New Delhi: Harihar Mishra (78), sitting outside his home in the village of Aksauli in Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur a few months back, had bemoaned that, “Yogi is killing all the Brahmins only,” but that, “the BJP will (still) win since all other parties are casteist”.
Now, Mishra is actively campaigning for Rohit Shukla ‘Lallu’, the Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate in his constituency, Majhawan.
Majhawan (Vidhan Sabha-397) is one of five assembly seats in the Mirzapur district. One of the many interesting seats in the Purvanchal (Eastern) region of Uttar Pradesh, Majhawan probably has the highest percentage of Brahmin voters of any assembly constituency, with around 84,000 Brahmins in its electorate.
In the fractured politics of Purvanchal, the party that gets the caste arithmetic right emerges as the winner. The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been trying to erode this and consolidate the region as a Hindu vote bank.
The BJP in 2017 had created the successful caste combination of ‘upper’-caste voters, non-Yadav Other Backwards Classes (OBC) and non-Jatav Scheduled Castes (SC), leading to a massive win on 312 of the 384 seats it contested, while its allies cornered 13 of the 19 they contested.
This time, however, the equations have changed. A number of non-Yadav OBC leaders have either jumped ship to the SP or have formed a coalition with them. Noteworthy among them are Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan, and the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party’s Om Prakash Rajbhar. All three of them were cabinet ministers in incumbent chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s cabinet, but left the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the BJP at different points, alleging discrimination against OBCs.
Another partner in coalition with the SP is Sanjay Chauhan’s Janwadi Socialist Party. Sanjay Chauhan claims to be the leader of ‘Nonia Chauhan’ OBCs while the Apna Dal Kamerawadi banks on the Patel Kurmi voters in the region.
While the SP has tried to create a ‘rainbow coalition’ of castes, the BJP is banking on its own social engineering and a coalition with Union minister Anupriya Patel’s Apna Dal Sonelal and Sanjay Nishad’s Nishad Party, competing for the Patel Kurmi and Nishad votes respectively.
Since 2014, the BJP has been carving out a voter base of OBC and SC voters who have traditionally tilted towards the SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), respectively, by using its Hindutva undercurrent with a mix of its welfare and development policies. All the while. the party’s traditional vote bank of ‘upper’-caste Hindu voters has remained by its side.
Meanwhile, the SP, for the first time, is trying to dent this ‘upper’-caste vote bank, specifically focusing on Brahmins and trying to cash in on the BJP’s supposed ‘anti-Brahmin sentiment’ that surfaced after the Vikash Dubey encounter. A perception popular in Uttar Pradesh politics these days is that Adityanath is supposedly pro-Rajput; the caste he hails from.
Also read: Alienated Brahmins May Alter BJP’s Electoral Prospects in Uttar Pradesh
Different strands of this political theory and perception lie in different events and happenings. A few months after Adityanath became chief minister, a team of around 200 police officers raided the residence of Vinay Shankar Tiwari, MLA from the Chillupar constituency in Southern Gorakhpur. Vinay Shankar Tiwari is the son of Hari Shankar Tiwari, who is considered to be one of the Bahubali (strongman) politicians of 1980s and 90s Uttar Pradesh.
The family is associated with the ‘Brahmin versus Rajput’ politics of Gorakhpur, where the two power centres lie; in Tiwari’s Hata (residence) and in the Gorakhnath Math which heads the temple after which Gorakhpur is named.
Tiwari had protested against the raid, calling it an act of revenge. Then in the BSP, Tiwari joined the SP a few months ago, along with other family members influential in the politics of upper Purvanchal.
Adjacent to Gorakhpur is the Kushinagar district, the area of influence of former cabinet minister Swami Prasad Maurya, which will also rest on caste equations.
Also read: In UP’s Kushinagar, Swami Prasad Maurya Disturbs BJP’s Scheme-Aided Popularity
The encounter killing of gangster Vikas Dubey led to a flurry of reactions among many in the Brahmin community and a battle had ensued on social media. Many had questioned why nothing happened to other mafia gangster-turned-politicians, such as Dhananjay Singh of Jaunpur and Brajesh Singh of Varanasi.
Vikas Dubey.
Since then, many have also cried foul about the arrest of Khushi Dubey, an 18-year-old girl who got married to Vikas Dubey’s aide Amar Dubey three days before the shootout at Bikru in which eight police officers were killed. Khushi Dubey was arrested after her husband, who was alleged to be involved in the shootout, was killed in an encounter with the police with many alleging that she had been arrested without adequate evidence.
Simultaneously, the charge of Thakurwad (a phrase referring to Yogi’s alleged pro-Thakur appeasement) under the present Uttar Pradesh government gained some ground.
Around the same time, another bahubali politician, Vijay Mishra, the Nishad Party MLA from Gyanpur in Bhadohi, was arrested in Madhya Pradesh. News of his arrest and his being brought back by police spurred a chain event. Many BJP supporters were rejoicing, saying that once again, ‘Gaadi palat jayegi’ (literally, the car will be overturned; a dog-whistle for fake encounters through a car crash), a reference to Vikas Dubey’s encounter.
At the time, a section of Brahmins mobilised a cavalcade of vehicles to trail the police vehicle and ensure Mishra’s safety. Mishra, now in jail, is fighting this election as an independent from the same seat.
Sensing an opportunity in light of these events, the SP has been trying to carve out its own section of voters from the community. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has recently even inaugurated a temple of Lord Parshuram, whom the Brahmins revere. Moreover, the SP changed its candidate from the Majhawan constituency a day before nominations were to be filed and had cancelled Damodar Maurya’s candidature, which it had announced a month back.
Political pundits say that the move can affect the voting patterns of the Brahmin community in over 12 assembly segments in Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Varanasi. If the SP manages to carve out a voter segment within the Brahmin community, then, along with its traditional Yadav and Muslim vote bank as well as the the Chauhans and Rajbhars, it can certainly win a many more seats than earlier.
On paper, the coalition does look like it can do the trick, but what happens on the voting day ultimately decides the result. It remains to be seen how the community will vote this time.
For now, it seems that while the BJP remains the first choice for the community, the few seats where the SP has strategically fielded Brahmin candidates may make some dent in the BJP’s Brahmin territory. This time around, it will be a generalisation to say that the whole community will tilt towards a single party in any seat, despite the loyalty of the community to the Hindutva cause.
Individual voters have their own concerns, ranging from old pensions, Anganwadi workers’ issues, stray cattle, ideological affinity and many more which will affect their voting choices.
Rohit Shukla is a freelance journalist.