ML Update
A CPI(ML) Weekly News Magazine
Vol. 20 | No.13| 21- 27 March 2017
Adityanath As UP CM Exposes Communal Core Of
Modi’s Pro-Corporate ‘Development’ Agenda
The BJP won
decisive victories in the Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.
However, in Goa, the mood of the mandate was certainly against the ruling BJP,
with six of eight sitting BJP Ministers including the outgoing CM losing the
elections and the Congress emerging as the single largest party. The BJP
however effected a virtual coup in Goa, patching together a post-poll coalition
with the legislators of the Gowa Forward Party that had projected itself as a
staunchly secular party, as well as the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP)
and several other MLAs who had contested the elections on a specifically
anti-BJP plank. In a shocking breach of propriety, the Goa Governor admitted
that she consulted the Union Finance Minister and BJP leader Arun Jaitley
before choosing to invite the BJP to form Government in Goa. In Manipur also,
where there was a hung Assembly with the Congress as the single largest party,
the BJP cobbled together an opportunist post-poll alliance with some MLAs to
stake claim to form government, with the cooperation of the Governor. In Uttar Pradesh
as well, the BJP’s choice of Chief Minister amounts to an attempt to manipulatively
interpret the mandate as being for an explicit agenda of aggressive Hindutva.
The BJP’s poll campaign sought a mandate based on overt promises of pro-poor
‘development’ and ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ (Inclusion and Development For All),
accompanied with calculated doses of communal dog-whistles about ‘Romeo squads’
or ‘shamshan vs kabristan.’ The choice of Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister
mocks any notion of inclusiveness or development, since Adityanath’s only USP
is naked, blatant communal, casteist, and patriarchal hate-mongering and
violence.
The BJP has
tried to soften the decision by appointing two Deputy CMs including Keshav
Prasad Maurya, whose appointment as BJP State President had helped win the
support of many backward castes for the BJP. But it is starkly clear that
Adityanath’s appointment as CM, far from signaling a nod to voter fatigue with ‘caste-based
politics’ or to inclusion of the hitherto marginalized non-Yadav BCs and
non-Jatav Dalits, on the contrary signals a return to upper caste consolidation
in Uttar Pradesh politics.
Yogi Adityanath
has earned notoriety as a communal bigot, whose private militia Hindu Yuva
Vahini is responsible for fomenting communal violence all over eastern Uttar
Pradesh. Adityanath himself has several serious criminal charges pending
against him.
In a series of
inflammatory speeches over the years, he has threatened to “kill 100 Muslims
for every Hindu killed”; “get 100 Muslim girls into the Hindu fold for every
Hindu girl who marries a Muslim”; “install statues of Gauri and Ganesh in every
mosque”; he has advised those who do not do yoga or worship Lord Shankar to
“leave the country”; to organize a boycott of actor Shah Rukh Khan’s films
which would reduce him to “wandering on the streets like an ordinary Muslim.”
He has publicly recommended curbs on Muslim population so as to avoid riots. In
his approving presence his supporters have made public speeches calling for
stripping Muslims of the right to vote and raping the corpses of dead Muslim
women.
Till recently,
prominent defenders and ideologues of the Modi Government were prone to argue
that Modi stood for a lofty ideal of ‘development’ while it was only a ‘lunatic
fringe’ represented by the likes of Adityanath who indulged in communal
hate-speech and violence. Some of Modi’s most ardent supporters had even gone
to the extent of demanding publicly that Adityanath be thrown out of the BJP
and jailed. BJP’s choice of UP Chief Minister has put paid to all such claims
of tensions in the saffron camp between the ‘development’ agenda and the
communal one. It underlines the basic unity and continuity in agendas of the
Prime Minister, the central government, and the RSS, marked by a simultaneous
pursuit of aggressive pro-corporate and communal Hindutva goals. Essentially,
the so-called saffron Hindutva ‘fringe’ actually constitutes the core of BJP’s
and the Modi Government’s politics, where communal rhetoric coexists with
rhetoric of corporate-led development and digitalization.
Adityanath is on
record opposing women’s reservation in political forums on the grounds that
this has a bad impact on their primary roles as mothers and wives and adopting
‘masculine roles’ turns women into ‘demons.’ He has argued openly for women to be
kept under masculine restrictions and regulation by their father, husbands or
sons. He is also on record asking for restrictions on SC/ST and OBC
reservations. Such views are a reminder that the ‘New India’ goal that Modi
speaks of is nothing more or less than the Hindu Rashtra, where the
obscurantist and hierarchical worldview of the RSS constitutes the core of all
the BJP’s rhetoric of modern economic ‘empowerment’ and ‘development.’ That worldview, apart from being inimical to
the identity and rights of Muslims and various other minority communities as
equal citizens, is intensely hostile to bids for equality and dignity of women
or oppressed and backward castes.
Ever since Modi
became Prime Minister in May 2014, his agenda of corporate-communal fascism has
been met with powerful all-round resistance and democratic assertion, every
step of the way. March 2017 will in no way dampen this resistance and
assertion, and will instead unleash new waves of people’s struggles.
