Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s advice to Hindus, “Batenge toh Katenge” (divided we shall perish), is unapologetically blunt. Made in the backdrop of diplomatic tensions owing to the pogrom against Hindus in Bangladesh, it is unfiltered too. But those who have heard him speak before will know that he is not one for diplomatic niceties. In Dhaka, his words will push the authorities to withdraw to a sheepish silence. Especially as the UP CM’s remarks exactly coincide with the release of an Islamist extremist in Bangladesh who is, to put it mildly, balefully disposed towards India and Hindus.
But here in India too, Yogi’s remarks have triggered a right royal rumpus. The Opposition, that prides itself on a self-professed secular-liberalism, has reacted predictably. Its big guns have accused Yogi Adityanath of polarisation, of using his office to spell out a divisive message aimed at heightening Hindu anxieties, and of painting Muslims as aggressors for no other reason than to consolidate the Hindu vote.
The Opposition is dead right. UP CM Adityanath’s remarks are a well-thought out political provocation. Yogi has only a few weeks before 10 assembly by-polls are conducted in his state to consolidate the Hindu vote that has noticeably fractured there. An unabashed invocation of well-worn Hindutva tropes, he hopes, will win back all the subordinate castes that have drifted away from the BJP. It is estimated that because of this drift, the BJP lost at least 20 parliamentary seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.
The CM’s utterances have a fair chance of affecting counter-polarisation as where they lack in subtlety they make up in substance. Hindus are only too well aware of their vulnerability when diced up into narrower identities.
History informs Hindus that when their unity has plummeted they have been fair game.
Pre-independence, the British exploited and reinforced existing caste, linguistic and religious fissures, creating new categories and sub-categories to fragment the Hindu population. Isolated and walled off by their own prejudices and suspicions, the majority community succumbed to the British.
It took Mahatma Gandhi to unite Indians, Hindus in particular, by promising a “Ram Rajya”. This was the first time that Hindu religious iconography was woven into the tapestry of the Freedom movement. The British, ever alert to the opportunity, played on Muslim anxieties. The Muslim community’s self-appointed guardian, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, fell for it and warned Muslims of the alleged down side of living in a “Hindu India”. He would go onto promise Muslims of the sub-continent, an exclusive preserve where their interests would never be “subsumed by the majority”. His Noah’s Ark would eventually be called Pakistan – the Land of the Pure.
That seminal event would arguably sow the seeds of “Muslim separatism” in the sub-continent.
The full implications are still playing out. In Kashmir, for one, in the late 80s, the Muslim majority in pursuit of their own version of the “Land of the Pure” turned on the Hindu minority with devastating consequences for inter-faith relations.
That the xenophobia never became a talking point underlines Yogi Adityanath’s point.
The Hindus of the time were so distracted and divided by Mandal politics that no one among them of any significance spoke up for justice.
In fact, some political observers have posited that even when they felt the need to speak up, the Centre-Left political leaders did not oblige the Kashmiri-Hindu. These parties after all had considerable Muslim votebanks.
All the BJP had to do in the late 80s and 90s was to step in and appeal to a nascent sense of siege among some Hindus. And it did. And very successfully too.
This prompted the non-BJP parties to politically oppose the saffron party’s attempts at mobilising the Hindu vote.
One distinct stratagem, among the many, was to fan the flames of anti-Hindu majoritarian ire. This ploy continues unabated till this day. The upper caste base of the BJP has been singled out as the cause of all social prejudices afflicting the polity. For a while, the BJP was able to overcome the Opposition’s counter-mobilisation strategy and benefit from Hindu consolidation. But as the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections demonstrate, the BJP’s tactics may have maxed out and the Opposition appears to have fashioned an effective riposte.
Can “Hindu Hriday Samrat” Yogi Adityanath step in and reverse BJP’s loss of influence over its grand Hindu social coalition? Will his polarising remarks once again allow the BJP to reap the whirl wind of the Centre-Left’s anti-Hindu majoritarian ire?
As they say, watch this space.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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