Rupture of a Quiet Resistance

'If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country . . . Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost.’
- Dr BR Ambedkar

This is just a miracle.’ On 4 June, after participating in an election debate, I spoke to a Samajwadi Party (SP) leader outside the TV studio. He said, ‘Till the first two phases of polling in UP, we were neither very hopeful nor speaking much. But when we saw the response to Rahul’s speeches, we realised that the weather has changed, and we have a fair chance. Then we got into aggressive mode.’ This was the day when the miracle happened, and UP was the talk of the town. Most unexpectedly, voters had given a verdict against BJP in a state where—the party was convinced—it couldn’t be defeated. By noon, BJP found itself struggling to get even 35 seats. The news of the day was that the almighty, omnipotent, divinely ordained prime minister could barely win in Varanasi, the very city in which he had pompously announced that ‘Mother Ganga has called me and adopted me.’ Modi finally won by 1.52 lakh votes.

I can’t name the SP leader, as we were engaged in an informal chat, but I was immediately reminded of a conversation I had with another SP leader over phone. This was in January 2024. The Ram Mandir consecration had not yet taken place, and from streets to TV studios, the saffron wave was turning into a tsunami. Bharatiya Janata Party’s massive victory had been declared inevitable, and the opposition was disheartened.

On the phone, the SP leader did not sound too optimistic either. When I asked him how many seats they expected, he could not count more than seven. I said, ‘If that is the case, then no power on earth could stop Modi from winning a third term with more than 300 seats.’ When I asked him which seats he thought the party could win, he was unsure. By March, I was told by another SP leader that the party would have an alliance with Congress as Muslims are more inclined towards Rahul Gandhi, and the party was planning to identify 25 to 30 seats strategically, pool all resources and try to win as many seats as possible, instead of contesting all 80 seats. This clearly indicated that SP had given up on giving a good fight to BJP in UP, and their battle was one of survival. But 4 June told a different story. Together, SP and Congress wrote a chapter that would haunt BJP for years.

Why and how did this happen?

Uttar Pradesh was undoubtedly BJP’s most powerful bastion after Gujarat. It was considered another Hindutva laboratory. On the eve of the elections, BJP was complacent. It seemed to believe that electoral history was on its side. The party had the genius of two Hindutva leaders—Modi and Yogi—along with Lord Ram’s blessing in the form of the consecration.

When Modi began his campaign for the Lok Sabha in 2014, he strategically decided to contest from Varanasi, along with Baroda in his home state of Gujarat. Modi knew that he could not become the prime minister unless he conquered UP. After the initial breakthrough in the early 1990s due to the Ram Mandir movement, BJP had not been a major force in the state for almost a decade and a half. As late as the 2009 parliamentary elections, they could only win 10 seats in UP with 17.5 per cent votes, while Congress had won 21 seats and SP, under Mulayam Singh Yadav’s leadership, 23 seats. Even Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), led by Mayawati, won 20 seats. In the 2012 assembly elections, BJP’s vote share shrank to 15 per cent, and the party could win only 47 seats. With 224 seats and 29.15 per cent votes, SP had formed the government.

Bharatiya Janata Party had no hope of emerging with a majority in 2014. Afterall, just two years prior, in 2012, its vote share had been only 15 per cent. But thanks to the highly personalised and presidential style of campaigning, Modi turned the tide, and BJP’s vote share almost trebled to 42.63 per cent. The party won 71 seats, which was nothing less than a miracle. In 2017, Modi’s magic worked again, and BJP ended up winning 312 out of 403 seats in the UP assembly. In 2019, BJP’s juggernaut continued, despite SP and BSP getting into a formidable alliance. Bharatiya Janata Party won 62 seats, and its vote share jumped to 49.98 per cent. Belying all speculations, BJP again formed the government in the 2022 assembly elections with 255 seats. This time, BJP’s seat share might have reduced, but its vote share increased to 41.29 per cent compared to 39.67 per cent in the 2017 assembly elections.

Since 2014, BJP has been in a pole position in UP, with the opposition struggling to give it a tough fight. Compared with the 2017 assembly elections, SP improved its vote share by 10 per cent in 2022. It did this by forming smart alliances with small caste-based political parties, gaining a 32.1 per cent vote share. But it had to be satisfied with 111 seats. Meanwhile, Congress suffered its most humiliating defeat in UP. Despite Priyanka Gandhi leading the campaign, the party could win only 2 seats with 2.33 per cent votes. On the eve of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, data clearly suggested that BJP had the upper hand. Combining the statistics with the fact that BJP had at its disposal two Hindutva icons—Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath—there was no stopping them. Yogi is no ordinary leader within the Hindutva fold. Today, he is seen as the future prime minister and, arguably, a worthy successor to Modi. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pressurised Modi and Shah to appoint Yogi as the chief minister in 2017. For them, he is the party’s next-generation leader. If Modi has adopted UP, then Yogi, by virtue of being the Peethadhiswar of Gorakhnath Math in Gorakhpur, is the son of the soil.

(Excerpted with permission from Ashutosh’s ‘Reclaiming Bharat’; published by Westland Publishers)