Pride, resentment: Brahmins caught in 2 emotions
Upper caste voters such as Mishra make up around 20% of Uttar Pradesh’s electoral population, with Brahmins accounting for almost half that number.
t is the afternoon of February 1, and the aptly named Ram Krishna Mishra, yellow paste smeared across his forehead, is watching the news in his shop on a creaky Onida television. The establishment is small and sells religious paraphernalia. It is on a cramped main road that has barricades every 50 metres, protecting entry to the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya. Mishra, 43, did not watch finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech, but is watching the post-Budget analysis on a popular Hindi news channel. As the anchors explain that there is no immediate relief to the middle class, he turns away in disgust. “They should have at least thought about the elections,” he says. The television is turned off, and the remote put down on the small counter with unnecessary force. Quickly, he composes himself, and takes a deep breath. “Doesn’t matter. Ayenge toh Yogi hi.”
Upper caste voters such as Mishra make up around 20% of Uttar Pradesh’s electoral population, with Brahmins accounting for almost half that number. Over the past 20 years, even as the BJP has been the primary port of call for these communities, there have been many attempts by the Samajawadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress to claw this away. But with elections a week away across western and central UP, even as there are loud murmurs in some quarters against the Yogi Adityanath government, particularly among Brahmins, it is clear that the party’s base among upper castes is largely intact. As Mishra puts it: “For us, there is no alternative.”
One of the reasons is the state’s chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
Around 500km away, near the site of the Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura, Ranjit Vyas has a BJP flag fluttering atop his home, and a photograph of Adityanath on one wall. “We have been BJP supporters most of our life, but once shifted to BSP in 2007. We have been waiting for a ‘viraat’ (tall) Hindu leader after Kalyan Singh in Uttar Pradesh. And now we have found him. Who else talks of Ayodhya and Mathura like he does? Who else has brought law and order, and controlled Muslims in the state? There is just nobody like him. He must come back as chief minister,” Vyas said.
Next to his home, Vyas has a small grocery store, where he sells, among other things, vegetables and cooking oil. Rising prices have hit him too, both at home, and at the shop. He is rationing more than he did, because he is selling less than he did. “But this will be resolved in the next year, and before 2024. If you are a Hindu, and someone who loves the country, your vote has to be for the Yogi-Modi combine,” Vyas said.
Yet, this is not 2014, 2017 or 2019, and there is very little sense of a wave for the BJP. If 2014 saw a combination of anti-incumbency (against the UPA at the Centre) and the after-effects of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, 2017 witnessed the emergence of a broad Hindu coalition and anti-incumbency against Akhilesh Yadav’s SP government in the state, and 2019 experienced the urgent nationalism engendered by the Pulwama attack and India’s Balakot airstrike. Those advantages don’t quite exist in 2022. Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura hasn’t evoked the same fervour that Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya did, and what this means, is that in places where there are local issues and anger against local candidates, there is more danger to the party than there once was.
In Ayodhya, for instance, despite Mishra’s assertion, there is trouble brewing. Sitting next to Mishra, is a school principal, who says he has been an RSS worker all his life. And he is worried. There was much talk that Adityanath was to contest the Ayodhya seat, but in the end the BJP has stayed with sitting BJP MLA Ved Prakash Gupta. “There is huge anti-incumbency against him. The Samajwadi Party candidate Tej Narayan Pandey works very hard and is a Brahmin, and a man of the people. He must have gone to people’s homes at least four times. He won from here in 2012, stunning the BJP. If people vote for the candidate, the BJP could lose this seat, and that will be a huge loss of face,” the principal says.
On the outskirts of Kanpur, around 270km away from Ayodhya, among undulating fields of paddy and mustard, the Brahmins of Bikru are angry. Bikru is the village of Vikas Dubey, gangster, politician, but a man of influence. And a Brahmin. In July 2020, Dubey and his gang were involved in a gunfight in which eight police officials were killed. Nine days later, the man who always seemed to get away because of his local clout, was arrested, calling out his name on camera as he walked into the police’s arms. A day later, on July 10, he was sensationally killed in police custody -- the car he was travelling in turning turtle, the police claiming he was attempting to flee. In the days after the encounter, his closest aide Amar Dubey was also shot dead in an alleged encounter. Among those arrested was Khushi Dubey, married to Amar three days before the encounter. And it is now Khushi Dubey’s sister, Neha Tiwari, who is the Congress candidate.
A villager from Bikru said, “For years, political parties patronised Vikas. Nobody is arguing he wasn’t a gangster, but how brazen is it that he died in police custody? Look at what they have done to Khushi? She was married to Amar Dubey three days before he died. Why was she arrested? There is a wave of sympathy among the Brahmins in these parts. Yogi keeps talking about law and order. But has he ever applied this law and order to a Thakur?” This is a popular refrain from Brahmins across the state – that the chief minister, a Thakur himself, has ignored them.
Across most upper castes, whether those vociferously for the BJP, those that will vote for them for the lack of an alternative, or those angry, one of the central factors is Adityanath. In UP, the BJP campaign is him. His strengths -- his support among the BJP voters as a larger-than-life Hindu leader, the unabashed support to Hindutva, the perceived improvement in law and order, the encounters, the bulldozers even if they push the boundaries of rules, regulation and law – are the BJP’s strengths. His weaknesses--a sense that farmers or the economy don’t rank high in the saffron-tinted administration’s lexicon, wearing his Thakur caste on his sleeve, the inability to reach out to emotionally assimilate other castes, the polarisation and a perceived arrogance and inaccessibility meaning sections of anger among the cadre – are the BJP’s weaknesses.
Back at the shop in Ayodhya, having listened to the principal’s rant, Mishra is more subdued. But there is consensus on one thing. This is a crucial election for many reasons, including the run up to 2024, but it also crucial for Adityanath. “If he wins, he becomes the first chief minister in God knows how many years to come back to power. He will be the clear heir to Prime Minister Modi in the BJP, the second biggest leader in the country.”
But if the BJP loses, Mishra said, “It will be Yogi’s loss.”
