Jittered by anti-incumbency, BJP plays Hindu-Muslim card to retain ‘Devbhoomi’

Hours before campaigning for the February 14 Uttarakhand Assembly polls ended on Saturday (February 12), Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami declared that a panel to draft a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) for the state will be formed as soon as his party, the BJP, returns to power.

A while later, addressing a public meeting in the Sahaspur assembly segment of state capital Dehradun, Union Home Minister Amit Shah alleged that “Rohingya Muslims had begun to settle in the hills of Uttarakhand” due to the Congress party’s politics of appeasement and that the BJP, when Dhami returns as chief minister, “would wipe Rohingya out of the state.”

The UCC, a religion-neutral legal framework for settling all civil matters such as marriage, divorce, property and inheritance rights, among others, has been a controversial and communally divisive poll promise of the BJP for decades. As such, Dhami’s push for a UCC from his assembly constituency of Khatima in Udham Singh Nagar district, from where he is eying a third consecutive legislative term, should not surprise anyone. Curiously though, neither the UCC nor the issue of Rohingya Muslims find a mention among the 25 key promises – which include drafting a strong law to curb ‘love jihad’, with provision of a 10 year jail term for the accused – made by the BJP in its Uttarakhand poll manifesto unveiled just three days earlier.

In its bid to retain power against a visibly strong anti-incumbency and an atypically cohesive poll campaign by its main rival – the Congress, the BJP has, over the past fortnight, given a pass to traditional electoral issues of Uttarakhand such as distress migration, lopsided economic growth, growing joblessness, shifting the state capital from Dehradun to Gairsain, et al. Instead, it has dialled up its rhetoric for fomenting Hindu-Muslim strife in the hill state that is known for its Char Dhams – Hindu pilgrimage sites – of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, and the Kumbh Mela site at Har ki Pauri in Haridwar.

Unlike Uttar Pradesh, from which Uttarakhand was carved out in 2000 following a sustained statehood movement, communal polarisation hadn’t been a conspicuous element of poll campaigns in the hill state – at least until recently. The divisions here were traditionally between the Thakurs and Brahmins; between people from the Garhwal and Kumaon regions that contribute 41 and 29 seats respectively to the Uttarakhand assembly, between people who identified themselves as ‘real’ Uttarakhandis and the migrants, or even between people living in the plains (districts of Udham Singh Nagar, Haridwar, and parts of Dehradun and Nainital) and the hills.

The state has an overwhelmingly large Hindu population of nearly 83 per cent (as per Census 2011). However, unlike UP where backward castes and Dalits collectively outnumber the forward caste communities, Uttarakhand has the unique distinction of its Hindu population largely comprising upper caste Brahmins (25 per cent) and Thakurs (35 per cent). The Dalits form the next big chunk of population at around 19 per cent.

Muslims, mainly concentrated in pockets of Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar, Haldwani, Dehradun, Nainital and Almora, constitute 13.9 per cent of Uttarakhand’s population.

“Communal polarisation had little traction in Uttarakhand before the BJP won its absolute majority in 2017. The concentration of upper caste Brahmins and Thakurs who had veered towards the BJP in the post-Mandal, and then even more visibly in the post-Kamandal era, perhaps convinced BJP leaders of the past that they don’t need to play up the Hindi-Muslim card in Uttarakhand,” Avikal Thapliyal, a Dehradun-based journalist who runs the portal avikaluttarakhand.com, told The Federal.

Thapliyal believes the politics of communal polarisation began in Uttarakhand in 2014 when Narendra Modi first became prime minister, but it picked up momentum immediately after the BJP won a brute majority in the 2017 state assembly polls. “Soon after the BJP won its landslide victory in 2017; there was a sustained and prolonged campaign by elements affiliated with the ruling party to persecute Muslims. In various pockets of Haridwar, Dehradun and Nainital, BJP began creating the narrative of ‘love jihad’ and land jihad by Muslims; the Congress was accused of Muslim appeasement that was, as per the BJP, changing the demography of the state by allowing an influx of Muslims. What we are seeing today is a natural progression of the politics that BJP started aggressively post 2017,” Thapliyal explains.

Jai Singh Rawat, another Dehradun-based independent journalist who co-founded the portal uttarakhandhimalaya.in, agrees with Thapliyal. Jai Singh also busts the myth of Uttarakhand alternating between Congress and BJP rule every five years since its formation and says the BJP’s focus on communal polarisation may be linked with this too. “Barring 2017, no party has ever got a clear mandate to rule. The majority mark in Uttarakhand is 36. In the 2002 polls that were held in the backdrop of massive anti-incumbency against the interim BJP government, which had two chief ministers in less than two years (Nityanand Swami between November 2000 and October 2001 and Bhagat Singh Koshyari between October 2001 and March 2002), the Congress won 36 seats and gave the state the only government in Uttarakhand that has functioned under one chief minister (ND Tiwari) for a full term. In 2007, the BJP emerged as the single largest party but got just 35 seats while in 2012, the Congress got 32 seats and the BJP got 31,” Jai Singh told The Federal.

Jai Singh says that the BJP’s strongholds through the past 22 years of Uttarakhand’s existence have been in the Garhwal region, which accounts for 41 of the state’s 70 assembly seats, while the Congress has traditionally been strong in Kumaon because its tallest leaders – Harish Rawat and the late ND Tiwari – both hailed from this region. “The char dhams, which give Uttarakhand its ‘Devbhoomi’ (land of the Gods) title, fall in the Garhwal region as does Haridwar. The BJP’s Hindutva plank finds a strong resonance in this region. In the 2017 polls, held after Modi’s rise, the BJP had won 34 of these 41 seats. Today, the BJP is finding it difficult to retain even 15 of these seats… The anti-Muslim pitch is meant to arouse the same Hindutva sentiment that had helped the BJP sweep Garhwal five years back,” Jai Singh said. He added that the BJP’s strident effort to “invoke the memory of (former Chief of Defence Staff) General Bipin Rawat (who died in a chopper crash last December), the Balakot air strikes or the sacrifices made by the Army in the fight against Pakistan” is also an extension of the same communally divisive politics “under the guise of nationalism”.

The BJP, most political commentators believe, is on a sticky wicket in Uttarakhand. The inability of its government to stop Uttarakhand’s youth from migrating out of the state in search of employment avenues or contain the steeply increasing price of gas cylinders that has become a major grievance of women voters have been forcefully highlighted by the Congress. The BJP is also facing public ire over the frequent change in chief ministers – the current government saw three chief ministers changed between March and July 2021; a repeat of the musical chairs that past BJP chief ministers (three between 2007 and 2012; two between 2000 and 2001) were forced to play – whenever the party wins a mandate. The Congress, in fact, has a poll campaign song highlighting this with the tagline ‘teen tigada kaam bigada, Uttarakhand mei nahi ayegi bhajpa dobara’ (the troika has spoiled everything, Uttarakhand won’t vote for BJP again).

It is in this backdrop that the party’s communally polarising rhetoric – believed by many to be the BJP’s last recourse when it faces imminent electoral humiliation – has begun to grow louder.

Last week, the BJP picked on a claim made by a Congress worker who reportedly said that Harish Rawat, the face of the Congress party’s poll campaign, had promised setting up a ‘Muslim University’ in the state if his party wins the election and he returns as chief minister. From Modi to Dhami, every BJP leader campaigning in the state launched an offensive against the Congress on the issue. The saffron party’s infamous IT Cell circulated morphed images of Rawat wearing a skull cap and sporting a long flowing beard. The BJP also dug out an old circular issued by the state government when Rawat was chief minister in 2016, directing various government departments to allow Muslims to take ‘half-day off’ from work on Fridays that fall in the month of Ramazan. Though the circular mentioned that members of other religious groups can also avail the ‘half-day off’ on days of significance to their communities, the BJP went to town accusing the Congress of Muslim appeasement.

Weeks before these developments, a gathering of Hindu rabble-rousers such as Yati Narsinghanand had given a call for genocide of Muslims during a ‘Dharam Sansad’ held in Haridwar. Similar calls were then made by other Hindu right-wing leaders who pass themselves off as men of God and are clearly affiliated with the BJP or its parent organisation, the RSS.

While travelling across Uttarakhand, though this reporter did not find vocal support among locals for the calls to anti-Muslim violence made at the Dharam Sansad and similar subsequent gatherings, there were many who believed that the setting up of a Muslim University in the hill state would “vitiate the social environment” of Devbhoomi.

Bhuvan Toliya, a resident of Kotdwar in Pauri Garhwal district, told The Federal that he was “all set to vote for the Congress because the BJP has not done anything in the past five years” but isn’t so sure of who he’ll vote for now. “Yeh kya karna chahte hain… Musalmaanon ke liye yahaan university ki kya zaroorat hai, mahaul kharab ho jayega… hamari ladkiyaan surakshit nahi rahegi aur phir love jihad shuru ho jayegi (what does the Congress want; what’s the need for a Muslim university here – it will vitiate the environment and then our girls will not be safe because things like love jihad will happen),” Toliya said. When told that Harish Rawat had denied ever promising the setting up of a Muslim University, Toliya said, “Obviously he will deny, it is election time… but if the Congress wins, it may do it (set up the varsity)”.

Ajay Devliyal of Lalkuan, the constituency in Nainital district from where Harish Rawat is seeking election, echoed Toliya’s view. “No one is happy with the BJP but we may still vote for it… we don’t want Uttarakhand to be run over by Muslims. Yeh Devbhoomi hai, Musalmaanon ka adda nahi banne denge (This is Devbhoomi, we won’t let it become a den of Muslims),” Devliyal said, speaking not just for himself but for his entire family of seven members.

For Kailash Sharma of Jhabrera in Haridwar district, the need to “keep Muslims out” of Uttarakhand is “most important”. “These people have been coming in large numbers to settle in Uttarakhand. Why can’t they stay where they are… most migrants coming and settling in Haridwar or other parts of Uttarakhand are Muslims; the Congress will create universities for them and then give them jobs and land rights… where will we go,” Sharma says. When told that the migrants settling in Uttarakhand include members of the Hindu community as well and that the state has an over 80 per cent population of his community, Sharma scoffs and says, “so we want to keep it like this, we don’t want Muslims here.”

Of course, there are others who believe the BJP’s Hindu-Muslim rhetoric won’t work in this election given extreme unpopularity of the state government. “This is their formula whenever they get in trouble. This time it will not work. The government has done nothing. The price of LPG cylinders is at ₹1,100; business has been zero; jobs are not available. Even infrastructure, which the BJP claims no one develops better than them, has not seen any improvement in Uttarakhand in five years. My sister lives in Uttarkashi; she nearly died because she had a medical emergency and the nearest hospital where she could get treated is a six-hour drive away in Dehradun. If even with an absolute majority, you can’t give us a hospital in our town, why should we vote for you,” said Arun Dabral, a resident of Srinagar in Pauri Garhwal district.