Editorial
Wag the dog: On Yogi Adityanath as UP CM
With Yogi Adityanath as U.P. Chief Minister, the BJP has front-staged the hardline fringe
When the tail wags the dog, the dog risks losing
control of it altogether. The national leadership of the BJP may or may
not have been guided by the wishes of a vociferous section of its cadre
base in nominating Hindutva firebrand Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
But in so doing it has ceded considerable power to a faction within its
organisational structure that is both fiercely autonomous and
frequently defiant. After politically exploiting his divisive rhetoric,
and allowing him to share State-level campaign space with Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, the BJP would have found it difficult to refuse Mr.
Adityanath a prominent role in post-election U.P. But to make him the
Chief Minister is to risk the fringe taking hold of the centre. In doing
so, the BJP has willy nilly shifted the discourse from development,
which Mr. Modi often projected in the election campaign. Indeed,
his choice is bound to signal in the public mind a front-staging of
issues such as cow protection, ‘love jihad’, and forced religious
conversion, all of which assume a character of aggressive minority
baiting. As the head of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an organisation
implicated in several cases of rioting, the new Chief Minister does not
exactly inspire confidence about law and order, an area of major failing
for the Samajwadi Party government that was voted out. Indeed, his
assuming office sends all the wrong signals to the law enforcement
machinery of the State. When the BJP projected only Mr. Modi during the campaign
and went into the election without a chief ministerial candidate, it
was taking care not to upset the different streams within its support
base. But the tact and sense that was evident at that stage seems to
have been lost in the messy triumphalism after the victory.
By opting for two Deputy Chief Ministers,
Keshav Prasad Maurya, the party’s State president who is from the
backward classes, and Dinesh Sharma, the Mayor of Lucknow who is a
Brahmin, the BJP is perhaps hoping to not only get the caste
representation right in the Cabinet but also rein in Mr. Adityanath. But
going by experience, a person of Mr. Adityanath’s standing and
persuasion is unlikely to let himself be outflanked in government. Mr.
Modi, and his alter ego, the party president Amit Shah, may believe they
will be able to make Mr. Adityanath behave more responsibly now that he
is no longer in opposition but at the helm. But they could well be
mistaken. If anything, it is Mr. Adityanath who has so far bent the
party to his will by protecting the identity and independence of the HYV
and setting his own agenda. Despite his past association with the Akhil
Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Mr. Adityanath is not beholden to the
Sangh Parivar for his popularity and clout in eastern U.P. As it turned
out, it was he who rode the Modi wave to serve his personal ambition and
push his pet projects. To make the Hindutva hardliner mend his ways is
about as easy as straightening a dog’s tail.
