Opinion How Mandir triumphed over Mandal

Sudha Pai writes: UP results show the victory of Hindutva and the weakening of the radical promise of social justice parties.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath waves at the supporters after his victory in the Assembly polls during a celebration at the party office, in Lucknow, Thursday, March 10, 2022. (PTI Photo/Nand Kumar)

Sudha Pai

March 17, 2022 03:20 PM IST First published on: Mar 17, 2022 at 03:54 AM IST

While there has been much analysis of the BJP’s massive victory in UP, where it won 255 seats and 41.3 per cent votes, the improved performance of the Samajwadi Party has attracted less attention. The SP won 111 seats and 32 per cent of the vote, compared to 47 seats and 21.8 per cent vote in the 2017 assembly elections. In 2012, when it formed the government, it had 29 per cent votes. If the Congress and BSP had performed better, the gap between the BJP and SP would have been narrower than in a starkly bi-polar situation. In the end, the SP under Akhilesh Yadav failed to unseat the Yogi Adityanath government despite poor governance, a declining economy and anger on the ground against the BJP.

During the campaign, sensing an opportunity, Akhilesh Yadav aggressively highlighted the governance failures of the Adityanath government and formulated strategies that helped improve the SP’s tally. Taking advantage of the farmers’ protest, which helped shift the electoral discourse from purely communal rhetoric to economic issues, Akhilesh formed the SP-RLD alliance to mount a strong campaign in western UP, making it a major theatre of the battle. It was believed that Jats, Yadavs and Muslims would vote for the alliance, following reports of improved Jat-Muslim relationships, which had broken down following the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

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With the existential crisis facing the BSP, and a perceived unravelling of the subaltern social coalition of the lower backwards — as some leaders such as Swami Prasad Maurya moved to the SP — Akhilesh made efforts to shed the image of a Muslim-Yadav party by creating an anti-BJP front of smaller OBC and Dalit parties: The Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal in western UP, Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party in eastern UP, Keshav Dev Maurya’s Mahan Dal in central UP, the Apna Dal (K) in eastern UP, and Sanjay Chauhan’s Janwadi Party (Socialist). He also formed the Baba Saheb Vahini to attract Dalit votes. By positioning himself as the leader of the pichhade or backward, he shifted the election discourse to a battle between Hindutva and social justice.

These strategies dented the western UP citadel of the BJP. SP-RLD candidates defeated BJP leaders such as Suresh Rana, Sangeet Som and Umesh Malik, who had been active in the Muzaffarnagar riots. The RLD won Shamli and three Jat-dominated seats in Muzaffarnagar district — Purqazi (SC), Budhana and Meerapur. The SP-RLD alliance benefited from Muslim support; 36 Muslim candidates were victorious, up from 24 in 2017. The farmers’ movement was primarily concentrated in four Jat-dominated districts — Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Baghpat and Meerut. Of the 19 seats in these districts, the BJP won six, all largely urban ones; in Baghpat, the BJP beat the RLD by a narrow margin.

CSDS data points to sharp competition between the BJP and the SP for the votes of the politically ambitious and upwardly mobile Kurmi, Koeri, Maurya, Kushwaha, Saini and other OBCs, with other parties receiving hardly any. From the Kewat, Kashyap, Mallah and Nishad communities, the SP received a higher percentage of votes than the BJP. A similar competition for Dalit votes is visible, with the BJP and SP receiving a higher percentage of votes from not only the smaller Dalit groups, but also the Jatavs.

No matter which party won, there was a challenge to Hindutva by the forces of Mandal. However, both historical and immediate weaknesses did not allow the SP to defeat the BJP. In the early 1990s, both Mandal and the Ram Mandir projects were initiated and though the BJP gained a majority in 1991, it lost in 1993 to the SP-BSP combine. But by that time, the Rath Yatra had taken place and the base of the Hindu project was laid, particularly among the OBCs. The destruction of the Babri Masjid led to a decline of the BJP in UP. But the SP under Mulayam Singh failed to mobilise the backwards, as it favoured family concerns and the Yadavs and ignored the lower OBCs, leading to it being viewed as a Yadav-Muslim party. Akhilesh succeeded to some extent in 2012 in widening the party base by gaining support across castes. But under Modi’s leadership, using a heightened communal agenda combined with generous welfarism, the Hindutva forces succeeded in gaining support of large sections of the OBCs and Dalits. In fact, by 2022 there was little need for communal rhetoric. The election was fought on a Hindutva template constructed in 2014; there is much greater acceptance today of the BJP’s cultural agenda among the OBCs and Dalits.

Despite these tremendous challenges, the SP began its electoral campaign for 2022 only in October 2021, which was too late to take advantage of the palpable anger on the ground and the unhappiness among the OBCs and Dalits. SP leaders were not visible during the Covid-19 pandemic, nor were they active in the farmers’ movement. Also, efforts to mobilise farmers outside of western UP were made much too late, only after the Lakhimpur Kheri incident on October 3, 2021.

The triumph of Hindutva over the forces of Mandal points to the BJP moving towards achieving its ambition of creating a Hindu nation, while the radical promise of the social justice parties, due to the failures of their leaders, seems to be gradually weakening. Defeating the BJP in the next electoral contest appears to be a herculean task for the opposition in UP.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 17, 2022 under the title ‘UP and down’. The writer is former professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi