India: Fahad Zuberi on How Hindutva works to create polarised segregated cities | (Indian Express, June 11, 2021)

The Indian Express

How Hindutva works to create an urbanity of hate

Socio-political rhetoric creates polarised cities through legislation and polarised segregated cities further contribute towards divisive politics

Written by Fahad Zuberi
June 11, 2021 10:55:37 pm

Over several decades and generations, as we see in Gujarat today, such a political and legislative system produces cities that are very starkly segregated on communal lines. (Illustration by C R Sasikumar)

On May 28, 2021, 11 houses in close proximity to the Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur were proposed to be acquired by the Uttar Pradesh Government citing reasons of security. Later reporting revealed that most of the residents had signed their consent on the proposal under pressure and fear from the state apparatus. These houses have been occupied by Muslim families for nearly a century and it is important for us to reflect on the fact that exclusively Muslim households were shortlisted for the construction of security posts and other facilities in the area.

Alarming as it is, the incident in Gorakhpur is a small scale example of similar strategies of homogenising urban neighbourhoods on communal lines that the government has been implementing in many other cities and states across the country. An imagined threat to law and order and safety of the inhabitant of these areas always fronts these strategies as their rationale.

Take for example the election rhetoric in Assam. Page 13 of the BJP’s manifesto for the assembly elections in Assam featured their promise to enact “appropriate laws” to curb “the menace of love jihad and land jihad” in the state. Although it is granted only three lines in the entire manifesto, the issue of “land jihad” was featured prominently in the Union home minister Amit Shah’s speech on March 26 in Guwahati. The party emerged victorious in the polls, and therefore, these laws are likely to be formulated and implemented.

“Land jihad” is a conspiracy theory in the Hindutva narrative that claims that Muslims are waging a religious war on Hindus by buying real estate in Hindu majority areas with the aim of dominating the neighbourhoods and gradually executing a Hindu exodus. Just like the rhetoric that created legitimacy for the “love jihad” law preceded the legislation in Uttar Pradesh, the rhetoric around “land jihad” gained pace in BJP’s election campaign in Assam. More importantly, just like there are no records or legal definitions of “love jihad”, the “menace of land jihad” also remains undefined and unrecorded and targets consensual real estate transactions between individuals.

While we have seen in Uttar Pradesh what a law against “love jihad” looks like, it remains unclear what would a law against “land jihad” seek to achieve and how will it try to do that? If, however, we want to understand what kind of laws work the narrative of “land jihad” in our cities, we must look at Gujarat.

Gujarat has unique legislation concerning the buying and selling of real estate in its cities. The legislation is called The Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, and restricts the exchange of real estate between people of two different religious communities. In the areas declared as “disturbed”, the exchange can only take place if an application for the same is approved by the district collector.

The law was enacted in 1991 and sought to prevent distress sale following an event of communal violence. Over time, however, areas that have not seen communal violence in several years continue to remain categorised as “disturbed” and the state has since added more areas to the list — sometimes without an incident of communal violence.

In Ahmedabad alone, over 750 areas are covered under the Disturbed Areas Act, 1991. Later amendments in the Act have made it much easier for the district collector to declare an area as “disturbed”. The amendments state that an area can now be declared “disturbed” on the basis of just a “possibility” of communal riot or polarisation (‘What has changed in Gujarat’s Disturbed Areas Act’, IE, October 19, 2020).

The Act — in its vague language — is widely used to prevent Muslims from buying properties in “Hindu dominated” parts of a city, thereby segregating neighbourhoods. It is also a tool of communal politics. For example, Sangita Patil, the MLA candidate in Gujarat Assembly Elections, 2017, promised her voters to get her constituency of Limbayat declared as “disturbed”. Upon winning the seat, she fulfilled the rather ironic promise and the area was declared “disturbed” in October 2017 in order to “…stop them (Muslims) from spreading into Hindu areas”. Similar impositions were done in posh neighbourhoods of Rajkot in January 2021, and in some cases, like that of Bhayli in Vadodara, residents themselves demanded that their area be categorised as “disturbed” after some Muslim families were allotted houses in Bhayli under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. The coming of Muslims in Bhayli was seen as a disturbance in the “peace-loving Hindu neighbourhood” (‘Residents demand Bhayli under Disturbed Areas Act, threaten to boycott polls’, IE, February 13, 2021).

The characterisation of minorities as the unwanted other forms the socio-political space that allows for legislations like the Disturbed Areas Act to operate. And in most instances, we see the narrative of “land jihad” — an unverified, undefined and unrecorded problem — as an integral part of the rhetoric. We see this in the manifesto of BJP and in Amit Shah’s aforementioned speech in Assam as well.

The promise to enact laws against land jihad features under the heading “Protection of Civilisation in Assam”. As the suffix implies “land jihad” is allegedly executed by Muslims and therefore, the “civilisation” of Assam needs protection from Muslims buying real estate. It also implies that it is the Hindu population of the state that has the first right over the land and Muslims buying land in an area of their choice is a religious war waged by an illegitimate outsider.

Amit Shah also accused Badruddin Ajmal, the leader of All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), of “changing the identity of Assam through land jihad” again implying that the identity of Assam is not inclusive of Muslims and Muslims buying land in Assam morphs its identity into something that it is inherently not. In this context, the Union home minister also used the word “infiltrator” to refer to the perpetrators of “land jihad”, further characterising the minorities as unwanted others.

Over several decades and generations, as we see in Gujarat today, such a political and legislative system produces cities that are very starkly segregated on communal lines. Polarisation of the people through hate speech, riots and propaganda provides the social consent to create and operate communal legislations in the city. As legislations legalise communal identity as the qualifier of the right to live in certain areas of a city, the divide is executed into the built form — in neighbourhoods, roads, apartment buildings and even government housing — preventing people from living in diverse neighbourhoods and reducing the interaction between communities to a minimum while also denying minorities the right to buy properties in the neighbourhoods of their aspirations.

What we do not know, we fear, and increased segregation, followed by reduced interaction and lack of familiarity, perpetuate and promote communal stereotypes. The dirty other — created through propaganda and political hate speech — is reinforced and the built environment — now segregated — creates a more expansive space to incorporate and sustain legislations like the Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, and potential legislations like the one the BJP has promised to enact in Assam.

Socio-political rhetoric creates polarised cities through legislation and polarised segregated cities further contribute towards divisive politics. Intolerance is created and sustained through a form of structural violence that gradually produces geographies of alienation and segregation.

Recent developments in Gorakhpur, the BJP’s manifesto in Assam and the political rhetoric of “land jihad” in the election campaign imply that the party intends to export the aforementioned politics of the built form from Gujarat to other states of the country where it sees the opportunity to translate the politics of Hindutva into an urbanity of hate.

Zuberi is an academic and writes about politics, culture, architecture and city studies

Video: 17 Years of Hindu Yuva Vahini and How Yogi Adityanath Became CM ( in Hindi, From The Wire, 13 May 2019)

Senior editor of The Wire Arfa Khanum Sherwani discusses the history of the Hindu Yuva Vahini in Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituency and the rise of Yogi Adityanath from the Gorakhpur mutt to Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister.
Joining the discussion are senior journalist Manoj Singh, Professor Chandra Bhushan and Mahatma Premshankar Mishra, the chairman of the Hindu Yuva Vahini.

India: Yogi Adityanath is struggling to control the monster he created. “Hindu Yuva Vahini”, once his private army

The Quint

In Yogi’s Gorakhpur, Ghosts of ‘Hindu Vahini’ Past Haunt the UP CM

Anant Zanane 11may 2019

Saurabh Vishwakarma, 34, is a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator from ward number 63 in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur. His ward, with nearly three thousand voters, abuts the Gorakhnath Math headed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Saurabh Vishwakarma (fourth from left), a BJP corporator who is openly campaigning against Yogi Adityanath. In this picture, from December 2017, he can be seen holding his election certificate as a corporator.

(Photo Courtesy: Sourced by Anant Zanane)

Vishwakarma was 15 when he joined the Hindu Yuva Vahini, Adityanath’s vigilante group or private army. He is a three-time BJP corporator and was re-elected in 2017, on a BJP ticket, even after he had a bitter falling out with Adityanath, who had declared a bounty of Rs 25,000 on his head.

Also Read : Lok Sabha Polls: BJP Fields Actor Ravi Kishan From UP’s Gorakhpur

Still a member of the BJP, Vishwakarma, says, “the government, and the man (Adityanath), who slapped the stringent Gangster Act on me and declared a reward on my head... how can I stand with them knowing they want to kill me in an encounter?”

Chandan Vishwakarma show’s his scars and bullet injuries he sustained during the 2007 riots in Gorakhpur.

(Photo Courtesy: Sourced by Anant Zanane)

Saurabh’s younger brother Chandan, who is also with the Hindu Yuva Vahini, points at a bullet wound on his lower left leg. He then uncovers his arm, that was ripped open by a sword when he was part of a Hindu Yuva Vahini mob that went on a rampage during the Gorakhpur riots of 2007 – when Adityanath was arrested for 14 days for violating prohibitory orders.
“I have taken bullets for him and he booked me for murder, attempt to murder in 54 cases. Last year, I was jailed for nine months after being arrested under the stringent National Security Act (NSA),” Chandan said.

Sunil Singh being arrested under the stringent National Security Act in Gorakhpur.

(Photo Courtesy: Sourced by Anant Zanane)

Both Saurabh and Chandan were recruited by Sunil Singh, who established the radical right wing outfit, as Adityanath’s private army. As foot-soldiers of Adityanath’s army, their job was to politically deify the god man and project him as a force in Purvanchal, independent of the BJP, by branding him as the legitimate custodian of Hindutva.

Debt of Loyalty, Cost of Revolt

They also unleashed a terrorising campaign of cow vigilantism, whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment and protecting Hindus from any persecution.
Singh, who spent 18 years of his life shadowing Adityanath, was his head henchman. He shows pictures to prove how he was once devoted to Adityanath, and was always seen by his side.

But in 2017, the ‘guru-chela’ had a bitter falling out, over denial of tickets to Hindu Yuva Vahini leaders – who were mentored by Singh – for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

Singh revolted and paid the price. He was eventually discarded from the Vahini and had to start from scratch, at the behest of Adityanath.

Sliced off from the Mahant’s innermost circle, he swore revenge. After a massive show of strength near Adityanath’s official residence in Lucknow, in May 2018, he formed a parallel outfit called the Hindu Yuva Vahini (Bharat).
Three months later, in August, Singh and 12 workers from his new-formed faction were booked for threatening Adityanath’s supporters on social media. They were arrested and sent to jail for nine months, under the National Security Act.

 [ . . .  ]

https://www.thequint.com/news/india/yogi-adityanath-gorakhpur-uttar-pradesh-hindu-vahini-rebellion-elections-2019https://www.thequint.com/news/india/yogi-adityanath-gorakhpur-uttar-pradesh-hindu-vahini-rebellion-elections-2019

India: The UP Government’s Colossal Cover-Up Attempt to Protect Adityanath from investigation into his role in anti-Muslim violence

The Wire

The UP Government’s Colossal Cover-Up Attempt to Protect Adityanath

By Ajit Sahi on 26/07/2017

Successive UP governments, BJP and non-BJP, have sought to scuttle the investigation into Adityanath’s role in anti-Muslim violence ten years ago. But there is enough in the case to still be revived if the court wants to.

Allahabad: Two months ago, the Uttar Pradesh government told the high court here that it would not prosecute chief minister Adityanath on charges of inciting and leading widespread anti-Muslim violence in Gorakhpur and nearby districts a decade ago. In response to a question the bench posed at the time, his government has now submitted a “counter affidavit” to the Allahabad high court providing a list of reasons to justify that decision.
However, the claims in this 126-page document submitted earlier this month contradict official records since 2007 when the violence occurred. Though there is no evidence that the police have ever questioned Adityanath, leave alone investigated him, to verify the charges of rioting, arson, assault and murder, the counter affidavit is a virtual exoneration of the BJP politician. It also doesn’t answer a critical question the court asked in April: can the chief minister legally decide his government’s position on that criminal case given that he is “a prime accused” in it?
Neither Adityanath, who became chief minister in March, nor his co-accused have ever denied the allegations entered in the FIR in the case. In a television interview in 2014, Adityanath not only proudly admitted giving the incendiary anti-Muslim speech that, as the FIR notes, caused widespread violence and murders, but said he’d do it all over again if needed. Yet, the counter affidavit pointedly refuses to accept that as evidence.
A brief chronology
A day after mobs, allegedly incited by Adityanath, rioted on January 27, 2007, Parvez Parwaz, a resident of Gorakhpur, sought to file an FIR. When the police stonewalled him, he moved the high court, which ordered the FIR registered. That was done in November 2008. The FIR invoked the following charges against Adityanath and others under the Indian Penal Code (IPC):

• Murder; attempt to murder
• Criminal conspiracy
• Unlawful assembly; rioting; dacoity
• Trespass; destruction of property; assault; wrongful restraint
• Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot
• Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony
• Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs
• Asserting that a class of persons be deprived of their rights as citizens
• Injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class
• Mischief by fire or explosive substance intending to cause destruction of a place of worship
• Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration

[. . .]

https://thewire.in/161755/adityanath-anti-muslim-cover-up/

India: UP government denies permission to prosecute CM Yogi Adityanath for 2007 riots

The Economic Times

UP government denies permission to prosecute CM Yogi for 2007 riots
By Aman Sharma, ET Bureau | May 11, 2017, 05.41 PM IST

NEW DELHI: Banking on a report from the CBI's forensic lab in Delhi, the Uttar Pradesh government has denied its CB-CID Wing the permission to prosecute the present state chief minister Yogi Adityanath for his alleged hate speech in the 2007 Gorakhpur riots.


Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.comhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/up-government-denies-permission-to-prosecute-cm-yogi-for-2007-riots/printarticle/58628713.cms

India: Allahabad High Court wants UP govt to inititate prosecution against accused (including Yogi Adithyanath) in 2007 Gorakhpur communal riots

The Wire

High Court Asks Why UP Government Is Delaying Sanction to Prosecute Adityanath for Hate Speech

By Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta on 11/05/2017

New Delhi: The Allahabad high court has come down heavily on the Uttar Pradesh government for unnecessarily delaying its sanction to initiate prosecution against five accused persons, including the newly-appointed chief minister Adityanath, in a case related to the 2007 Gorakhpur communal riots.

In a terse order on May 4, 2017, a two-judge bench comprising Justices Ramesh Sinha and Umesh Chandra Srivastava took strong note of the fact that the state Crime Investigation Department (CID) has been waiting for more than two years now for the required permissions to file a chargesheet in the matter, and directed the UP chief secretary to appear before the court on May 11 with the records of the case and present his explanation. [. . .]  https://thewire.in/134412/adityanath-allahabad-high-court-hate-speech-riot/

India: Rise of Hindu ‘extremist’ spooks Muslim minority in India’s heartland (Michael Safi)

The Observer

Sunday 26 March 2017 00.02 GMT

Rise of Hindu ‘extremist’ spooks Muslim minority in India’s heartland

in Gorakhpur, the power base of a firebrand monk, religious tension grows with Uttar Pradesh’s 40 million Muslims

Michael Safi in Gorakhpur

Pastor Ritesh Joshua had just called a tea break when he saw the men in the saffron scarves. More than a hundred, some wielding sticks, had massed outside his white stucco church on the outskirts of Gorakhpur, a temple town in eastern Uttar Pradesh. It was three days after Christmas.
“They started shouting, ‘You are converting people. We will not allow any conversions here’,” he says. “They shoved people, turned over furniture, and told me, ‘You are the main culprit’.”
The men, allegedly part of a religious activist group called the Hindu Yuva Vahini, cornered one of the parishioners. Smartphone footage shows the woman pulling her blue shawl tightly around herself as she answers questions about her involvement with the church. “No one is forcing me to convert,” she insists.
“If the police hadn’t arrived, we don’t know what would have happened next,” Joshua says. “After the men left, everyone in the church was silent, so frightened. This is a time of testing for us.”
Last week, the monk who founded the HYV, and whose firebrand Hindu supremacist vision guides the organisation, was selected by the party of prime minister Narendra Modi to lead the most populous state in India – the equivalent of the sixth largest nation on earth.
Yogi Adityanath’s appointment as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, about a fifth of whose 200 million people are Muslim, is “stunning”, says Milan Vaishnav, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy thinktank. “He is an extremist in terms of his speeches, a very proud rabble-rouser, and somebody who doesn’t have a claim to fame other than a dedication to a strident form of Hindu nationalism.”
“It is an important and disturbing moment,” agrees Ramachandran Guha, an author and historian. “It is the fringe moving to the mainstream.”
The boyish face of Adityanath, 44, beamed down on Gorakhpur last week from thousands of green-and-saffron banners plastered along its main road. On Sunday, tens of thousands of people are expected to line the road for his triumphant return to Gorakhpur, the electorate he has represented for almost two decades in the Uttar Pradesh parliament.
Another addition to the city streets last week were squads of police officers hunting so-called “Romeos”. Along with a ban on buffalo slaughter, cracking down on amorous young men was a key campaign promise of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party. Officially, the police are targeting “Eve-teasing”, the endemic sexual harassment that blights some Indian streets. But critics instead see a crackdown on mixed-religion couples, in line with Adityanath’s fevered, baseless warnings that Muslim men are trying to seduce Hindu women as part of “love jihad”.
The surprise appointment of Adityanath to run the state has deeply rattled Manoj Singh, a Gorakhpur journalist who has spent the last two decades tracking the new chief minister and the HYV men he labels a “private army”. He recalls, 10 years ago, when the city boiled with religious tension after the murder of a Hindu man, and Adityanath rose to address a crowd of HYV supporters outside the Gorakhpur railway station.
“We cannot tolerate such incidents any more,” he told the men. “It has crossed all limits. If someone sets ablaze the houses and shops of Hindus, then I do not think that someone stops you from doing such things.
“Get ready for a final battle,” he says. Court documents allege Adityanath’s followers then went on a rampage, burning Muslim-owned properties and an Islamic mausoleum. “I saw the burned shops,” Singh says. “I saw the Muslim men who ran the shops trying to douse the fire. I knew one of the shopkeepers. He was very emotional. He said, ‘Look what has happened to me. I’m ruined’.”
Adityanath was arrested and imprisoned for 11 days. He broke down in parliament recalling the ordeal. But, Singh says, his fiery rhetoric was unchanged. “If [Muslims] kill one Hindu man, then we will kill 100 Muslim men,” he has said since. But Adityanath began to distance himself from frontline violence. “He took a political turn,” Singh says. “He started having political dreams.”
Hinduism is a poor soil for fundamentalists such as Adityanath to grow. The world’s third most-practised religion has no pope, no mandatory scripture, no impulse to convert new believers. The caste system has sown division deep into its DNA. Wherever Hinduism has taken and flourished across Asia it has blended with and infused local cultures, forming what author Sunil Khilnani has called a “bewildering internal pluralism”.
It was contact with more rigid doctrines, first the Islam of the Mughals, then the Christianity of the British, that first planted the seeds of political Hinduism. They grew with demands for Indian independence, as those who sought freedom for the extraordinarily diverse subcontinent grappled with the question: what was an Indian, anyway?
Jawarharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, opted for the broadest possible answer. The India his Congress party advocated was, he wrote, proudly plural: “An ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously”.
But Hindu nationalists such as Vinayak Savarkar, discerned in the countless communities that populated modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh an essential “Hindutva”, or Hindu-ness, that persisted no matter what faith an Indian practised.
“Religious minorities will all have the right to practise their religion”, Savarkar wrote of the India he envisioned – but they were inescapably citizens of a Hindu “rashtra”, or nation.
“This vision of Indian history is one of victimhood,” says Guha. “That Hindus were first persecuted by the Muslims, then the British, and they can only recover when they repudiate all that is Muslim and British in their past.”
The elevation of Adityanath is part of that “old battle between the Congress and the rightwing Hindu parties”, he says. For the first 40 years after independence, Hindu nationalists struggled to summon more than 10% of the national vote. But their appeal has surged in the past quarter-century, culminating in the election three years ago of Modi, the staunchest Hindutva flag bearer ever to occupy the prime minister’s residence.
Other than Modi’s political talents, Guha says the growth of Hindu nationalism is partly down to poor leadership in the Congress party, whose most prominent leader is Nehru’s great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi.
“But it is also part of a regional and global phenomenon of religious nationalism. You see it now in Turkey, and in our neighbourhood, with Pakistan and Bangladesh. There are parallels with Sri Lanka. And even in America, when George Bush said Jesus was his favourite philosopher,You can’t blame Rahul Gandhi for everything,” he says.
Modi was briefly an international pariah over his Gujarat state government’s alleged role in ignoring, and possibly abetting, deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in the state in 2002. But he assiduously reinvented his image in the decade before winning power in 2014, projecting himself as a pro-business, Apple Watch-sporting statesman obsessed with economic development.
In power, Modi has been coy about his Hindu nationalist agenda, prioritising issues such as tax reform and corruption crackdowns over the national ban on cow slaughter his party championed on the campaign trail.
With the selection of Adityanath, “the veil has been lifted”, says Vaishnav, from the Carnegie Endowment. “It answers one of the questions that we had about Modi all along,” he says. “Is this guy’s project about development or Hindu nationalism? What this pick reaffirms is that it’s not an either/or question. He has two faces: one is Modi the great economic moderniser, and the other is one of muscular nationalism – and Adit is its starkest manifestation,” he says.

In Zafara Bazar, a Muslim district of Gorakhpur, Gulshan Ali is talking bitterly near the butcher shop where he worked until last Monday: “They talked about ‘development for all’, but the moment Adityanath became chief minister he started taking away our jobs,” he says. That was when – less than 24 hours after Adityanath was sworn in – police officers told him the business was being shut. “We didn’t get any notice,” another butcher, Jawad Ali, says. He pleaded that his shop sold only buffalo, not the cow meat that many Hindus eschew. “But they told me, ‘From today, your business is closed’.”
A thick blanket now hangs over Jawad Ali’s shopfront, and he passes his days with other out-of-work butchers reading the newspaper and gossiping darkly about what might be coming next. “For several generations we’ve been butchers,” he says. He admits he has been operating his shop unlicensed for the 15 years – but not for lack of trying. “Since 2002 the government stopped renewing meat licences because of Yogi Adityanath and his movement,” he says.
A previous government, one that relied on Muslim votes to hold office, worked out a compromise between its voter base and the growing clamour to ban cow and buffalo meat in the state: butchers such as Ali would be denied licences, but allowed to continue running their businesses.
The bargain held until Adityanath’s unexpected ascension. The crackdown on butchers has left up to 2,500 families in Gorakhpur without an income.
Heightening their frustration is that India is the world’s largest exporter of buffalo meat, with most of the companies run by Hindus who see no clash with their beliefs. “Here they’ve found a new god in buffalo,” one of the meat-workers mutters.
The chief preoccupation for many Muslims in the city is what comes next for the HYV. A few kilometres from Zafar Bazar is the resplendent Gorakhnath Mutt, a campus of ornate, chalky white temples interspersed with manmade ponds and patches of yellow and saffron marigolds.
The temple, which Adityanath oversees as chief priest, was buzzing this week with political officials and HYV men basking in the glow of their leader’s sudden promotion. “You talk to many Muslims, in and around the campus here, they all appreciate that Yogi Adityanath has become chief minister,” says Pramod Kumar Mall, the officer in charge of the HYV.
The role of the HYV, now that its leader is the most powerful man in Uttar Pradesh, will not change, says HYV officer Pramod Kumar Mall. “We are working for the nationalist movement. We don’t want this country to disintegrate. There are so many movements who want to disintegrate the system, and we want to stop them and make people understand about it,” he says.

He will definitely favour Hindus over Muslims ... this is what he has been since the beginning

Wijahat Kareem

Regrettably, he says, there are “many” Muslims in the country working against Indian interests. “Just as President Trump has found so many, in India you will find so many.” But he is adamant that minorities in the state have nothing to fear from Adityanath’s rule. “This country belongs to them,” he says. “[As long as] they feel they are citizens of this country and feel they should respect the national religion – just as Hinduism has accepted many religions.”
Despite Mall’s assurances, Muslim community leaders in Gorakhpur are well aware of the new reality in their state. Over tea at his home, surgeon Wijahat Kareem, 62, describes his own political philosophy as “Gandhian”. “But Gandhi is losing his sheen,” he says. He chooses his words carefully. “You cannot change his heart,” he says of the new chief minister. “He will definitely favour Hindus over Muslims, but we can’t complain. This is what he has been since the beginning. You know with whom you are talking But there is hope that because of his past record he will be more cautious, more liberal than he was earlier on,” he says.
Hope, he concedes, is all Uttar Pradesh’s Muslims have left to rely on. “Politicians cannot win on the basis of Muslim votes,” he says. “So we have to keep believing in the right-thinking Hindus. That’s what we are all hoping for. Our staying in the mainstream of the country depends on them.”
He insists, repeatedly, that he is “not concerned”. But as he goes to say goodbye he pauses in the door frame. For a moment he is silent. “Let us pray for the Muslims of Gorakhpur,” he finally says. “Even if Yogi is harming Muslims in other parts of the country, he won’t do anything to Muslims in Gorakhpur. Of that I’m very sure.”

India: Yogi Adityanath’s mutt, hardline Hindutva’s hub (Yubaraj Ghimire)

The Indian Express

Yogi Adityanath’s mutt, hardline Hindutva’s hub

Adityanath is heir to the history and legacy of the Gorakhnath Peeth that has long believed in militant involvement in politics as a means to achieving its religious and ideological ends.

Written by Yubaraj Ghimire | Updated: March 21, 2017 8:43 am

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath leaves after a meeting in Lucknow on Monday. Mahant Avaidyanath, four-time MP from Gorakhpur, in Parliament. Photo: Vishal Srivastav. Yogi Adityanath’s rise to power in Lucknow is in several ways the culmination — and recognition — of consistent efforts put in by at least two earlier heads of the Gorakhnath Peeth, the highest seat of the Nath Aghori order, to push the Hindutva agenda in Indian politics. In fact, the famous pledge in the BJP’s Palampur Resolution (1989) to build a “magnificent Ram temple in Ayodhya” was a reiteration of what Mahant Digvijaynath, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and the then head of the Gorakhnath Peeth, had resolved to do a full four decades ago.
In 1949, at the end of a long religious ceremony organised by Digvijaynath, idols of Ram Lalla and Sita appeared mysteriously inside the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. A never-ending legal dispute followed, and L K Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 created an unprecedented Hindutva wave countrywide, leading ultimately to the demolition of the 16th century mosque by kar sevaks on December 6, 1992.

The Jana Sangh, the BJP’s predecessor organisation that was born in 1951 with the aim of promoting ‘Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan’, surrendered its existence to the Janata Party that was formed to fight Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1977. After rebirth as the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, it allowed itself a bit of ideological confusion — toying for a while with a variant of Gandhian socialism. In elections held after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, it sank to an all time low of 2 seats in Lok Sabha (C Janga Reddy from Hanamkonda and A K Patel from Mehsana), which prompted a sharp ideological turn to the far right, and the BJP put Ramjanmabhoomi at the top of its agenda.

Four years after the Babri Masjid was pulled down, the party formed its first government at the head of a coalition, which lasted for 13 days. It came back to rule for 13 months in 1998, and then again in 1999, this time for a full term — which saw a fair sprinkling of saffron robes in the House. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the BJP to a majority on its own, which included an astonishing 71 out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh. A near repeat of that performance in this month’s Assembly elections, and the choice of Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister, underscores the importance the BJP places in the Ayodhya movement as the engine of its rise.
Assets declared by CM Yogi Adityanath –
The Hindu Mahasabha, whose creation was the culmination of several efforts made to unite Hindus between 1906 and 1915, is older than both the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (formed in 1925) and the Jana Sangh. It advocated militant methods in support of the Hindu cause, and to restore India’s pre-Partition integrity. Digvijaynath, who became the Mahant of the Gorakhnath mutt in 1934, called for temporary disenfranchisement of Muslims, and unlike the heads of many other Hindu religious institutions, joined politics. He entered Lok Sabha in 1967 with the support of the Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangh, comfortably defeating the Congress candidate at the Gorakhpur seat. Digvijaynath’s successor Avaidyanath, who became Mahant in 1967, served as an MLA for 5 terms and as the MP for Gorakhpur for 4 terms, winning the last two elections — in 1991 and 1996 — as a candidate of the BJP when the party had adopted the Ramjanmabhoomi issue as its main electoral plank.
Avaidyanath, who headed the Gorakhpur mutt from 1967, when he succeeded Digvijaynath, to 1994, was one of the leading lights of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement. Photo: R K Dayal (Express Archive) Yogi Adityanath, who took over the leadership of the mutt on February 15, 1994, has always been with the BJP, and has been pursuing Hindutva causes more aggressively and with greater anti-Muslim stridency than his mentor Avaidyanath and Digvijaynath, often warning the party against surrendering the Ram temple issue. Like the Hindu Mahasabha and both his predecessors at the Gorakhpur mutt, he has crossed swords with the BJP many times, always in favour of a more assertive Hindutva.
Beside his visible clout in northeastern UP, what possibly worked to propel Yogi to the Chief Ministership was his ability to display public rage on being denied the post, with likely unpalatable chain effects inside and outside the state, given the power of the Gorakhnath Peeth and the reverence with which it is held by large sections of people. The Chief Minister is a Rajput, but the mutt has a significant following among all sections of Hindus, including Dalits, as Gorakhnath is believed to have encouraged rulers to treat their subjects fairly, with equality and dignity, and punish those who defied the edicts. Yogi is likely to be tasked with promoting Hindu militancy and development simultaneously.
–
Yogi Adityanath is believed to follow closely behind his two immediate gurus on their belief in the need for a stronger India, and an expansion of its current borders. To that end, those close to the Chief Minister say, he firmly believes in the Hindu Mahasabha’s June 8, 1947 resolution: “India is one and indivisible and that there will never be peace unless and until the separated parts are brought back into the Indian Union and made integral parts thereof.”
On Nepal — where Yogi makes occasional visits and his order has a large following — he has said repeatedly that “its status as a Hindu kingdom must be restored”.
Digvijaynath was anti-Partition and anti-Gandhi, to the extent that he was investigated in the Gandhi assassination case. He was opposed to the Mahatma’s non-violent politics — and Digvijaynath’s alleged incitement of a mob that set fire to a police station in Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur) in 1922, killing 23 policemen, led Gandhi to call off his Non-Cooperation Movement.
Yogi Adityanath is heir to the history and legacy of a mutt that has long believed in militant involvement in politics as a means to achieving its religious and ideological ends. It remains to be seen how the leader of the Gorakhnath Peeth discharges his duties as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Gorakhnath & Pashupatinath
The sprawling Gorakhpur mutt, seat of Yogi Adityanath, has been put under a heavy cover of security since Yogi became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Photo: Praveen Khanna Guru Gorakhnath, believed to be Shiva’s incarnation in human form, is the presiding deity of Nepal’s royal dynasty. Legend has it that as a 7-year-old child, Prithvi Narayan Shah, who ruled Nepal in the 18th century, was blessed by Gorakhnath, who predicted he would conquer every piece of land he set foot on, and that 10 generations of his family would rule after him. Prithvi Narayan Shah went on to conquer many kingdoms and fiefs, and had, by 1768, unified Nepal into the entity that it is currently.
The abolition of the monarchy in 2008 has not reduced the royal family’s reverence for the Guru, and its relations with the Gorakhnath Peeth, the highest seat of the Nath Aghori order, remain intact. “In fact, Prithvi Narayan Shah was initiated into the Nath Aghora order, and wrote a bhajan in praise of the lord,” says Debnath Yogi, priest of the Gorakhnath temple on the premises of Kathmandu’s Pashupatinath temple.
Every Makar Sankranti, when the Gorakhpur Peeth offers khichri as prasad to devotees — to mark Gorakhnath’s first appearance, when he ate khichri prepared with rice, lentils and other things his disciples got in alms — Nepal’s royal family is the first contributor.
Yogi Adityanath has met former King Gyanendra at least twice over the last 4 years, asserting that Nepal must once again become a “Hindu kingdom”, and blaming “Western donors and NGOs” for conspiring to remove the “cultural and historic symbol of (Nepal’s) identity”. Four years ago, Adityanath invited Gyanendra Shah to inaugurate the newly built Gorakhnath temple near Gorakhpur. Two months ago, Gyanendra was the chief guest at a dharma sabha attended by sadhus and representatives of various faiths, where Yogi addressed the former King as “Vishwa Hindu Samrat”.
Until about a decade ago, coins and currency notes carried the words “Sri Gorakhnath” and an image of Shiva’s trident. “Jai Gorakh” is the war cry of military units in Nepal, and one of the battalions is named Gorakh gan. Nepal’s Army celebrates Shivaratri as its Foundation Day in honour of Gorakhnath.
ghimire.yubaraj@gmail.com

India: Yogi Adityanath -The way of the sword and the monk's cowl (Aman Sethi)

Business Standard

How BJP's Yogi Adityanath has used religious polarisation to trump caste divide in Uttar Pradesh

Aman Sethi  |  Gorakhpur  March 18, 2017
Business Standard is republishing this April 2014 profile as the Bharatiya Janata Party's legislature has unanimously elected Yogi Adityanath as its leader and the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

---

From 8 am to 10 am each morning, Yogi Adityanath, high priest of the Gorakhnath mandir and Gorakhpur's Member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party since 1998, tends to his constituency from a low desk in a spacious room in the administrative block of the temple's sprawling lands.

Assisting him is a team of scribes, seated cross-legged on the ground before a set of ancient Devnagari-script typewriters, balanced on bricks wrapped in old newspaper. Petitioners pass through a security check, leave their shoes at the gate, and approach the priest with folded hands and bowed heads.

Adityanath - short, stocky, and clad in saffron robes, thick transparent plastic earrings, and vermillion socks - listens with the fragile patience of a self-consciously busy man. "Write an application," he occasionally declares. The clerks nod dutifully and slide another sheet of paper into the typewriter.

Recent reports describe Adityanath - a Hindutva hardliner, and prime accused in Gorakhpur's 2007 communal riots - as a key coordinator of the BJP's election strategy for Uttar Pradesh, the state with the most Lok Sabha seats. He first won the Gorakhpur seat when 26-years-old; now 42, he has fashioned himself as the BJP's most recognised face in east Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP has spoken of a wave in favour of their prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, but Lokniti-CSDS post-election surveys over the past 15 years establish that a quarter to a third of the electorate vote on the individual qualities of a candidate rather than the party she represents, suggesting many seats could turn into head-to-head contests between candidates with specific local histories, rather than the competing narratives of Modi and Rahul Gandhi.

In 1999, Yogi Adityanath won Gorakhpur by the slimmest of margins - 7,339 votes; 10 years later in 2009, he romped home with a winning margin of 2,20,000 votes. This year, locals are speculating on the winning margin, rather than the possibility of his victory, despite no particular signs of progress in this constituency.

Gorakhpur appears a melancholic border town on the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal border, yet to overcome the loss of its fertiliser factory, shuttered in 1990, its sugar mills that collapsed over the next decade, and its children - claimed by the hundreds every year by Japanese encephalitis. Male and female workforce participation is amongst the lowest in the country and a little more than 70 per cent of households still do not have an indoor toilet.

Over 15 years, Adityanath, an upper caste Kshatriya, has sunk deep roots in Gorakhpur. His clerks resolve squabbles in city neighbourhoods; his foot soldiers from the Hindu Yuva Vahini have been criticised for engineering riots in the countryside. His inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric has polarised eastern Uttar Pradesh, while his position as the mahant of the Gorakhnath temple lends his pronouncements an air of mystical profundity.

This election season, the BJP has publicly focused on the need for good governance and development and steered clear of overt communal and regional propaganda but on the ground, Modi is banking on regional satraps like Adityanath to bring in the votes at all costs.

"We solve problems," said Dwarika Tiwari, Adityanath's head clerk, gesturing to his typewriter, his telephone, and a stack of tattered notebooks filled with telephone numbers gathered over decades, "We write to the appropriate authorities, we telephone the superintendent of police, we inform the district magistrate and tell him to investigate."

Jung Bahadur, a retired infantryman, has come on behalf of his grandson, "Rajbir, my grandson ran away with a dhobi caste girl. Her parents say she was kidnapped. He is in police detention." Chandra Prakash Gupta, dismissed from a private distillery eight years ago, has been coming ever since in search of a job. Suresh Sharma, a Gorakhpur resident now employed as an accountant in Chennai, has dropped by to have his photograph taken with the yogi, "I go to the BJP office in Chennai; it is good to have a photo to show them."

No problem is too small for Adityanath's attention, no trouble too trifling. "We'll do whatever is needed," Tiwari said, as he churned out the latest application on official MP letterheads, "This? This one is for someone who urgently needs a train reservation using the MP quota."

An MP is expected to legislate, hold the executive to account and represent the interests of her constituency in Parliament. Adityanath, for his part, has sponsored five Bills - there was one in 2009, asking the Centre to pass a national law banning cow slaughter, another to change the country's name from "India that is Bharat" to "Bharat that is Hindustan", and a third banning forced religious conversions. He has also called on the Allahabad High Court to set up a bench in Gorakhpur, and for a uniform civil code.

Yet, in their constituencies back home, MPs aren't judged by House attendance, questions asked, or participation in debates, but on their ability to leverage the state on behalf of their constituents.

Most MPs have neither the funds nor staff to implement big-ticket projects that could ensure re-election.

For example, a representative can spend Rs 5 crore per year on her constituency under the MP Local Area Development Scheme, which works out to a total of Rs 400 crore a year for Uttar Pradesh's 80 Lok Sabha members; a minuscule sum compared with the state government's budgeted expenditure of Rs 221,201 crore for this year. This is where Adityanath's morning meetings prove crucial.

"Voters perceive the role of MPs as that of a problem solver," said Chakshu Roy of PRS Legislative Research, explaining MPs are often voted for doing everything apart from their constitutionally mandated jobs, "Voter expectations, therefore, align the incentive structure for MPs to address constituency concerns at the cost of their legislative responsibilities."

Further, before selling their message to their electorates, prospective MPs must first convince their own parties of their candidature - this makes the creation of a committed base and local politics even more critical. Rajnath Singh could replace BJP stalwart Lalji Tandon in Lucknow, but no one is likely to replace Adityanath in Gorakhpur.

"The public is deeply attached to my name, to my thought process, to me," said Adityanath in an interview soon after his durbar, "The public wants their elected representative to be in touch with them." Through his daily hearings, he said, "I have a constant conversation with the public about their personal problems, problems with the administration, problems with a powerful oppressive person. That is why they vote for me."

Yet, any other candidate could arguably set up an equally efficient grievances cell. Adityanath's biggest asset, his critics said, is an amorphous vigilante army of youth organised as the Hindu Yuva Vahini and tasked with protecting the Hindu faith.

In 1999, Yogi Adityanath made front-page news as an MP. "BJP out to protect trigger-happy MP" ran the second lead on the March 6 Lucknow edition of The Times of India, detailing an extraordinary story that began as a minor dispute over the fate of a peepul tree in a Muslim graveyard in a faraway village, acquired increasingly communal overtones, and ended with Adityanath desecrating the graveyard and his supporters fatally shooting a 26-year-old policeman in the face.

"A pattern emerged," said Manoj Singh, a senior journalist in Gorakhpur, "Yogiji or his supporters would interfere in a village-level fight between two communities and turn it into a big case of Hinduism under threat."

An anecdotal list of communal incidents compiled by Singh describes the vigilante group's involvement in at least 18 separate incidents of communal violence since 1999. While the 2007 Gorakhpur riots, in which a Hindu man was killed and hundreds of Muslim shops burnt, were widely reported, the incomprehensible banality of minor incidents makes for more chilling reading.

In 2002, for instance, Adityanath and his followers arrived at Gorakhpur's Turkmanpur locality and escalated a squabble between a Hindu and Muslim over who spat paan on whom into a full-blown communal confrontation in which stones were thrown, a street brawl erupted and the police were called in.

Adityanath insists the Yuva Vahini is simply a cultural organisation. "Our philosophy is to live and let live, but if someone puts their hand on our throats, we have the right to remove that hand by force if need be," he said.

Yet, his critics, both inside and outside the BJP, said Adityanath's vigilante army was set up to build a power base and grassroots network independent of the the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. BJP leaders begged off from commenting on Adityanath or his politics. "To be honest, I don't have the time," said Varun Gandhi, the BJP's other star campaigner in Uttar Pradesh, before hanging up.

His critics in the Congress were more forthcoming.

"Adityanath is undoubtedly a rabble rouser. His speeches are venomous and vitriolic even in Parliament," said Jairam Ramesh, the Congress leader who most recently served as the Union minister for rural development, "He is more of a politician than a sanyasi, peddling a very destructive ideology of hate and prejudice."

In the meantime, the Yuva Vahini has expanded its influence across the region and its strategy of casting routine street fights as ideological struggles is paying dividends.

Last month in Rasoolpur, a village in Azamgarh constituency, 100 km south of Gorakhpur, a group of Hindu youth decided to build a brick enclosure around a Hindu deity installed under a roadside tree. The Muslims protested, a fight broke out and a young Muslim man was shot. He survived but his friends grabbed Vijay Pratap Yadav, a father of four and the brother of the sarpanch of Rasoolpur, and beat him to death.

Days after Yadav's death, the local representative of the Hindu Vahini contacted his elder brother, Uma Shankar, and asked him to join the vigilantes. "Of course, something will have to be done," Uma Shankar said in a recent interview at his house, "The Muslims have terrorised us."

Despite the fact that Mulayam Singh Yadav, leader of the Samajwadi Party, will contest from Azamgarh this time, Uma Shankar said the family was switching allegiance from the Samajwadi Party, the party of choice for most Yadavs, to the BJP.

"The Samajwadi Party thinks it wins because of the Muslims, so let's see what happens when the Yadavs leave it," he said, "I think we will join the Yuva Vahini, and if we do, we will bring another 50 men with us for Yogiji."

---

UTTAR PRADESH'S PRIESTLY POLITICIANS
With each generation, Gorakhpur's mahants have harnessed the Goraknath temple to consolidate their unchallenged hold on power

• 1967: The high priests of the Gorakhnath Mandir have played a role in Eastern UP's politics since Mahant Digvijai Nath represented the constituency in the Lok Sabha from 1967 to 1971 from the Hindu Mahasabha
• 1984: Digvijaynath's successor, Mahant Avaidyanath, sets up the Sri Ramjanmabhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti and leads a march from Sitarmahi, Bihar, to Ayodhya to "liberate" the temple. Avaidyanath served as an MLA from nearby Maniram from 1962 to 1980 and as Gorakhpur's MP from 1989 to 1996, frequently using the Ram Janmabhoomi issue to garner votes
• 1992: Avaidyanath plays a crucial role in mobilising crowds around the destruction of the Babri Masjid. On the eve of the demolition, the mahant is spotted on the terraces of the 'Ram Katha Kunj', the building facing the Mosque, among senior leaders such as L K Advani and Ashok Singhal, according to court documents
• 1998: Avaidyanath retires from politics and his role as the head of the Goraknath temple. His protege, Ajay Bisht - a disciple from Uttrakhand who takes on the moniker Yogi Adityanath - wins the Gorakhpur constituency at the age of 26
• 2014: With the Ramjanmabhoomi issue losing its appeal, Adityanath recasts village level conflicts as religious ones and is set to win his fourth full term

India: Know your Yogi Adityanath -the hardline Hindutva leader who just got chosen as the Chief Minister designate of UP

 Yogi Adityanath is to be the new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. He will be sworn in tomorrow the 19th March 2017 in Lucknow

During 2017 UP assembly elections Adityanath's campaign slogan was 'BJP जीती तो राममंदिर बनेगा, SP जीती तो कब्रिस्तान'. Ram Mandir rather than schools and hospitals.

What Yogi Adityanath Choice Says About Modi-Shah, RSS

by Swati Chaturvedi

http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/what-yogi-adityanath-choice-says-about-modi-shah-rss-1670976

Yogi Adityanath: From Hindutva mascot to Uttar Pradesh chief minister

 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/elections/assembly-elections/uttar-pradesh/news/yogi-adityanath-from-hindutva-mascot-to-uttar-pradesh-chief-minister/articleshow/57707604.cms

Yogi Adityanath: The way of the sword and the monk's cowl

How BJP's Yogi Adityanath has used religious polarisation to trump caste divide in Uttar Pradesh

Aman Sethi  |  Gorakhpur
http://www.business-standard.com/elections/uttar-pradesh-assembly-elections-2017/yogi-adityanath-the-way-of-the-sword-and-the-monk-s-cowl-114040200025_1.html 

योगी आदित्यनाथ का इंटरनेटनाद !

रवीश कुमार November 28, 2014
http://naisadak.org/yogi-adityanath-ka-internetvaad/

Riot manufacured in Gorakhpur

What happened in the eastern Uttar Pradesh town was not a conflict but violence unleashed by MP Yogi Adityanath and his henchmen
https://communalism.blogspot.in/2007/02/riot-manufactured-in-gorakhpur.html

o o 

Video of Adityanath's Hindu Yuva Vahini leader saying, 'We should take dead Muslim women out of graves and rape them'. Adityanath sits impassive on the stage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0vAzA1c8sM

Here is a clip from later in the documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuGv739vVJI - where Adityanath says that Hindu men must capture Muslim girls and convert them. This is incitement to rape.

The full documentary - Saffron War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0dPWx-VvE. I strongly recommend that you watch this to get a sense of the genocidal attitudes of the Hindu Yuva Vahini.

India: Sunil Singh, the leader of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), a right-wing group based in Gorakhpur

The Huffington Post India


POLITICS
How This Champion Of Hindutva From Gorakhpur Is Calling Out Modi's 'Double Standards' On Secularism
"This isn't so much about winning as it is about teaching the BJP a lesson."
03/03/2017 3:12 PM IST | Updated 03/03/2017 4:30 PM IST

Betwa Sharma
Politics Editor, HuffPost India

AFP/Getty Images

Sunil Singh has been in the news a great deal during the course of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The leader of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), a right-wing group based in Gorakhpur, has not only fielded 20 candidates against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he has also challenged the authority of his one-time mentor, Yogi Adityanath, a five-time parliamentarian and the BJP's firebrand leader in UP.

In a recent interview with HuffPost India, the 40-year-old Singh explained why he believes so passionately in the cause of Hindu supremacy in India and how much he dislikes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "double standards and drama" on secularism. "First, you claim to be secular, then you give two helicopters to your most firebrand leader Yogi Adityanath to go to western UP to polarise people on Love Jihad, Karbala and Kabristan," said Singh.

"You, yourself, are talking about graveyards," he continued, referring to Modi. "You pretend to be secular to show the world, but when you want votes, you fall back on Hindutva."

'You pretend to be secular to show the world, but when you want votes, you fall back on Hindutva.'

On whether the cause of Hindu supremacy was out-of-sync with the times, Singh neither agreed or disagreed. The question was relevant considering that BJP's primary pitch was development and that, with the exception of firebrands, its leaders kept themselves bridled with only veiled references to polarising issues.

Singh did not contest that Modi cut a very popular figure in the state. But the youth leader went on to explain that Hindutva to him was non-negotiable, whether or not it was politically lucrative. "Whether you win or lose votes, you have to stick to the principles. My fight is for the principles," he said.

Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Not In It To Win

In addition to alleged involvement in the riots of Mau and Gorakhpur, HYV members were detained for launching a reconversion programme in 2014. Singh has described Aligarh Muslim University as a "nursery of terrorism," with links to the ISIS.

The trouble started earlier this year, when Singh raised his voice against the BJP leadership for what he perceived as an affront to his mentor, Yogi Adityanath, the patron of Hindu Yuva Vahini. He questioned why Adityanath was not projected as the chief ministerial candidate of UP and his exclusion from Modi's Cabinet as well as from on-going election campaign posters.

The campaign build-up coincided with a wave of anger that convulsed the BJP cadres over the choice of candidates, especially the inclusion of those who were regarded as "outsiders" and "rebels" from other parties. The "loyal" ticket seekers who had spent considerable time and resources in constituencies from where they sought tickets were devastated. Money not merit, they said, had won the day.

But unlike the thousands of disgruntled party workers whose disappointment was confined to caustic words at the national party president Amit Shah and state party president Keshav Prasad Maurya, Singh decided to go further. He challenged the BJP by fielding many candidates against it. These rivals were from the Hindu Yuva Vahini.

Even after his mentor, Yogi Adityanath, turned around and sacked him, Singh continued to function as the leader of the Vahini. He tied up with the Maharashtra-based Shiv Sena. Together they are fielding over 100 candidates in eastern UP, causing a worry to the BJP.

Local observers point out that Yogi Adityanath has stood tall on the Vahini's shoulders for many years, gaining in strength and stature from its radical push of Hindutva in the region.

In this election, so far, the BJP has delegated polarisation politics to leaders such as Sangeet Som and Yogi Adityanath, punctuated with some pointed remarks from Modi at rallies and a distasteful acronym from party president Amit Shah.

Meanwhile, the Vahini and the Shiv Sena have unabashedly campaigned on the Hindutva plank, promising to secure the interests of the Hindus. While the BJP espouses the cause of the Ram Temple within constitutional norms, the right-wing alliance vows to go ahead with the temple building, no matter what, if it comes to power.

When this reporter pointed out that his political calculations could end up splitting the Hindu votes to the benefit of either the BSP or the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance, Singh said, "I don't care."

"This isn't so much about winning as it is about teaching the BJP a lesson," he said. "BJP, Amit Shah and Keshav Prasad Maurya must realise that you cannot treat workers like they are dirt. You cannot use them and then discard them."

Singh continued, "This is hurt and pain talking. Hurt that comes when you put your blood, sweat and tears into a cause you believe in, but all for nothing. Pain that comes from being beaten by the police, going to jail, for your principles."

'This is hurt and pain talking. Hurt that comes when you put your blood, sweat and tears into a cause you believe in, but all for nothing.'

Burning Muslim Houses

Singh, who holds a Master of Science degree in biology, was born in a village named Ahmedpur, around 40 kilometres from Gorakhpur. After working with the ABVP for a few years, he became an ardent follower of Yogi Adityanath in the 1990s.

On why there was a need to create an outfit of young Hindu men, Singh repeated the oft-cited claims of Muslim men harassing Hindu girls and the slaughter of cows. He recalled a time when BJP workers could not enter a Muslim-dominated zone of 42 villages on the Gorakhpur-Maharajganj border, describing it as "a place worse than Pakistan".

Singh is unapologetic about any violence that might have come about in the pursuit of protecting Hindus. He recalled with satisfaction the mayhem that was left in the Mohan Mundera village of Kushinagar where a Muslim had allegedly raped a Dalit minor in 2002. "I say it without any hesitation, there was not a single Muslim house left there that did not have smoke coming out of it," he said.

'I say it without any hesitation, there was not a single Muslim house left there that did not have smoke coming out of it.'

SANJAY KANOJIA via Getty Images

Double Standards

When this reporter pointed out that Modi as the prime minister had an outlook different from that of a Hindutva crusader for the BJP, Singh said in that case he should make his stand clear.

The youth leader continued that hundreds of thousands of workers had helped Modi win the 2014 Lok Sabha election based on the twin causes of "development and Hindutva".

In 2014, Modi had accused the Congress-led government of aiding the "pink revolution" by subsidising slaughter houses, Singh stated. However, India continued to remain the top beef exporter almost three years into the BJP government.

"There cannot be two standards. You do not give even a single ticket to Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, but in Jammu and Kashmir, you are forming a government with Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's Party. What happened to Article 370? What happened to the rehabilitation of the Hindus in Kashmir? Your party is now at the Centre. What have you done about these issues?"

The youth leader continued. "When it is election time, you bring up the Ram Mandir, otherwise you forget it. You (Modi) had promised to be tough on Pakistan, but you go to Pakistan and attend a wedding in Nawaz Sharif's family. You go to Pakistan, but you don't visit the Ram Temple in Ayodhya."

There cannot be two standards. You do not give even a single ticket to Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, but in Jammu and Kashmir, you are forming a government with Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's Party.

Singh described the BJP's approach to the issue of Triple Talaq as "more drama". "Don't Hindu women have problems? At least, a Muslim man leaves a Muslim woman after saying talaq three times. Prime Minister left his wife without talaq."

Singh appears to be in two minds about the future. On the one hand, he wants to see the BJP lose and to build the Hindu Yuva Vahini into a political party dedicated to the "glory of Hindus". On the other hand, he is still attached to Yogi Adityanath, whom he calls his "guru".

"When he has come out of the black magic done by Amit Shah, we will work together again," he says.

India: How a Mystical Mutt of Yore Became HQ of Hardcore Hindutva Under Adityanath [BJP’s Gorakhpur MP]

News 18

How a Mystical Mutt of Yore Became HQ of Hardcore Hindutva Under Adityanath

Suhas Munshi | News18.com
Updated: March 4, 2017, 1:29 PM IST

BJP’s Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath campaigns in Pilibhit on February 10. (PTI)

'Agla agna hogba to hey avadhu tu hova paani’
If the person next to you is fire, then hey sadhu you should be water.
-Gorakh Vani
At about 1pm in Gorakhpur, Sunil Singh, the head of Hindu Yuva Vahini, was talking about Muslims he had murdered.
“Were you part of 2007 riots?”
“Haan... eint ka jawaab pathhar se diya… hamare ek bhai maroge, tumhare chaar bhai maarenge. Ek Musalmaan ne Dalit ladki ka balaatkaar kiya tha, jaan se maar diya tha. Mohan Munder village Kaptangunj mein, ek bhi Mussalman ka ghar nahi bacha. Sabke ghar jalaye. Theek se jalayee. Bum feke. Goliyan chalai. Do teen udhar se bhi mare.” (We gave them a fitting reply. If you kill one of us, we will kill four of you. A Muslim man raped a Dalit girl, killed her. In Mohan Munder village, not a single Muslim house was spared. All houses were burnt, bombed, fired at.”
For 25 years, Singh has been the head of Hindu Yuva Vahini, a private army of five-time Gorakhpaur MP Yogi Adityanath, who himself has been booked for making hate speeches, and was arrested during 2007 riots.
Standing in today’s poll-bound Gorakhpur, it’s difficult to believe that this city was once the spiritual headquarters of Nathpanthis, a tradition of mystics called kaan-phatas (because of their custom of piercing one ear), who trace their lineage to the Adiyogi, Lord Shiva. The Nath monks were known more for leading progressive and reformist movements across the subcontinent, which even inspired Kabir Das and Guru Nanak.

It is difficult to believe today that Yogi Adityanath is the present Mahant of the Mutt that was started by Dalits and made famous by Muslims. Or that the Gorakhnath Mutt had little to do with Lord Ram or heavy Hindutva.

Manoj Singh, a local journalist and a scholar on Gorakhnath Mutt, offers a valid poser. “Ever since Adityanath became the Mahant of this Mutt, I have not once heard a verse of Gorakh Vaani from him,” he said.

“Why would the Mahant of one of the most popular and oldest Mutts not even discuss the ideas and literature of his Mutt?" he asks.

Singh ends that question with his own conclusion. “Maybe he doesn’t know Gorakh Vaani himself, or maybe he’s read it and knows that the idea behind those powerful verses actually undermines his own position.”
Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath karyalaya at the Mutt.
Nathpanthis had no connection with politics or even the wider society. They set up their centres well outside busy settlements to spend time alone meditating.

“Its followers were mainly Dalits, Nishads and a few Muslims who were turned away by Brahmins under the prevalent sanatan systems. They came together to sing Gorakh Vaani,” Singh said.

Even today, several villages like Lohra and Sathiaun in Azamgarh, and Koth in Balia are comprised mainly of Muslim jogis, who, wearing saffron robes, set out and sing Gorakh Vaani throughout the country.

“Nathpanth was a unique ideology that was neither dwait nor adwait. It was about purity of the soul. Even Prophet Mohammad finds mention and praise in Gorakh Vaani. This was a popular centre of meditation, not of politics as the case is today,” said Professor Chittranjan Mishra, head of department (Hindi), Gorakhpur University.

Another Gorakh Mutt scholar, Professor Pramod Pandey, who heads the sociology department, Gorakhpur University, claims Adityanath with his aggressive Hindutva agenda has distorted the Nathpanthi ideology.

“Nathpanth kabhi ugr Hindutva soch nahi thi (Nathpanth was never about hardline Hindutva). It was a progressive, reformist movement based on Gorakh Vaani, which for its literary and sociological value, is taught even today to our students.”

Experts claim the transition from spirituality to reactionary politics began around 100 years ago with the arrival of Mahant Digvijay Nath, who was also one of the founders of the Hindu Mahasabha. His name came up during the investigation into Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.
And then came the turn of his disciple Avaidyanath who represents Gorakhpur in the Lok Sabha.

“There are hints that the Mahants before Digvijay Nath were Dalits. But with him Hindutvasation and Kshatriyakaran of the Mutt started. He was a kshatriya and so were his two followers. Slowly, images and sculptures of Ram and Hanuman and verses from Ramayan started replacing images of Gorakhnath and his verses. It expanded from a humble fireplace to a 52-acre campus,” said Manoj Singh.

He added, “But things changed drastically with Adityanath. There is something about Adityanath that distinguishes him from the previous Mahants.”
While the ambitions of his predecessors were confined to Gorakhpur, Adityanath wants to play on a national stage. He has addressed 150 rallies in UP campaign, and is threatening to overshadow all other BJP leaders in and outside UP.
‘Habak na chalba, thabak na chalba, dheere dharba paon,’ goes a line of Gorakh Vaani. (Do not walk fast or jump, O selfless Sadhu, place your feet slowly.)
Adityanath has emerged as BJP’s power-centre in Poorvanchal. Since he jumped into electoral politics, in 1989, the party has maintained dominance over the area’s MLAs, city mayors, and Parliamentary seat.
On the other hand, though, he has not really achieved much outside Gorakhpur. In the 41 Assembly seats in the Gorakhpur–Basti belt under his leadership, the party has never secured more than 11 seats. This shows how, in this belt, which has a high percentage of Dalits, Adityanath has been popular only among few upper caste Hindu voters.

This time, the BJP’s prospects even within Gorakhpur look grim. Nishads, with about 1 lakh voters, have formed their own party. Kayasths have publicly supported the BSP, strong renegade BJP leaders are threatening to take down new BJP candidates in Gorakhpur district.

“The party is in such a bad shape that for the first time its party president has had to hold rallies here,” said Sunil Singh.
Being such a popular and powerful figure in his district, Yogi Adityanath holds a darbar outside his office in Gorakhpur Mutt every morning. Those whose voices aren’t heard by bureaucrats and police start assembling outside his office from 7am to seek an audience with him.

The venue of Yogi Adityanath's morning darbar.
On March 2, Adityanath was uncharacteristically late in his durbar. According to his assistants, Yogi Adityanath was busy meeting and talking to people on phone since 5 in the morning. Later in the day, he’d go and receive Amit Shah and hold a joint roadshow with him.
Adityanath arrived with his assistants only at 9. Media, eagerly waiting for a sound byte on the last day of campaigning in phase six, was lined up. Many wanted to get his views on the local newspaper advertisements that BJP had published that morning. It had Amit Shah’s face on it, not Adityanath’s. BJP had clearly shown the Mahant his place.
Unlike his usual practice of sitting on his customary chair, he stopped outside his office for a second — listening to his audience — and dismissed everyone immediately. “Chunaav ke baad aana,” he said while walking away from the people holding requests and recommendation letters in their hands.
Yogi Adityanath has achieved quite a lot at a remarkably young age of 44. But this time, he is fighting one of the toughest battles of his political life. On one hand, political parties like the BSP and the SP–Congress alliance threaten to invade into his political space. And on the other, disadvantaged communities like Nishads are for the first time fighting back to stake their claim on the Mutt, since, they claim, Gorakhnath’s guru Matsyendranath was a Nishad.
At this time, it may be wise for the Yogi to return to the timeless, memorable and instructive verses of Gorakh Vani.
‘Ye jag hai kaanto ki badhi, dekh dekh pag dharna,’ (This world is full of thorns, O Sadhu, tread very carefully.)