The Uttar Pradesh government spent in excess of Rs 160 crore on publicity over the last year, most of it lavished on its strongarm boss, Adityanath. It could have saved some of that kitty; Prime Minister Narendra Modi advertised him like no advertising could. It came cheap, and it was priceless.
Arriving in Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency, last month for the first time since the deadly second Covid-19 wave overwhelmed the city and UP, Modi rained superlatives on Yogi: “UP ke yashasvi, urjawan aur karmath mukhyamantri” (UP’s celebrated, energetic and hardworking chief minister). Flying in the face of deathly images from the Ganges banks, Modi called Yogi’s handing of the pandemic “unparalleled” and spelt out a list of achievements so long that it was difficult to decide what to flag and what to leave. The saffron-clad Hindu monk was his chosen one.
In hailing Yogi, Modi swept aside images of dead bodies floating in the rivers and jutting out of shallow graves from riverbeds as crematoria and hospitals were overwhelmed. He also closed his eyes to the brutal rape of a Dalit girl by upper caste Thakurs, arrest of journalists under sedition laws for publishing reports critical of the state government and persistent hounding of the minorities.
Assembly polls in UP are due early next year and Modi is clearly telling Yogi’s competition and dissenters to shut up and fall in line. One of India’s most divisive leaders is, unsurprisingly, also Modi’s best bet to retain UP.
Brand Modi and the BJP desperately need to win UP. Bruised badly by rejection in Bengal and his halo dimmed by rampant Covid-19 mismanagement, victory in UP is a must for the Modi scheme to roll out.
But if the “yashashwi, urjawan and karmath” Yogi is able to secure victory for Modi, he will also emerge as a strong claimant to succeed Modi.
The foregrounding of Yogi by Modi shows the present regime loves divisive leaders. In 2017, the choice of Yogi had surprised many. In retrospect, it appears to have been a deliberate one. Since taking over, Yogi has turned into a role model for other BJP chief ministers. His aggression in dealing with anti-CAA protesters, his promotion of encounter killings of “criminals”, pushing a law against inter-faith marriages christened “love jihad” by Sanghi outfits, and the latest population control law, to name a few, have turned him into a darling of the BJP’s core Hindutva support base.
Chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, including veterans like Madhya Pradesh’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan, have rushed to emulate Yogi’s “love jihad” law, underscoring that polarisation is popular. Yogi’s idea of making the existing cow slaughter law more stringent and the move to recover damages to public property from anti-CAA protesters was also emulated by other BJP chief ministers. Assam’s new chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, a Congress import, is also trying to copy Yogi by pushing an anti beef-eating law and embracing the encounter killing model.
Yogi, who has never been an organic part of the RSS-BJP and whose influence was confined to Gorakhpur, UP’s eastern edge, has over the last four years turned into a national figure. He has been sent to canvass for the BJP from Bengal to Kerala and Maharashtra to the Northeast, on demand, though to debatable purchase. BJP leaders maintain he is a crowd-puller.
Unlike Modi and many other BJP leaders, Yogi never joined the RSS. Born in Uttarakhand and brought up as Ajay Bisht, he was given his current name by his mentor, Avaidyanath, the then chief priest of Gorakhnath temple. Avaidyanath was elected from the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat four times, initially as an independent, then as a Hindu Mahasabha candidate and finally on a BJP ticket. Avaidyanath never needed the BJP but the BJP needed him.
Yogi won his mentor Avaidyanath’s trust and emerged his religious and political heir. He got elected on a BJP ticket for five terms beginning 1998, but retained a separate identity and outfit — the Hindu Yuva Vahini — often seen as his private militia.
Many BJP leaders believe the top brass picked Yogi in 2017 under pressure from the RSS, which wanted to assert Hindutva symbolism in India’s largest state.
“Now he (Yogi) has turned so big that the central leadership is wary of sidelining him so close to the polls,” one BJP leader in Lucknow said. Yogi’s detractors in the party in Lucknow, who had launched a bid for change of leadership, however, are hoping the post-poll numbers could change the game. They believe the simmering anti-incumbency against Yogi, due to Covid-19 mismanagement, the farmers’ stir and Thakurvad (dominance of Yogi’s Rajput caste brethren) would hobble the party to a degree that Yogi’s leadership would come into question.
Yogi, meanwhile, appears to be moving with his eye firmly on his goal. Not in a hurry though. He is only 49, considered very young in politics, and so has a long innings ahead.
He has made Modi his new mentor, like Avaidyanath. He may be the chief priest of the revered Gorakhnath temple but he projects himself as an obedient disciple of “aadarniya Pradhan Mantri”. He repeatedly underlines that he is working under the “margdarshan (mentorship) of Modiji”. That doesn’t mean the disciple has given up his objective of becoming “guru” one day; after all, Modi too was disciple to L.K. Advani at one time.
The polls are in UP but the Yogi hoardings have started to spring up in Delhi and elsewhere too. With just two photographs — Modi (larger) and Yogi (smaller) — the hoardings declare Uttar Pradesh the “No.1 State in the country”, using the pretext of the state bagging the first prize on some Indian smart cities’ award.
“He (Yogi) is trying to make Modi and Yogi synonymous. The effort seems to be to convert Modi-Shah into Modi-Yogi,” one BJP leader quipped. Clearly, if Modi benefits from Yogi’s success in UP, Yogi himself is using the Modi currency.
