hope that if—by some twist in the tale—the BJP loses U.P., the political party will find itself on the back foot, forced to conclude that its policy of divisive Hindutva has reached its sell-by date.

So fully have our deepest and darkest passions been excited that reservoirs of this hate have distributed evenly through society in almost every state. We have seen recently how states far removed from U.P.—but influenced in some degree by it—have become founts of self-sustaining hatred.

The crown of the ‘most-divisive state’ has fierce, surprise competition these days. One could argue that Adityanath’s biggest challenger is not Akhilesh Yadav—his real competitors are the chief ministers of other BJP-run states.

In 2014, Himanta Biswa Sarma, then a Congress politician, called Modi a “terrorist”, said we do not do “Hindu-Muslim” and declared, in reference to the 2002 Gujarat riots, that “blood flows through the water pipes of Gujarat”. By 2021, he was saying India belonged to Hindus and the BJP, to which he defected in 2015, did not need “Miya (or Muslim) votes.”

“I know Shivraj Singh [Chouhan],” Father Maria Stephen, public relations officer of the Madhya Pradesh Catholic Church Association (MPCCA), told Article 14 in February. “He is a soft man and was a very good friend of ours in the past. He used to come on every Christmas and wish us well. But this term, he didn’t come.” Stephen was saying this in relation to the increased attacks against Christians in MP.

Once upon a time, Chouhan had no problem hosting iftaar parties and wearing a skull cap to show solidarity on Eid. That attitude prompted 16% of MP's Muslims to vote for the BJP in the 2018 assembly elections. By 2020, he said those who plotted ‘love jihad’—the fanciful notion that Muslims were somehow luring Hindu women into matrimony to convert them to Islam—would be “destroyed”.

Similarly former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa, who, according to his predecessor Siddaramaiah, publicly celebrated the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan in 2012, wore a Tipu turban and brandished a replica of his sword, cancelled those celebrations in 2019 and later that year vowed to remove all mention from textbooks of the Muslim ruler who fought the British.

The same politician who announced compensation for Muslim anti-CAA protestors killed in police firing—then hastily rescinded it after censure from Delhi—last week handed over Rs 25 lakh of public money to a Bajrang Dal activist with a criminal record who was murdered in the town of Shivamogga, the reason for the compensation being that his attackers were Muslim.

Under his successor Basvaraj Bommai, the state has taken a “sharp right turn”. His Christmas present to the Christian community, reeling under attacks from hardline Hindu groups, was the Karnataka Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021, or the ‘anti-conversion’ Bill.

It began with excuses for bovine-related lynchings (they’re eating beef) and then spread to good Muslim-bad Muslim analyses. We justified using the pandemic to fire up Islamophobia (they’re spitting); disallowed prayers in administration-sanctioned public spaces (they’re encroaching); looked away from economic boycotts of the community (they’re using Hindu names); and essentially corralled the various everyday freedoms of Muslims into airless corners. Many of us have now discarded all excuses. In WhatsApp groups and public speeches (see here and here), the bald justification for anti-Muslim bigotry is down to this: “In 1947 a country was made for Muslims. Why are they here?”

Most Muslims have got the memo. “Ever since the BJP has risen, they've created a feeling of divide, of difference—this has only grown,” Shabbar Siddique, 18, of Lucknow, told NPR. “The Muslim community have just given up—we have no hope, we have stopped reacting.”

Journalist Salik Khan recently articulated what has been bothering many privileged Muslims for a while: “Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if I should just leave. Will I be running away? What about those who can’t leave? Should I stay and do my bit in the fight? Isn’t the pursuit of security a legitimate pursuit?”

Yet this is India, you don’t have to look far to find that hope never dies.

I broke his heart when I told him about the union minister, a graduate of Harvard Business School, who garlanded eight men convicted for lynching after they were released on bail. And of my south Mumbai (former) friends and (estranged) family with fancy degrees whose hatred for Muslims has been fully unmasked in recent years.

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.