Actors Arun Govil and Dipika Chikhlia Topiwala, famous for their portrayal of Ram and Sita, dressed in bright golden yellow and red, walked the streets of Ayodhya invoking memories of Ramanand Sagar’s television series Ramayana ahead of the Ram temple consecration ceremony on January 22.
They were welcomed with flowers and adulation as they described Ram Temple as Rashtra Mandir. In a deeply religious atmosphere, none could have imagined that in two months, Govil will enter the political arena to fight the Meerut Lok Sabha seat for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming elections.
Meerut is the nerve centre of a prosperous but highly polarised western Uttar Pradesh that is going to the polls in the first two phases of the elections and will indicate the way the electoral wind is likely to blow for the rest of the state.
Way back before the 2012 assembly polls, the Mufti of Muzaffarnagar Zulfiqar Ali had said lyrically, “Jo hawa purab ke kheton se chali hai woh ab ganne ke kheton tak pahunch gayi hai” (The air that started blowing from the fields of East has now reached the cane fields of West). The polling trends in the seven-phase UP assembly polls had moved from east to west; it had then favoured the Samajwadi Party (SP), which formed its first government under chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.
Thanks to the penetration of mobile phones, the voters tend to follow the initial voting pattern in the rest of the phases.
Experts say it happens only when the elections are swept by a wave like in 2014.
Today, the temple wave, generated by the BJP, cannot be denied but to intensify it further in western UP, the BJP has sent Govil who will continue to rekindle the memories of the temple movement. Interestingly, the participation of people from the western part of the state in the temple movement of the 1990s was comparatively low compared to the east for geographical reasons.
Keeping the temple momentum high, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has been saying at ongoing conclaves about the tradition of Holi celebrations in Ayodhya. “We all have been hearing the song for a long time, ‘Holi Khele Raghuveera Avadh Mein, Holi Khele Raghuveera', but this is the first time Ram played Holi in Ayodhya and now the lanes of Mathura and Vrindavan are waiting."
It may be recalled here that a court case is ongoing to resolve the Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Idgah dispute in Mathura.
Yogi also said the bhajan or religious song on play in the country is, ‘Jo Ram Ko Laaye hai, Hum Unko Laayenge’ as Govil sat next to him.
The first phase, for which polling will be held on April 19, is most crucial for the BJP as it covers Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina, Moradabad, Rampur and Pilibhit Lok Sabha seats.
Five of them were won by the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in 2019 when the BJP along with its allies won 64 seats.
At stake this time is the prestige of Jitin Prasad, son of the late Congress stalwart Jitendra Prasad, who moved to the BJP from Congress and became a cabinet minister in the Yogi government. He is contesting from Pilibhit constituency, close to his home town of Shahjahanpur.
Interestingly, Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun have had a 35-year-long association with the district which has a sizable Sikh Population. But the BJP high command took the risk of replacing the sitting MP Varun Gandhi with Jitin Prasad, who will have to work hard to win the seat. Varun has withdrawn from the scene after sending an emotional letter to his constituents. The reunion of the Gandhi siblings- Rahul, Priyanka and Varun, has been in discussion for long.
The political strength of the Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary, who snapped ties with SP and joined hands with the BJP after his grandfather Charan Singh was awarded with Bharat Ratna will also be tested in this election. However, he has to assuage the angry-agitating farmers, the majority of whom are Jats, his caste.
Rampur is yet another seat, which SP was eyeing but its last-minute flip-flop under incarcerated Azam Khan’s pressure has ruffled feathers in the party; SP had lost the seat to the BJP in the 2021 by-polls.
The communal polarisation of western UP started after the Maliyana communal riots in 1987. It had deepened by the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. So much so that even in the 2019 elections, protesting farmers were determined to defeat the Modi government but they eventually voted in favour of the BJP. As they themselves said: “The farmers turned Hindus”.
The social fabric has not been repaired despite efforts made by Chaudhary.
Thus, not only does the political temperament of the voters differ from the rest of the state, but their poll issues vary too: Caste, cane and communal polarisation will decide the outcome.
According to Jagat Singh, who has watched and analysed the politics of the state since the days of late Prime Minister Charan Singh, cane is the lifeline of the region. In the words of farmer leader Choudhury Diwaker, the 5.3 million cane growers of the region decide the election from MP down to the ward level. And there are always pending dues for the government to clear.
Interestingly, Dalits are also economically and socially strong in western UP, which became a centre of the Dalit movement under Kanshi Ram’s leadership in the 1990s. Which way would they vote this time?
The western part of UP is spread over 21 districts. The dominant castes are Muslims, Jats, Gujjars and Dalits. According to the 2001 census, Muslims constitute 25.89% of the population. The region has 22 Lok Sabha seats.
Sunita Aron is a consulting editor with the HT based in Lucknow. You can find her on X as @overto. The weekly column, Keeping up with UP tackles everything from politics to social and cultural mores in the country's most populous state. The views expressed are personal.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Tarik Cyril Amar
Rachel Marsden
Bradley Blankenship
Michael Kwet
visit website
