Yogi and his incendiary message

“I voted for Modi, not for Yogi,” said one of my friends after Yogi Adityanath was appointed as the chief minister of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

My friend being a Hindu, voted for Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) in the recently concluded UP state elections. Though this doesn’t mean that Muslims who account for about 18% of the population in the state did not vote for the BJP, however, the reverse polarisation by the BJP, ie, exclusively appeasing Hindu votes garnered much more attraction from the majority.

But contrary to what people expected from the BJP, they appointed Yogi Adityanath, a radical Hindutva leader, as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Known for his penchant for pitching Hindutva and raising tempers against minority appeasement, the five-time Gorakhpur MP emerged as a “surprise choice” for some and a “shocking package” for others.

Controversial figure: Adityanath is a priest who left his home in the ‘90s to join the Ayodhya Ram Temple movement, a volatile incident that killed over 2,000 people in a dispute over Babri Mosque and Lord Rama’s birthplace.

He is a controversial figure, known for making misogynist, anti-Muslim and inflammatory speeches. Over the years, Adityanath has established himself as the foremost firebrand Hindutva leader.

Two years ago, he wanted Muslim places of worship to feature Hindu deities. “If given a chance, we will install statues of the goddess Gauri, Ganesh and Nandi in every mosque,” he was quoted as saying at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Virat Hindu Sammelan in Varanasi.

He had also made polarising statements about ‘love jihad’ — an alleged conspiracy by Muslim men to seduce Hindu women and convert them to Islam. He faces criminal charges in multiple cases, including attempt to murder, criminal intimidation, rioting, promoting enmity between different groups, and defiling a place of worship. In 2007, he was detained for 15 days for allegedly inciting riots in Gorakhpur.

In 2016, Adityanath said that the family of a Muslim man who had been lynched for allegedly consuming beef in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, should face criminal charges. The same year he said that incidents of ‘Christianisation’ had led to separatist movements in northeast India. In an undated video uploaded in August 2014, he said, “If Muslims take one Hindu girl, we’ll take 100 Muslim girls. If they kill one Hindu, we’ll kill 100 Muslims.”

Adityanath is also the founder of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an organisation that has often been at the helm of instigating communal tension. One of its members was found saying it was all right to ‘rape dead Muslim women.’ Adityanath has had a running tussle with the state police and administration that he will now be presiding over, which has had to step in time and again to prevent him from visiting communally sensitive areas.

Since presiding over: Ever since Yogi Aditynath presided over, he has gone a tone softer making repeated claims that his government will channel the development for all the communities and religions. However, he immediately took stringent action against the closure of illegal slaughterhouses in the state. Cow slaughter is already banned in Uttar Pradesh, since it is considered a holy animal among Hindus, however, the closure has affected the markets of buffalo meat, mutton and even chicken.

Making of a Hindutva state: I feel things have started to take this shape ever since the BJP came to power in 2014 and Modi became the Hindutva image. A popular leader among the Hindus who rose from dedicating much of his career to a Hindu nationalist group called the RSS.

Two days ago, I met my friend again, this time he seemed less astonished and pledged alliance to the state chief minister, like many including the media, who is now busy doing an image makeover of the radical leader. Now, even his past critics believe that Adityanath deserves a chance. A chance? A chance for Adityanath to convert UP into a Hindu state?

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2017.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.