How UP cookie will crumble
Uttar pradesh’s regions spanning the west, east, centre and Bundelkhand, exist in silos, each with their own preoccupations and concerns conditioned by economics, geography and demography. However, come an election, political imperatives transcend the distinctive characteristics. UP votes as one state, and has lately, rooted for a single party or coalition. The fractured verdicts that threw UP into disarray in the past are history. The next Assembly election is about five months away. While a lull has seemingly descended over the east and central regions and Bundelkhand, the western belt is in ferment.
The farmers’ protests reflect west UP’s pre-election zeitgeist. The agitation, led by the Jat farmers, saw the emergence of Rakesh Tikait, the spokesperson of the BKU, as a force to reckon with, but Tikait’s resurrection had other after-effects. The maturation of Jayant Chaudhary, who heads the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), is a significant consequence of the agrarian churn. As long as his father, Chaudhary Ajit Singh was around (he passed away in May 2021), his scion lived in his shadow and fought the polls on the legacy of his grandfather, Chaudhary Charan Singh, that appeared to gradually fade away under the weight of the BJP and its Hindutva project. Jayant is the biggest beneficiary of the protests because on a reflex, he reacted the way a seasoned politician would: seize the moment and build on it.
Tikait imbued the movement with emotions that placed him on the centre stage; Jayant stirred the cauldron of sentiments and together they aroused feelings against the UP government. West UP covers the districts adjoining Delhi and Haryana known as the Jat belt, which is a misnomer because while the Jats once laid down the law, Mandal and the BSP phenomena saw the OBCs and the Dalits assert their political autonomy—Brijbhoomi and Rohilkhand hold 125 of the 403 Assembly seats. Large parts of this region, which voted for socialists, became BJP strongholds after 1989 and stayed that way. In the 1993 polls, which the SP and the BSP fought together, central and eastern UP slipped away from the BJP’s grasp, despite the party projecting it as a ‘referendum’ on the Babri mosque’s demolition but the west enabled the BJP to stay afloat. Even the BJP now privately admits it cannot take the west’s rural turf for granted because certain developments presage a shift on the ground.
On September 20, Jayant was anointed with the ‘Chaudhary’ prefix at a ‘rasam pagdi’ ceremony that heralded his arrival as the new political representative of the khaps across India. These informal village councils in North India that also work as quasi judicial bodies congregated at Chhaprauli in UP’s Baghpat district, the traditional seat of the Chaudhary family, and instated Jayant as the community head. This position was held by his father and grandfather. Rakesh Tikait and his brother, Naresh Tikait, who heads the BKU, attended the ritual in a political leg-up for Jayant.
However, Jayant’s RLD has its limitations. It can hope to address the Jats, a community that is not entirely trusted by the other upper castes, the OBCs and certainly not the Dalits who for years weren’t allowed by the Jats to independently exercise their franchise. Likewise, the BKU is straitjacketed with a Jat-exclusive appeal. The RLD’s alliance with the SP could give Jayant the lift he needs, provided SP president Akhilesh Yadav goes beyond getting the support of the Yadavs and ensures the Muslims vote almost en bloc for the coalition.
There are straws in the wind, which the political players might look to grasp before the moment passes. The Gurjar or Gujjars, an influential OBC community, that is generally loyal to the BJP, was in arms recently when the caste title ‘Gurjar’ went missing from the plaque of a statue of Mihir Bhoj, a ninth century king of the Gurjar-Pratihara dynasty, who is revered by the Gujjars. Last week, CM Yogi Adityanath unveiled Bhoj’s statue without the ‘Gurjar’ title which the community promptly construed as an affront to their history, and importantly, a tactic used by the Rajputs, Adityanath’s community, to appropriate a caste totem and embed him in their pantheon of greats. The Gujjars gathered at a mahapanchayat to register their objections. Such a development cannot bode well for the BJP that’s counting on the OBC votes to neutralise the prospective loss of Jat support.
On the other hand, is the SP-RLD fully assured of Jat backing? A throwback to recent history is useful to get a perspective on the Jat votes. West UP was seared by communal violence which originated in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 and pitted the Jats against Muslims. The Jats and Muslims, who shared a working relationship, became sworn adversaries and no attempt by the RLD to resurrect the metaphors that defined communal equations helped. The RLD was trounced in every election held since 2014. The Tikaits admitted they voted for the BJP in 2019. Even now, Rakesh Tikait sounds ambivalent.
In a recent interview, he claimed the BKU would remain ‘apolitical’, he would not share a political platform with the RLD and that many of his comrades would still vote the BJP because of ‘local pressures’. To try and mollify the farmers, Adityanath hiked the state administered price of sugarcane by Rs 25 per quintal, the first raise in his tenure. That might not be enough of a sweetener because one of the BJP’s MP, Varun Gandhi, demanded that the price be augmented by another Rs 25 to take it to Rs 400 per quintal.
The imponderables have made the scenario uncertain for the players in the prelude to the elections.
