‘Laal Topi’ could be BJP’s nemesis in UP… but conditions apply

Earlier this month, addressing a rally in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned the people of the poll-bound state against ‘laal topi waale’ (people who wear red caps). Modi’s barely veiled barb was against the state’s dominant regional outfit – Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) – whose leadership and cadre proudly flaunt their laal topi in public.

Modi’s barb and subsequent political events in Uttar Pradesh have evoked curious electoral chatter in the state, particularly in pockets of eastern Uttar Pradesh or Purvanchal; a region that sends over 130 MLAs to the 403-member Vidhan Sabha and one that the saffron party had swept in 2017. Political commentators and a section of the public in Purvanchal believe this chatter has the potential of helping the SP jolt the BJP’s hopes of returning to power in Uttar Pradesh, provided, of course, Yadav makes some decisive interventions – and compromises.

“For over three decades, Uttar Pradesh has had multi-cornered electoral contest between the SP, BSP, BJP, and Congress. Even when two of these four parties have an alliance, there is still a three-cornered fight and, in different pockets, smaller caste-based outfits are also in the arena. By singling out the SP, Modi has made it known that he believes the fight for Uttar Pradesh this time is bipolar – between the BJP and SP – and that neither Mayawati’s BSP nor the Congress are a factor,” explains Chittaranjan Mishra, a professor of Hindi at the Gorakhpur University and a keen political commentator on Purvanchal. Mishra says that such a narrative may have “no impact for the Congress because the party genuinely is not in the race, for the BSP such a comment coming from Modi is damaging because it endorses the popular perception that Behenji (Mayawati) won’t fight the BJP. For the SP, it can be helpful because the floating voter who is upset with the BJP but is undecided about the alternative now knows that Akhilesh is the only challenger.”

Strategic alliances

Modi’s likening of the red cap sporting SP cadre with a “red alert” for Uttar Pradesh came at a time when Yadav’s Samajwadi Vijay Yatra across the state has been drawing massive crowds, reminiscent of the cycle (the SP party symbol) yatra he ventured on ahead of his stunning victory in the 2012 assembly polls. This election, the former chief minister’s SP will go into polls through adroitly crafted alliances with several smaller regional outfits that have an appeal among people of the state’s different regions and castes.

Also read: Modi’s largesse for Purvanchal exposes BJP’s faultlines in poll-bound UP

In western Uttar Pradesh, for instance, SP is in alliance with Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) that has witnessed a revival of its appeal among the region’s farming community that is yet to forgive the BJP-led central and state government’s their highhandedness during the 15-month long agitation against the now repealed farm laws. The RLD’s vote-base among western Uttar Pradesh’s Jats and Muslims is also on the mend owing to the many ‘bhaichara sammelan’ (gatherings for brotherhood) that the party organised over the past two years to repair the strain in communal bonhomie caused after the 2013 Muzzafarnagar riots. Similarly, the SP has allied with Zahoorabad MLA and former BJP partner OP Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), which has pockets of influence among the backward Rajbhar community concentrated in parts of Purvanchal.

“By allying with multiple outfits that have a limited but crucial support base in different parts of the state, Akhilesh is replicating the same formula that had helped the BJP register its unprecedented 2017 assembly poll victory,” says Satish Kumar Rai, former professor and head of the department of political science at Varanasi’s Kashi Vidyapeeth. Rai, however, adds that while such alliances, coupled with a series of notable inductions that Yadav has made to his party’s ranks recently by poaching leaders from the BJP, BSP and the Congress, do improve the SP’s chances of victory, the real challenge for Yadav lies within the SP.

“Irrespective of the issues that get spoken about in the run up to Uttar Pradesh’s elections, the unfortunate fact is that elections are ultimately fought on identity politics and narrative – caste or religion of the candidate, which party represents which community, communal polarisation, etc. This is where Yadav needs to work very hard to shed the image that when in power his party only benefits the Yadavs or, to some extent, the Muslims,” says Rai.

On the ground in Purvanchal, a region where caste and religious fault lines are, arguably, starker than anywhere else in Uttar Pradesh, this baggage for Yadav is a heavy one to shed. The BJP, with its vast election machinery, has already been exploiting the hangover of public anger against the alleged dominance and ‘goondaraj’ of the Yadav community and the alleged appeasement of Muslims during various SP-led governments of the past.

‘Goonda raj’ narrative against SP

Akhilesh Yadav’s government that preceded Yogi Adityanath’s had gained notoriety for its poor record on maintaining law and order in the state – a chunk of this criticism was centred on the perception that Yadavs and Muslims (the SP’s famous Muslim-Yadav vote bank popularly called the MY factor in Uttar Pradesh politics) wreaked havoc on people of other castes. As the SP positions itself as the BJP’s main challenger this election season, this taint has come back to haunt Yadav.

Travelling across Purvanchal, this reporter heard numerous similar ‘anecdotes’ being narrated by locals with minor alterations, seemingly tailor-made to make the incident sound more relevant to the village, town or city. Almost all talked about a Yadav entering a shop – the description would change from a grocery store to a paan shop or a dhaba – buying something and then, when asked to pay, refusing to do so and instead bursting into expletives claiming “jaante nahi ho, hamari sarkaar aane waali hai (don’t you know, we are coming to power)”. In some of these tales, the Yadav would, for maximum effect, arrive at the shop in a car or on a bike that displayed either a sticker saying ‘Yadav’ or ‘Yaduvanshi’ or a poster of Akhilesh and the SP.

In Varanasi, this reporter asked Samajwadi worker Tanuj Pandey if he had heard such stories. Pandey answered in the affirmative and said, “this is the handiwork of the BJP… such messages are also circulating on WhatsApp to discredit SP by spreading fear that, if voted to power, Akhileshji will give people of his community a free hand to do as they please in the state.” An SP MLA from one of the Purvanchal constituencies told The Federal, requesting anonymity, that “criminal elements” in the SP were sheltered by Akhilesh’s uncle Shivpal Yadav but Akhilesh, being the Chief minister, had to “pay the political price for not reigning in these people in time”.

Also read: Yogi did not bathe in Ganga because he knows it is dirty, says Akhilesh

Shivpal and Akhilesh had a famous fall out ahead of the 2017 assembly polls and a year later, the former floated his own outfit, the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia). Akhilesh recently met Shivpal, who continues to hold significant political clout in some parts of Uttar Pradesh, and indicated that he was open to a pre-poll alliance with his uncle’s party. The SP MLA said that though Akhilesh’s olive branch to Shivpal could strengthen rumours of the party endorsing ‘goonda raj’, the former Chief minister was “aware of the importance of perception management and had, thus, only talked about an alliance to keep the BJP out of power and not a merger of Shivpal’s party into the SP”.

For Akhilesh, this is a tight-rope walk given the chatter already growing in various parts of the state about the ‘return of the Yadavs’. The other prattle heard commonly across Purvanchal is over comments attributed to the SP chief on the issue of Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir and or the Kashi Vishwanath Dham corridor inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Varanasi earlier this month. “Akhilesh has said he will have a Babri Masjid built next to the Ram Mandir if his party comes to power and he has promised people that he will have the Kashi Vishwanath Dham cleared up so that encroachers who were cleared from the temple land by the BJP can re-settle there again… no Hindu will accept this,” Ram Avtar Singh, a resident of Jigna village in Purvanchal’s Mirzapur told The Federal. When asked where he heard Akhilesh Yadav make these comments, Singh told the reporter, “WhatsApp par chal raha hai, sab hi log keh rahe hain bola hai usne (it’s circulating on WhatsApp and everyone is saying Akhilesh said this).”

Prof. Chittaranjan Mishra says such rumours will only grow as the elections near and the challenge for Yadav is to steer clear of reacting to them. “The BJP employs a very clever way to spread such rumours… they weave in a full story in which most parts are true and then insert some lies. Such messages will typically refer to a rally or public event which has been widely reported by the press and some comments which have actually been made; this makes the message sound genuine and then lies are added… the reader believes that if everything else in the message is true, why would one line be untrue,” explains Mishra

The advantage of BJP’s failures 

Yet, despite the obvious baggage of its past and the alleged rumour mongering by the BJP’s infamous IT Cell, the SP’s fortunes seem to be on a steady revival owing to public anger on issues of rising prices, unemployment, shortage and black marketing of fertilisers, destruction of crops by stray cattle, frequent power outages in rural areas, etc. Shatrudra Prakash, MLC and SP leader from Varanasi tells The Federal that what will matter for the electorate “are the issues of today and this is why you can see lakhs of people turning up for Akhilesh’s vijay yatra in every part of the state… people are tired of the false claims of this government and are desperately looking for change”.

But, for the SP, there is much ground to cover to before it can hope to become the beneficiary of the change that Prakash believes the people want so urgently. A senior SP leader tells The Federal that for his party to emerge victorious, what will, perhaps, matter more is not just a new narrative for governance but a formidable socio-political alliance that brings within it people of all castes and religions by ending the dominance of Yadavs in the SP’s list of candidates. This theory finds resonance on the ground too.

For instance, in Meja constituency of Allahabad district, a group of people that included a cross section of people from different castes, told this reporter that they want to vote out the BJP because they are unhappy with the sitting MLA, Neelam Karwaria, and also with the government’s failure in controlling inflation and joblessness. “The only alternative we see is the SP but we will decide on voting for it only after we know the candidate. If the SP fields a Brahmin candidate who is a Meja local, it will definitely win but a SP candidate from any other caste or even a Brahmin who is not a local will find it difficult to wrest the seat,” says Pramod Mishra.

A similar challenge of balancing caste aspirations was evident in Chakmada village of Handia constituency where the population mix includes upper caste Brahmins, Muslims, Binds, Yadavs and other backward castes. In 2017, this was one of the few constituencies in eastern Uttar Pradesh where the BJP was not among the top two contenders and the electoral fight was firmly between the SP and the BSP. Hakim Lal Bind of the BSP won the seat but has now moved to the SP. “The fight in Handia is now between the BJP and SP, with the SP having a clear upper hand. But, if the SP fields Hakim Lal again, it may not win because the people are not happy with his performance as MLA but if it fields some other Bind candidate, it will win… a Muslim, Yadav or Brahmin candidate will not be acceptable here,” Deepak Chaubey, who runs a small a cement business in Chakmada tells this reporter.

The other big expectation from the SP is coming from a section of Purvanchal’s electorally dominant Brahmins, which has been distancing itself from the BJP in recent years owing to an impression that the community not only got a raw deal from the ruling party but was also selectively targeted by Yogi and members of the chief minister’s community – the Thakurs. Yadav has, in recent months, been aggressively wooing Brahmins, who have traditionally had a leading role in determining which party rules Uttar Pradesh. A slew of Brahmin leaders, including Gorakhpur strongman Hari Shankar Tiwari’s family, BJP’s Khalilabad MLA Digvijay Narayan, BSP leader Santosh Tiwari and others, have joined the SP recently.

SP sources told The Federal that the party is also reaching out to prominent civil society leaders from the Brahmin community, including the Mahant of Varanasi’s iconic Sankatmochan Hanuman Temple, VN Mishra, and others to influence Brahmins in Purvanchal and other parts of the state to repose faith in Yadav’s leadership. The catch for Yadav, however, is that prominent Brahmin leaders also want the SP to field a substantial chunk of candidates from their community.

Also read: Modi raises ‘UP+Yogi. Bahut hai Upyogi’ slogan, Akhilesh mocks with ‘Un-Upyogi’

“The Brahmins, particularly of Purvanchal, have been a decisive factor in who forms Uttar Pradesh’s government but once these parties come to power, they conveniently forget about us. Mayawati did the same when she warmed up to Brahmins in 2007 and became chief minister, BJP did it in 2017. We obviously feel cheated. If the SP can give 50-75 tickets to Brahmins across Uttar Pradesh, the community will rally behind Akhilesh because there is a lot of anger against Yogi’s selective targeting of Brahmin leaders,” a Brahmin MLA from the BJP tells The Federal, on condition of anonymity. The BJP MLA adds that several Brahmin leaders from his party and also from the BSP and the Congress are in touch with the SP and may jump ship closer to the election.

For Akhilesh, the problem in this bargain with the Brahmin community is that he needs to balance their aspiration of greater share in ticket distribution with similar hopes being expressed by leaders of other communities that he is trying to woo. “The problem with a broad coalition of castes and religions is that you have to also distribute tickets equitably. The core vote of the SP comes from the Yadavs and Muslims but the SP will have to field a significantly high number of non-Yadav backwards, Dalits, Brahmins and other castes if it wants their votes. His electoral success will depend on how effectively he manages this matrix and also on how his core vote bank reacts to this because naturally the share of Yadavs and Muslims in tickets will have to go down,” says Varanasi-based political commentator Suresh Pratap Singh.

These are tricky compromises for Akhilesh Yadav, but some interventions that he may need to make within his party to keep it on the revival track may prove equally thorny. The SP leadership, including senior members who have stood by the party since the days of Yadav’s father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, have shown a tendency to create needless controversies through obtuse comments. A recent example was the SP’s Sambhal MP, the octogenarian Shafiq-ur-Rehman Barq who made condemnable and grossly regressive remarks while criticising the Centre’s decision to raise the minimum age for marriage among girls from 18 to 21 years. This foot-in-mouth propensity of SP’s leaders has been a recurring pain for the party and often shows Yadav as a man who can’t control his party.

“Many of these leaders have been around since before Akhilesh entered the political arena. Some are his father’s contemporaries, others are those who were close to Shivpal but stayed on in the SP when the latter left the party. There are other younger ones too who have scant regard for party discipline and regularly shoot their mouth off. Yadav will need to read the riot act to them firmly and contain such utterances in poll season but the problem is that this is also a time when egos are more fragile than ever. If he ticks them off too firmly, they’ll quit the party or sabotage its campaign,” a SP leader close to Yadav tells The Federal.