Mirdha legacy at stake in Jat stronghold of Nagaur

The combative social group’s third weighty chieftain, Paras Ram Maderna, used to be elected from Osian in the nearby Pali Lok Sabha constituency.

Located over a hundred kilometres off Jodhpur towards Bikaner, Nagaur is to the Jats of Rajasthan what Bihar’s Madhepura is to the Yadavs. Since India became a Republic, the constituency has been the karma bhoomi of the community’s tallest leaders, Nathu Ram and Ram Niwas Mirdha.

The combative social group’s third weighty chieftain, Paras Ram Maderna, used to be elected from Osian in the nearby Pali Lok Sabha constituency. Divya Maderna, daughter of his son Mahipal, who is incarcerated in a murder case, was elected last year from his grandfather’s seat to the state legislature.

The story is the same in Nagaur. There, Nathu Ram’s granddaughter, Jyoti Mirdha, is up against Hanuman Beniwal, whose fledgling Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) has a poll pact with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Known for his rough-and-ready ways, the RLP leader has pan-Rajasthan aspirations beyond his talent. The Jats constitute 9% of the state’s electorate. Stepping into the shoes of the Mirdhas in Nagaur would be one big political leap for Beniwal.

A victory against Jyoti will give him the political heft he needs to fill the space vacated by the Mirdhas. The irony is that Beniwal’s father, Ramdev, began his legislative career as an understudy of Nathu Ram.

But in politics, there aren’t any permanent friends or enemies. The Jats are in search of a leader; Beniwal thinks he has it in him.

Opinion is divided in Nagaur on Beniwal, and how he portrays himself. His “Hanuman Sena”, made up of boisterous, unemployed young men, is at once an asset and a liability. The plebeian storm-troopers at his beck and call make him unacceptable to peers who grew up watching the much-venerated Mirdhas.

If Nathu Ram, a formidable farm activist in his early years, served as a central minister and the chairman of the National Agriculture Prices Commission, Ram Niwas, a polished parliamentarian that he was, rose to become the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

Regardless of his rakish persona, Beniwal, a sitting MLA from Khemsar, is popular for his accessibility, and his ability to help his constituents. It’s there that Jyoti, who was MP from 2009-14, comes a cropper. She lacks Hanuman’s ground-connect; her ‘sanjivini (elixir)’ is the Mirdha family’s goodwill in the area.

At 5.25 lakh, the Jats are the single largest vote bank in Nagaur. The Muslims and scheduled castes number over three lakh, Rajputs 1.5 lakh and the Brahmins 1.25 lakh. “The volume of Jat votes the BJP’s Gajendra Singh Shekhawat received in Jodhpur will influence the level of Rajput support for Beniwal in Nagaur,” said Prashant Aboti of Dainik Bhaskar.

Given the very palpable apathy for Beniwal among sections of Rajputs, it might be problematic for Shekhawat to deliver his part of the bargain with the RLP. “The Rajputs hold Beniwal in low esteem, given the ugly face-offs he has had with them,” said Mahendra Pratap, son-in-law of Nathu Ram’s younger brother. On that feedback, he foresaw a sizeable Rajput support for Jyoti.

In an analysis based on the 2018 results in Nagaur’s eight assembly segments, a retired mathematics teacher, Mehram Chaudhary, gave Jyoti a lead of 80,000-1,00,000. The caveat to the prediction was Beniwal’s ability to activate the hitherto dormant BJP-RSS cadres who don’t have a direct stake in the seat contested by the RLP.

But Aboti, the journalist, felt Nagaur’s 1.5-lakh first-time voters could upset all calculations if they rise above social identities to vote in consonance with their pro-Modi, pro-Beniwal sloganeering. Jyoti’s counter to that can only come from prospective Rajput support —and a bigger share of the Jats vote.