Subscribe

0

Politics

Yogi, only Hindu political executive who could say 'divided we fall'

When the system of the country is hostile to its majority, when even Prime Minister Narendra Modi betrays his Hindu mandate and when the RSS holds that Muslims have the ‘same DNA’, Yogi Adityanath offers a glimmer of hope

author-image
Surajit Dasgupta
Updated On
New Update
Bantenge to katenge: Yogi, the only Hindu in a position of authority who could have said it
Listen to this article
0.75x 1x 1.5x
00:00 / 00:00

There could not have been a more appropriate time to comment ‘बंटेंगे तो कटेंगे’ (bantenge to katenge: divided we fall) than the aftermath of the 2024 Lok Sabha election in India, which was soon followed by rollbacks of quite a few reform measures by Narendra Modi’s BJP-led NDA government even as Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi keeps insisting that the constitution of every set of people in India must be viewed through the caste lens. And there will not be another leader in the foreseeable future who is a chief minister of India’s most politically important state, and not a fringe element, who can call a spade a spade — Yogi Adityanath.

While “to be cut” can be a metaphor, as seen in the division of Hindu votes on caste lines in the recent election, it can be literal not only in the case of Hindus of Bangladesh but also in several cases of lynching of Hindus in the hands of Muslims every year in West Bengal since 2017, the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari in broad daylight, the sar tan se juda killings in the aftermath of the comment on Islam’s prophet Muhammad made by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, who was thence condemned to lead a life in solitary confinement of her security detail.

The opposition knows this well. Gandhi, who was until recently infamous for bloopers, has been advised well to keep harping on caste census. No matter how much it harms the country, he is catering to a constituency that sees eminent sense in his diatribes. They believe once it is known which section of Indian society occupies what percentage of which profession, they will demand reservations proportionately — much as it is not necessary that if x% of seats in an office is reserved for a y community, x% of candidates from that y community will be interested in that particular job.

Muslims have castes too, Islamic teaching notwithstanding, but Rahul Gandhi wouldn't ask for a Muslim caste census

The BJP will take time to come up with a counter-strategy. The statements by Nirmala Sitharaman, Kiren Rijiju, Sudhanshu Trivedi et al from the treasury benches do not count. But then, the BJP does have an evergreen formula, which was as good at the time of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement as it is now: Look at the Hindu population as one.

When you don’t, the BJP says, you get a government like that of Mamata Banerjee who "condones murderers and rapists", Ashok Gehlot under whose rule Hindus were attacked during Hanuman Jayanti allegedly for the first time in Rajasthan’s history, Siddaramaiah who reversed all safeguard measures the regime of BS Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai had put in place in Karnataka.

Why is Gandhi not asking for a census that would tell the percentage of Pathans, Muslim Rajputs, Turks, Sheikhs, Khans, Syeds, Rizvis, Maliks, Ashrafs, Ajlafs/Arzals, Kammis, Seyps, Shaykhs, Pashtuns, Mughals, Ranrejes, Bhishtis, Chippas, Helas, Bhatiyaras, Dhobis, Mewatis, Meos, Pinjaras, Naddafs, Fakirs, Behnas, Dhunias, Dhunkars, Mansooris, Kunjaras, Raines, Manihars, Kasais, Mirasis, Barhais, Hajjams, Nais, Salmanis, Julaha-Momins, Julaha-Ansaris, Momin-Ansaris, Luhars, Saifis, Nagauri Luhars, Multani Luhars, Tadavis, Banjaras, Mukeris, Makranis, Mochis, Telis, Nayatas, Pindaris, Kalaigars, Pemdis, Nalbands, Mirdhas, Nats, Niyargars, Niyargar-Multanis and Niyarias?

Because the Congress needs Muslims to stay united. It's Hindus who must be divided so that a slice of the majority's pie chart adds to the unified Muslim vote for all anti-BJP parties to give them a winning arithmetic sum.

But RSS misread and BJP betrayed the Hindu mandate

Forget for a while that for the past five years or more, both RSS and BJP have faced accusations from a burgeoning section of Hindus of working against the interests of the majority community, 

•    With comments like “Hindus and Muslims share the same DNA” by Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat (‘If so, what is the problem if Hindus convert to Islam, Mr Bhagwat?’ they ask, ‘We would continue to have the same DNA, wouldn’t we?’)

•    With NSA Ajit Doval promising Iran that Sharma would be handed exemplary punishment for her Sahih Bukhari’s Hadith-backed comment on Islam’s prophet

Business Standard report Ajit Doval on Nupur Sharma in Iran
•    With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photo-ops with Pope Francis and hobnobbing with the Sheikhs of Arabia

PM Modi with Pope
•    With the alleged demolition of hundreds of Lingas and the callous felling of the holy tree, the Akshay Vat, during the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor

Akshay Vat felled
•    With the taking over of even such temples in Uttarakhand by the state  during the execution of the Char Dham project, which were hitherto free, which was withdrawn after protests by Hindus — in a country where no mosque, church, mausoleum, pagoda or Parsi temple is under state control

Uttarakhand-withdraws-controversial-51-temples-take-over-Act
•    With the prime minister’s Pasmanda outreach etc

Nevertheless, the BJP also being the only party that at least speaks for Hindus for three months in the run-up to an election, it has to carry the burden of expectation of a large section of despondent and terrified Hindus who, according to microbiologist and social media influencer Anand Ranganathan, are “eighth-grade citizens in their own country”.

When such a party also faces the compulsion of being politically correct in the comity of nations, the United Nations, the US administration, the American and European press, besides the opposition and homegrown leftists who also control a large section of the media and entertainment industry since Bollywood came under the vice-like grip of the Indian People’s Theatre Association, made up of communists Prithviraj Kapoor, Bijon Bhattacharya, Balraj Sahni, Ritwik Ghatak, Utpal Dutt, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Salil Chowdhury, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Jyotirindra Moitra, Niranjan Singh Maan, S Tera Singh Chan, Jagdish Faryadi, Khalili Faryadi, Rajendra Raghuvanshi, Safdar Mir, Hasan Premani, Amiya Bose, Sudhin Dasgupta et al way back in 1941.

When the judiciary shows anti-Hindu bias

In a scenario where the Supreme Court goes soft on Mohammed Zubair while falling like a ton of bricks on Sharma, Yogi is one politician who finds a workaround when the highest court of the country tells him he should not have put up posters in the streets of Lucknow, Kanpur and other cities of Uttar Pradesh, identifying those who rioted and destroyed public property in the name of democratic protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019. Yogi’s administration goes ahead and razes to the ground the houses of several suspects, not giving two hoots to judicial interventions, virtually turning the bulldozer into his trademark or signature style.

Zubair vs Nupur

This situation is not unique to Hindus, mind you. A house divided has always fallen — be it the Christians of pre-1970 Lebanon who used to dismiss as paranoia any Christian who said Muslims were taking over their country, the agnostic-atheistic post-WWII Christians of France until the murder of journalists working with Charlie Hebdo, Protestant Christians of England until Birmingham became unrecognisable as a part of Europe or Americans until jokers who cannot locate Palestine on the world map began pro-Palestine protests on university campuses.

To pre-empt the possibility of Indian politics taking such a turn of no return, Hindu unity is a must. After all, the religious civilisation that once spanned between Afghanistan and Cambodia has now shrunk to the size of the seventh-largest country in the world, which is still an illusion, as a majority of the population of Hindus are nominal Hindus, unmindful not only of their religion but also of the demographic ticking bomb, understanding which does not take a theologian.

Hinduism Expansion in ancient Asia

Yogi heads one of the two governments — the other being the Uttarakhand dispensation led by Pushkar Dhami — that dared to enact a law that made it mandatory for shopkeepers along the route of Kanwariyas to reveal their identities. This, after hundreds of videos surfaced on social media since 2000 when Tablighi Jamaat helped spread coronavirus faster in the country than it normally would, by being the last community to temporarily shut down their places of worship, attacking doctors and nurses in hospitals and assaulting policemen who were enforcing lockdown.

Attacks on doctors, nurses during lockdown

Police attacked during lockdown

Since then, Muslims have been caught on camera on numerous occasions spitting in food before serving it to Hindus, masquerading as sadhus before getting caught and running dhabas in the names of Hindu gods while the UPI payment procedure exposed their real identity. Of course, the mainstream media, which makes a “tantrik” guilty of rape in a news report which reveals the perpetrator was a maulana, is too shameless to acknowledge any of the above happens or has ever happened. In this atmosphere that is so hostile to Hindus, one Hindu leader had to speak the truth that others can see too but deny. In this day and age, Yogi Adityanath is the only person in a position of authority who could say it.

The views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Squirrels

 

uttar pradesh hindu muslim RSS Mohan Bhagwat yogi adityanath Narendra Modi BJP