YOGIC POSTURE

Why Hindutva’s street fighter refuses to deviate from his cause

At his official residence, 19 Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Road in Delhi, the BJP Member of Parliament Yogi Adityanath meets all visitors. They are politely asked to remove their shoes before entering the office. Here they are first offered prasad and then asked to wait till they are called to an adjacent room, where Adityanath sits with an associate. He spends around two minutes with every visitor and instructs his staffer to look into the matter if necessary. One visitor introduces himself as the block president of Hindu Jagran Manch, Laxmi Nagar, New Delhi. He requests Adityanath’s presence at a function scheduled for 24 December. Adityanath politely declines, for he would not be available that day.

“You are Hindu Hriday Samrat,” says the person.

Adityanath smiles and responds: “But I am not in Delhi on that day. There are prior engagements in my constituency.”

The engagement that has kept Adityanath in the news, however, was supposed to be held on 25 December in Aligarh—a mass conversion planned by the Manch that has now been called off. This is among the Hindutva issues that have drawn the MP into the spotlight, much to the discomfort of the moderate wing of his own party. “This [controversy] is not something I try to stir. I am a very silent person who doesn’t speak just like that. Each time, the media approaches me with a question on certain issues; I just express my thoughts. It is you guys who make it sensational,” he says.

Adityanath presents himself as someone who is not a loose cannon like some of the other BJP saffronites. He claims to weigh every word before he speaks. “What did I say on conversion? There is a difference between conversion and ghar vapasi. When somebody forces a religion on someone and asks them to convert without their real consent, that is forceful conversion, and take my words, I am totally against it,” he says. “Whether it is a conversion forced by Hindus or Muslims or any other community, I oppose that. But if someone says a converted Hindu wants to come back to Hinduism willingly, it’s our duty to support him and it is his constitutional right to do so.”

Yogi Adityanath has been elected to the Lok Sabha from the constituency of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh five times. In the recent Assembly bypolls, as chief of the BJP’s campaign committee, he almost became the face of the party in the state; and either coincidentally or deliberately, a scare over ‘Love Jihad’ seemed to become central to the party’s electoral strategy. Adityanath mentioned it in every poll speech. Even now, after the phenomenon seems largely discredited after the Meerut girl who sparked it off admitted that she’d lied about being gang-raped and converted to Islam, Adityanath still speaks of it as a ‘problem’.

“Love Jihad is a social and national problem,” he says, “Jihad in the name of love is unacceptable and only a BJP government in the state can stop the forceful conversion of Hindu girls.” Despite such an aggressive campaign posture, the election didn’t go too well and voices within the party began to rise against him. But he still enjoys the confidence of the senior BJP leadership, including Prime Minister Modi and party president Amit Shah. The reason is simple: he is undoubtedly popular and has a wide following that spans all of eastern UP and some parts of the border districts of Bihar and Nepal. That he can win votes in these regions is clear to the party leadership. “He believes more in reaching out to people, and that has made him a star in his own right,” says Dr Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, a party MLA from Gorakhpur, “He doesn’t need some charisma to win an election. He wins on his own because people love him.”

Several factors contribute to his public appeal and the most significant is his association with the Gorakhnath Math. Situated a little south of the city, the temple is the biggest shrine of the Nath religious sampradaya or tradition. Gorakhpur derives its name from the shrine that was built in the memory of Gorakshanath, a saint of the tradition. Unlike other Hindu orders, the Nath Sampradaya doesn’t believe in caste divisions among Hindus, and lets non-Brahmins become temple priests; the mahants of the main shrine, for example, are only Rajputs. The math there controls two Gorakhnath temples, one in Gorakhpur and other in Nepal. For years, this religious site has been the central point for all Hindu religious activity in the region. The former king of Nepal, Birendra Bikram Shah, used to visit this temple every year in January, when a month-long fair would be held on its premises.

The temple has a history of association with politics. Its one-time mahant Digvijay Nath had joined the Congress back in 1921 and was even arrested for taking part in the Chauri Chaura incident. And in 1949, it was Digvijay Nath who was responsible for having the idols of Lord Rama and Sita furtively placed inside the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, which resulted in the mosque being locked for decades. The 1949 incident established the Gorakhnath Math as a leader of the saffron cause. Digvijay Nath’s successor as mahant, Avaidyanath was also active in politics and was elected as an independent MP from Gorakhpur twice—in 1970 and 1989—before he joined the BJP, which had taken up the Ram Janmbhoomi movement for a temple to replace the mosque. He later won elections twice on a BJP ticket (in 1991 and 1996).

Adityanath was born as Ajay Singh in Uttarakhand. He took sanyas at the age of 22, arrived at the Gorakhnath Math after renouncing his worldly life and became the successor of Avaidyanath, who was withdrawing from active politics on account of poor health. In 1998, Adityanath fought his first Lok Sabha election from Gorakhpur and became the country’s youngest MP at the age of 26; he has held the seat ever since. He was rather shy initially and didn’t like speaking for long, but has emerged over the years as a speaker who knows the pulse of his audience.

Following the tradition of his gurus, Adityanath has expanded the political imprint of the math in Gorakhpur and nearby districts. His support plays a crucial role in the awarding of BJP assembly or Lok Sabha tickets. As a young face of Hindutva, he has tried to draw more youth into the fold by setting up the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an outfit that has branches in various villages in all districts of eastern UP and some parts of Nepal. He is now trying to expand the Vahini’s reach to states like Bihar and Uttarakhand.

In 2007, Adityanath was so confident of his support base that he was planning to fight elections sans BJP support, under the Hindu Mahasabha banner. But a compromise was reached after the BJP gave him the authority to select its candidates for eastern UP seats.

Like all good politicians, he keeps his constituency well engaged. Before he became an MP, Gorakhpur had a reputation of criminals fighting over railway tenders. “His biggest contribution to the city is a normal life for everyone. Criminals have vanished,” says real estate dealer Rajan Rai. “Businesses have really flourished in his tenure.”

When in Gorakhpur, Adityanath holds a janata darbaar every morning. Anyone is free to come and meet him. He instructs his staff to write letters or make calls to concerned authorities immediately. He is branded a ‘Hindu leader’, but minorities, especially Muslims, also solicit his assistance. The temple premises are surrounded by small Muslim colonies, and most of them depend on the temple for their livelihood, selling the devout tiny items. “We are as safe as anyone else here. He takes care of us,” says Naeem Ali, a footwear shop owner who lives in an area behind the temple. The Hindu Yuva Vahini has been accused of instigating riots, but for the last many years, Gorakhpur has not seen any religious violence.

Dr Agarwal remembers visiting a site with Adityanath where BJP workers were carrying out construction work. Unhappy with the quality of the work, Adityanath asked the villagers to demolish the structure. “Workers are only a medium to reach people. If there is some negligence on their part, it’s my duty to make them more disciplined and committed,” says Adityanath.

He is not a lazy parliamentarian. In the current Lok Sabha, he has almost 100 per cent attendance and has participated in 18 debates. He has even initiated some on his party’s behalf. He has asked 89 questions, related mostly to religious issues and problems of his constituency.

He also speaks his mind, even if it goes against the party. In 2012, he openly criticised the BJP’s UP leadership for taking the tainted Babu Singh Kushwaha into the party. None of it has done his career in politics any harm. “I am completely dedicated to our Prime Minister’s agenda of growth and a clean India. The rest are my personal opinions and there is no conflict of interest,” he says.

But won’t his own views on issues like conversion overshadow the Prime Minister’s development and governance agenda? “Don’t get driven by what the opposition says,” he replies, “Conversions used to happen in the past and will continue in future regardless of which government is there [in power]. If any government—say, the UP government— wants, it can bring in a law banning conversion and I will support that.”

Meanwhile, his local popularity appears to be going up. In September, he was anointed the peethadheeshwar mahant of the Gorakhnath Math after the death of his guru, Avaidyanath. Adityanath now has direct control of several educational institutes and hospitals run by the Gorakhnath Trust. And he is better known across the country than he had perhaps ever dreamt of.

For the moment at least, he can shoot his mouth off and all that his party leaders can do is look displeased. But they really can’t shut him up.

AdityanathBJP leaderconversionHinduismMuslims