“The BJP is sweating in the winter of North India,” says Rakesh Tikait, president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) which helped build an unprecedented farmer’s resistance into the largest protests in world history, and eventually defeated three controversial new farm laws that had been strongarmed through parliament by Narendra Modi’s BJP in September 2020.
Tikait spoke to The Hindu after two phases of elections in Uttar Pradesh, the mammoth state of over 200 million citizens which dominates what is commonly known as “the cow belt of India.” About his own turf within that sprawl, he said “if the BJP could win one seat out of six in Muzaffarnagar, it should consider itself lucky. It is losing all three in neighbouring Shamli.”
He also made the important point that previously polarized communal relations, which have historically powered the politics of extremism in UP, have now drastically improved. “They have realised that mutual discord is harmful, and others are taking advantage of this distrust. Both the communities came together for the farmer’s agitation and its impact is now being seen in the elections.”
We won’t know the final results until March 10 -- when they will be announced for UP along with Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Goa -- and there are still five more phases to go.
Nonetheless, just like Tikait, many other informed observers have noted similar trends, which has doubtless set the alarm bells ringing in New Delhi. This is because Uttar Pradesh is an all-important political battleground, and what happens here will inevitably be understood as setting the pattern for national elections in 2024.
In addition, the state also offers another kind of preview, because this is where the BJP has given the rest of the country a glimpse of its potential future, after five years under chief minister Ajay Bisht (the monk-turned-politician who is generally referred to by his religious name of Yogi Adityanath).
Under this strident majoritarian hardliner, the people of UP have been subjected to the hard edge of Hindutva on full blast. These are no longer any kind of dog whistles, but instead only the piercing shriek of an oncoming train. At this point, no one could have any doubts about what’s approaching.
Is there really any substantive distance between Modi and Adityanath? Perhaps not, but when it comes to style, it’s more than enough to spark victory as opposed to defeat.
“The prime minister is a larger-than- life figure in the cow belt,” says Najeeb Jung, the former lieutenant governor of Delhi who was previously also vice-chancellor at Jamia Millia Islamia.
In an outstandingly assured, thoughtful, and balanced interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Jung explained that Modi is “a magnet to attract votes” in UP. “He is charismatic. He speaks so well. And the original magic which may have existed [in the minds of other Indians] still exists in the cow belt. Had he been the face of these elections in UP, it would have made a considerable difference.”
But the ruling party chose differently. Jung says, “not only the prime minister but even [the home minister] Mr Shah has not been the face of this election. It is Yogi Adityanath, and that carries with it the pluses of this government, as well as the baggage that he carries with him.”
The upshot, says Jung, is that “it is an extremely negative factor, and in fact it is [the absence of Mr Modi] that is the prime factor that will lead to the defeat of the BJP. I think it was a major tactical mistake.”
Of course, there are other reasons too. Jung listed some of them: The aftermath of the agonizing farmer protests, the unsolved problem of millions of stray cattle after Modi’s peremptory bans on cow slaughter and associated products, massive unemployment amongst the young, and Adityanath’s catastrophically incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Still, in the final reckoning, it seems that every other compulsion pales in comparison to the personal failure of the BJP’s up-and-coming poster boy. It leaves the party with an overriding conundrum. What’s Plan B?
The answer to that question is highly likely to be the same catch-all solution the BJP keeps on offering India, even after the massacres in Gujarat that took place under his watch precisely two decades ago this month: Modi, more Modi, then Modi again.
In 2024, precisely because of this dramatic scare in UP, it’s going to be the cult of personality on the largest scale the country has ever seen. But will that be enough to win over “the cow belt” once again?
For her insights, I reached out to my friend, the magisterially great Hindi novelist and writer Mridula Garg, whose award-winning oeuvre includes over 30 books in virtually every genre. The 83-year-old told me that: “Unfortunately the ‘Hindi heartland’ continues to suffer from misguided notions. They seem to believe that Adityanath would somehow bring back the mythical glorified past, with his schemes of corporate agriculture and industrial growth.”
What happens instead, says Garg is that “the costs are enormous. We lose freedom of expression, diversity of beliefs, and advancement of women or gender equality. In fact, the conviction that it is the duty of the establishment to ensure the safety of women from sexual assault has itself been sidelined.”
Garg explains: “The problem is that though deep and genuine pluralism does exist even now amongst the common populace of North and Central India, ironically, it is the educated middle class which is veering towards the idea of Hindu superiority. What fills me with dismay is the way high scholarly positions in universities are rapidly being filled with mediocre and diehard Hindutva believers, and the highest state literary awards are distributed like alms to mediocre sycophant writers and poets.”
It's a fraught situation, and the future could get even bleaker. With unmistakable sadness, Garg told me the relentless brutalization of the public sphere is “helping bring about an extinction of all “tehzeeb,” what to say of the long-eroding “Ganga-Jamuna” tehzeeb.”
Vivek Menezes is a writer based in Goa, India.