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The Messages, Mathematics and Silences that Formed the

BJPs UP Win

The Bharatiya Janata Party consolidated the support of the leftover castes such as the Gujjar,
Tyagi, Brahmin, Saini and Kashyap who are not counted in the typical matrix fashioned for years on
the basis of the dominant groupings like the Jats, Muslims and Dalits. Accompanying the
mathematics were a slew of ideas about Muslims and Yadavs as oppressors, and a strategic silence
so as to not polarise all Muslim votes to benet the BSP.

Radhika Ramaseshan (ramaseshan.radhika@gmail.com) is with the Business Standard.

The rst striking feature of the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh polls was the ambiguity or the silence
maintained by the Hindu voters, especially those from the upper castes who have been vocal in
articulating their preferences in previous elections.

Whenever we met the Brahmins, Rajputs and Baniassingly or in small groups, we found them
curiously reticent, replying in generic terms about the principal parties and contestants in their
constituencies. In the past their answers would be contextualised in a broader perspective,
embellished with historical nuggets, statistical data (subject to cross-verication) and insightful
anecdotes.

The second aspect was the nuanced Muslim responses which ranged from spurts of enthusiasm for
the Samajwadi Party(SP) Indian National Congress (henceforth, the Congress) alliance in the rst two
phases of polling in western UP and Rohilkhand. In the rounds that followed thereafter, the
enthusiasm turned into confusion as to whether the SP-Congress formation or the Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) was better positioned to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It further tuned into
indierence in the slog overs of the elections where, if anything, the minorities would be expected to
poll more enthusiastically.

By the time polling moved to eastern UP in the sixth and seventh phases, the Hindus were markedly
more aggressive about voting for the BJP. These included core BJP voters who stood by the party
through its highs and lows as well as an expanded constituency that aligns itself with the BJP
whenever it sees the party as a winner. When the long-drawn electioneering peaked in Prime
Minister Narendra Modis road shows and stopovers at vantage political points like a Yadav
monastery in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, the Hindu voters came out of their cocoons and
the election re-evoked the high-decibel ambience of 2014.
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Strategic Silences

This shift has been dened as strategic silence by representatives of the BJP and the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) who were on the ground or engaged in backroom planning. The phrase is
not novel in UPs political lexicon. In the 1993 state elections held a year after the Babri mosque was
demolished, Muslims had adopted the same tactic. They would not reveal who they were voting for,
unless one happened to know the community members and their opinion-moulders well enough to
be taken into condence. Conventional electoral wisdom had it that the Muslim votes would be
shared by the edgling SP-BSP alliance and the Janata Dal and therefore the division would work to
the BJPs advantage. But Muslims sensed that the SP-BSP combine had begun to attract the
backward castes and Dalits in big numbers and was emerging as the BJPs most formidable
contender.

Barring western UP, where the BJP managed to hold its ground because of the absence of the SP in
many places and because of the BSPs inability to suciently challenge the BJP on its own, the SP-
BSP beat the BJP in large parts of the central and eastern districts and became the single largest
alliance to eventually form a government, albeit ashort-lived one.

Muslim leaders later described the tactic as a sochi-samjhi ranneeti (well-thought out strategy),
crafted to confound the other side. They said that the message was communicated through an
ecient bush telegraph but it had escaped the RSS-BJPs attention. Indeed, in 1993 the Hindus
aligned with the BJP were so condent of its victory that on polling days, they took their time to vote.
It was by noon that they rushed to the booths when they saw that the Muslim turnout could
outnumber that of the Hindus.

Western UP

In 2017, in the rst phase of elections in west UPs Jatlandwhich incidentally also has a high
Muslim, Dalit and backward castess presencethe pre-poll narrative was moulded by the anger
spewed over Modi by the Jats. It was provoked by the BJPs faulty ticket distribution, thecentres
failure to give Jats reservation, demonetisation, the appointment of a non-Jat like Manohar Lal
Khattar as the Haryana chief minister and the fury of the small traders and retailers over the
damages suered after notebandi.

In trading hubs such as Saharanpur and Bijnor (which went to polls in phase two), the traders and
retailers were upset with the centre for prodding the income tax department to issue notices through
text messages on their mobile phones, which sought a time-bound explanation for the amounts that
were deposited into their bank accounts after the demonetisation announcement. In these two
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towns, the traders collectively decided to not vote for the BJP and to opt for NOTA. By contrast, the
Muslims, who were full of beans over the SP-Congress tie-up, left none in doubt about their choice.

The results revealed something dierent: the BJP scored impressively in western UP and Rohilkhand,
nearly on a par with its showing in 2014. According to NDTVs estimates of the phase-wise polling
percentages, the BJP obtained 43.72% of the votes in western UP and 39.82% in Rohilkhand. On 16
March, The Wire carried a report by Anoop Sadanandan about How Dainik Jagrans exit poll helped
the BJP sweep UP, placing the BJPs vote share at 45.06% in phase one and 40.04% in phase two,
sourced to the Chief Electoral Ocer, UttarPradesh website.Inuential as the daily Dainik Jagran has
been in taking up the BJP since the years of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, the partys consistently
upward swing in the seven phases cannot be ascribed to a single exit poll.

Leftover castes

Bureaucrats in Lucknow, a few of whom hailed from western UP, cited one major reason: the BJP had
consolidated the support of the leftover castes such as the Gujjar, Tyagi, Brahmin, Saini and
Kashyap who are often not counted in the typical matrix which fashioned for years on the basis of
the dominant groupings like the Jats, Muslims and Dalits (the Yadavs have a small presence in this
region). The BJP discovered the untapped numerical potential of the unseen groupings. It not only
elded many candidates from these groups but also co-opted them in other ways. Chandramohan,
an RSS pracharak (whole-timer) from Bulandshahr, said that when the BJP president Amit Shah
constituted committees to oversee each polling booth, he was directed by the RSS to include
members of the less visible castes in these 25-member panels so that they felt wanted. The sense
of belonging did not cease with the inductions. Suggestions were elicited from these caste
representatives and at times implemented to give them a feeling of empowerment, said
Chandramohan.

A bureaucrat explained that an archetypal western UP assembly constituency has three lakh voters,
of which Muslims account for a lakh and the Dalits (predominantly the Jatavs, the sub-caste to which
the BSP leader Mayawati belongs) and Jats for 50 to 60,000 each. The remaining numbers are made
up of the less visible castes and add up to nearly a lakh. This was the pile the BJP seriously looked
at as its anchor because at that point it was unsure about the Jats who were apparently rooting for
Ajit Singhs RashtriyaLok Dal (RLD).

Thwarting Muslims from the BSP

The second part of the BJPs game-plan was elaborated upon by a top leader who confessed that
phase one was a doordie round for him not because of the Jats but the BSP. His estimate was that
in 55 of the 73 constituencies, the prospective combine of Muslims and Jatavs that Mayawati had set
her sights upon was a sure winner. Imagine, if the BSP had got 50 of these seats, we could have lost
the election because this would have demoralised our workers straightaway, he said. Fortunately
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for the BJP and unfortunately for the BSP, the Muslim-Jatav combine did not fall in place.

At this juncture, word spread that the SP-Congress alliance was in fact on the upswing. The RSS and
the BJP covertly pushed the word, convinced that this was the only way to thwart the Muslims from
going the BSPs way. Clearly, the Muslims, who otherwise astutely gure out the arithmetical heft (or
lack of it) of a party or an alliance, did not calculate that barring their votes, the SP-Congress was not
assured of another bankable constituency. It was an emotional response. The image of Akhilesh
Yadav is good, he is an inclusive leader. The idea of the Congress is important because nationally it
is still the only party that can confront the BJP. Together we inferred that they would come to
power, said Moradabads Urdu scholar Murtaza Iqbal. While the combine easily won the seats with
strong Muslim electorateslike six of the eight in Iqbals MoradabadLok Sabha
constituencywherever the Hindus coalesced into one force, the BJP had the upper hand as in
Deoband, the seat of a reputed Islamic seminary.

The Muslim as the Oppressor

If mathematics was one aspect of the BJPs nessed blueprint, its messaging was the other.

Bhupinder Singh, also an RSS pracharak in western UP, said the central theme of the Sangh
fraternitys message to the Hindus was Man hee man se vote dejiye, sayam rakhiye apne vani par
(vote with your minds, be restrained in using your voice). Parsed, it meant do not advertise your
choice. The votes had to be silent, it had to be a vote against secularism and a vote that placed
Hindu values above ones caste. At the same time, we had to be mindful of not polarising the Muslim
votes one way, said Singh.

Lucknow ocialdoms information was that the RSSs volunteers, replenished by the
swayamsevaks from Gujarat, went door-to-door in the west, purveying a slew of ideas,drawn from
their pet theories about the Muslims. One of these were that until the BJP was voted to power in
Gujarat, the Muslims had the right of way over everything, including the seats on state buses. They
would place their skull caps on the seats and no Hindu would dare to touch them. That practice has
since ceased, an RSS activist claimed. Another theory was that if Muslims were re-elected in big
numbers as in 2012, they would take over the police and administration and use their clout
toharass Hindu women.

Muslims were held culpable for causing large-scale palayan, or the exodus ,of Hindus seeking to
protect the honour of their womenagainst the gangs who were running western UP. When the
BJPs Kairana MP Hukum Singh agged the issue and released lists of the migrants in June 2016, an
investigation by the Indian Expressfound that most of them had left to seek better business
opportunities. A few said that they left willingly because they found the environment tense after the
Muzaarnagar riots of 2013. Singhs daughter, Mriganka, contested the assembly polls on the issue
of palayan and was defeated by Nahida Hasan of the SP.Another report in the Indian Express by
Harish Damodaran (20 June2016) showed that western UP sugarcane growers were more
preoccupied with the non-payment of dues by the sugar mills than by palayan.
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The BJPs Saharanpur MP Raghav Lakhanpal also raised the matter before the assembly polls,
alleging that the murder of a local trader had forced several businessmen out of the town. Neither
he nor the BJPs Saharanpur leaders had their names. Jaswant Batra, the vice-president of the towns
traders association and a BJP member, categorically stated that the only migrations that took place
were back in 2000 when Uttarakhand was carved out of UP because businessmen saw the new state
as an attractive proposition.

The image of the Muslim as an oppressor was embodied in three political personas. The best
known was SPs senior minister and Rampur legislator Mohammad Azam Khan, known for courting
controversies through his intemperate statements. The other was the Congress leader from
Saharanpur, Imran Masood who was booked in 2014 for making a hate speech against Modi. The
BJP demonised him so excessively that he lost his seat, Nakur. The last was Mukhtar Ansari who
despite being in the Lucknow jail for years on charges of murders always wins his seat in Mau,
eastern UP. He won this election too from the BSP but the BJP painted him as a criminal.

Another idea propagated was that jobs in the police and administration would be cornered either
by the Yadavs and Muslims (in that order) or by the Jatavs, if the SP and Mayawati were elected.
Therefore, the BJP was the only party that can re-empower Hindus and bring them back in the
system.

Overall, the notion of us versus them worked but largely so in western UP and principally in
Rohilkand because Muslims constitute over 30% of the population, outnumbering the Hindus in
places like Rampur. The RSS-BJPs campaign achieved its goal: the number of elected Muslim
legislators dropped from 68 in 2012 to 25 in 2017.

Eastern UP

In the lower Doab, Avadh and eastern UP zones, the conception of the Yadav as bully and
oppressor was played up by the BJP to rst consolidate the votes of the upper castes and then
regroup the non-Yadav backward castes and the disempowered Dalits. But true to the RSSs diktat,
the stratagem to isolate the Yadavs was calibrated skilfully in order to not entirely alienate this caste
and importantly, not to lose sight of the Muslim as the main adversary of the Hindu. This was why in
central and eastern UP, the propaganda about Hindus being discriminated againstwhich was
themed around the denial of land to crematoriums and the allocation of spaces to
burialgroundsresonated even in the rural areas, more so after Modi spoke of the pursuit of double
standards for dierent faiths by comparing the shamshanghat with the kabristhan.

It was evident that the message had got across as far as a village in Bahraich on the India-Nepal
border from what Shiv Kumar Shukla, a farmer in Kunari Bangla, said. I live amidst a large number
of Muslims and Yadavs and both vote for the SP. I cannot risk enmity with either because we are
inter-dependent in many ways. At the same time, I want Modi to succeed in this election because a
BJP government alone can give me security. The Muslims attack our DurgaPuja procession every
year. The Yadavs have conscated eight bighas of land belonging to my son-in-law. But nobody is
ready to le a complaint because everyone at the police station, from top to down, is a Yadav,
alleged Shukla.
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On the opposite side of Shuklas home sat a group of Muslims, oblivious to what he thought. They did
not factor the BJP in their assessment. Its a ght between the SP and the BSP and we are certain
that most Hindus will vote for the SP, said Aqeel Ahmed, a small businessman.

In eastern UP, the historically disadvantaged castes like the Chouhan(salt makers),Nishad (sherfolk)
and the Musahars(who catch rats, collect honey and stitch leaf plates) rallied around the BJP, helping
the party rub o its historical association with the upper castes for the time being at least.

But there was a twist in the tale that became apparent in a village, Samedha, just outside Azamgarh
in eastern UP. Here, a Rajput, proud of his uency in English, refused to disclose his name because
the RSS-BJP had asked him to be discreet. His sprawling house located in the middle of wheat and
mustard elds unmistakeably reinforced his status as an inuential resident although the ocially
elected pradhan belonged to the numerically large Rajbhar caste. He claimed that the BJP leaders of
Azamgarh courted him knowing well that only a Rajput can swing the votes of the backward castes
and the Dalits for them.

Conclusions

In eect, the upper castes, who voted their hearts out for the BJP, were central to the methodology
the party used for its social expansion. At the apex stood the Brahmins, Rajputs and Banias who
concluded that neither the SP nor the BSP served their long-term interests. In 2007, the upper castes
had rooted for the BSP to unseat an incumbent SP government. In 2012, they returned to the SP to
punish Mayawati for allegedly misusing The SC and the ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act) 1989 against
them. In both these elections, the BJP did not come across as a serious bidder for power.

With the BJP re-establishing pre-eminence in UP under Modi in 2014 after a hiatus, 2017 marked a
gharwapasi (homecoming) for the upper castes. The caste and communal dynamics that played out
through the various phases were wrapped in Modis version of development. At the core lay the
RSS and the BJPs fundamental belief that the minorities can be relegated to the fringes of UPs polity
in an order where the savarnas can be expected to call the shots.

However, the vote percentages that the other two parties securedthe SP got 21.8% out of the 298
seats it contested and its ally the Congress got 6.2% from the 105 seats it fought on while the BSP
managed 22.2 %proved that their base support was intact, belying the BJPs claim that it had
weaned chunks away from the SPs Yadavs and the BSPs Jatavs. The BJPs biggest challenge will be
keeping the edice of the upper castes, the most backward castes and the disempowered Dalits
structure it has raised in a monolith before the next elections.
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