(Yogi Adityanath has been named as the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. In the light of this announcement, The Quint is republishing this article from its archives, originally published on 4 March 2017 as a part of The Quint's Uttar Pradesh Assembly election reportage.)
“Yogi Adityanathji sacche Hindutva se door ho chuke hain.”
Sitting under a canopied Shiv mandir on a crumbling state highway in Padrauna district in eastern Uttar Pradesh, I nod along to an observation I thought I’d never hear. Is Yogi Adityanath, the epitome of extreme-right political discourse in India, not ‘Hindutva’ enough? And yet, that’s exactly what Ajay Kumar Pandey aka Pappu Pandey, and other members of a rebel group in Hindu Yuva Vahini believe.
Yogi Adityanath’s soft stance on Hindutva, and unfair distribution of tickets in BJP, has compelled Pandey and other members of Yuva Vahini to break away and contest elections in 13 constituencies in the Assembly elections in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
On the ballot paper, rebellion looks like a tempo.
Pappu Pandey is contesting elections from the Padrauna assembly seat, around 73 km from Gorakhpur, and his election symbol is a black-and-yellow auto-rickshaw. Dressed in a bright-green shirt and a red Nehru jacket, Pandey gets off the lead vehicle in a convoy of SUVs to meet us in a Shiv mandir; his followers in tow, sporting tilaks and holding campaign flyers.
Pandey is angry at Yogi Adityanath for giving BJP tickets to ‘outsider’ candidates, especially former BSP leader Swami Prasad Maurya.
Interestingly, Pandey says that his fight is not against Yogi Adityanath; in fact, his election is being fought with “Yogi ji ka aashirwad.” The conflict in a BJP MP giving blessings to a competing candidate in an important district is explained away as Hindu Yuva Vahini being a ‘parallel organisation.’
The Hindu Yuva Vahini was founded by Yogi Adityanath in 2002, and functions in the state as a vigilante, Hindutva social outfit. The Vahini’s history of violence filters in uneasily as we sit in a banquet hall adjoining a newly-opened restaurant in Gorakhpur, meeting Sunil Singh, the leader of the rebel group.
As surreal as the combo of coffee and radical Hindutva premised on hatred of Muslims seems, it is the trigger on which the rebellion within Yogi Adityanath’s ranks is based.
Tickets in Purvanchal in BJP have been handed out to well-connected candidates, on the criteria of ‘katta (country-made revolvers), bhatta (brick kilns) and dupatta.’
But the candidates fielded by Hindu Yuva Vahini are contesting as independent, with ‘support’ from an unlikely alliance partner, Shiv Sena. At the time of our meeting, the candidates from Hindu Yuva Vahini were waiting for the BMC polls to get over, so that Uddhav Thackeray could lend their campaign strength to them.
Interestingly, when Yogi Adityanath was brought in by the BJP to campaign in the BMC elections, he was reportedly greeted with:
“Dekho dekho kaun aaya
Hinduon ka sher aaya
Hindustan mein rehna hoga
Yogi Yogi kehna hoga”
(Source: The Indian Express)
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