[Few decisions in Indian politics matter more than the selection of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, because the post is seen as a springboard for future prime ministers. At the age of 45, the diminutive, baby-faced Adityanath is receiving the kind of career-making attention that projects an Indian politician toward higher office.]
By
Ellen Barry and Suhasini Raj
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Yogi
Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most-populous state,
during
a visit to Allahabad, India, in June. Adityanath was a surprise choice
by
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, to lead Uttar Pradesh.
Credit
Jitendra Prakash/Reuters
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LUCKNOW,
India — A Hindu
warrior-priest has been chosen to rule India’s most populous state, and the
cable news channels cannot get enough of him. Yogi, as everyone calls him, is
so ascetic and incorruptible that he doesn’t use air-conditioners, they say.
Yogi sleeps on a hard mattress on the floor. Yogi sometimes eats only an apple
for dinner.
But the taproot of Yogi Adityanath’s
popularity is in a more ominous place. As leader of a temple known for its
militant Hindu supremacist tradition, he built an army of youths intent on
avenging historic wrongs by Muslims, whom he has called “a crop of two-legged
animals that has to be stopped.” At one rally he cried out, “We are all
preparing for religious war!”
Adityanath (pronounced Ah-DIT-ya-nath) was an
astonishing choice by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, who came into
office three years ago promising to usher India into a new age of development
and economic growth, and playing down any far-right Hindu agenda. But a
populist drive to transform India into a “Hindu nation” has drowned out Mr.
Modi’s development agenda, shrinking the economic and social space for the
country’s 170 million Muslims.
Few decisions in Indian politics matter more
than the selection of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, because the post is
seen as a springboard for future prime ministers. At the age of 45, the
diminutive, baby-faced Adityanath is receiving the kind of career-making
attention that projects an Indian politician toward higher office.
“He is automatically on anybody’s list as a
potential contender to succeed Modi,” said Sadanand Dhume, an India specialist
at the American Enterprise Institute. “They have normalized someone who, three
years ago, was considered too extreme to be minister of state for textiles.
Everything has been normalized so quickly.”
In March, when the Bharatiya Janata Party won
a landslide electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh, political prognosticators
expected Mr. Modi to make a safe choice — Manoj Sinha, a cabinet minister known
for his diligence and loyalty to the party. On the morning of the announcement,
an honor guard had been arranged outside his village.
But by midmorning, it was clear that
something unusual was going on. A chartered flight had been sent to pick up
Adityanath and take him to Delhi for a meeting with Amit Shah, the party
president. At 6 p.m. the party announced it had appointed him as minister,
sending a ripple of shock through India’s political class.
They were shocked because Adityanath is a
radical, but also because he is ambitious, even rebellious. As recently as
January, he walked out of the party’s executive meeting, reportedly because he
was not allowed to speak. Mr. Modi is not known to have much tolerance for
rivals.
The appointment “invests a certain amount of
power in Yogi Adityanath that cannot be easily taken away,” said Ashutosh
Varshney, a professor of political science and international studies at Brown
University.
“Modi has been either unwilling to stop his
rise, or unable to stop his rise,” he said.
As a young man, Adityanath’s passion was
politics, not religion. One of seven children born to a forest ranger,
Adityanath, born Ajay Singh Bisht, found his vocation in college as an activist
in the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu
organization.
He was so engrossed in the group’s work that
the first two or three times he was summoned by a distant relative, the head
priest of the Gorakhnath Temple, he “could not find the time,” he has said.
But religion and politics were fast
converging. Gorakhnath Temple had a tradition of militancy: Digvijay Nath, the
head priest until 1969, was arrested for exhorting Hindu militants to kill
Mahatma Gandhi days before he was shot. His successor, Mahant Avaidyanath,
urged Hindu mobs in 1992 to tear down a 16th-century mosque and build a temple
there, setting off some of the bloodiest religious riots in India’s recent
history.
When Adityanath announced his intention to
join the temple, his father, Anand Singh Bisht, forbade it, he said in an
interview. But Adityanath left anyway. Years later, Mr. Bisht burst into tears
at the memory.
Mr. Bisht did not learn that his son had
become a monk until four months after the fact, he said. Mr. Bisht rushed to
see his son at the temple, and found him transformed, his head shaven and his
ear pierced in a painful ceremony said to unlock yogic powers.
“I said, ‘Son, what have you done?’ I was
shocked,” he said. “That was my child’s desire and so he was there. Then I gave
my permission to go ahead. I had no choice.”
Adityanath won a seat in Parliament, the
first of five consecutive terms. Among his advantages was a new group he had
formed: the Hindu Yuva Vahini, or Hindu Youth Brigade, a vigilante
organization. The volunteers, now organized to the village level and said by
leaders to number 250,000, show up in force where Muslims are rumored to be
bothering Hindus.
Vijay Yadav, 21, a volunteer lounging at
Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur on a recent day, said he had recently mobilized
60 or 70 young men to beat a Muslim accused of cow slaughter. They stopped, he
said, only because the police intervened.
“All the Hindus got together and the first
slap was given by me,” he said proudly. “If they do something wrong, fear is
what works best. If you do something wrong, we will stop you. If you talk too
much, we will kill you. This is our saying for Muslims.”
During the first five years after the
vigilante group was formed, 22 religious clashes broke out in the districts
surrounding Gorakhpur, a city in Uttar Pradesh, in many cases with Adityanath’s
encouragement, said Manoj Singh, a journalist. In 2007, Adityanath was arrested
as he led a procession toward neighborhoods seething with religious tension.
Even then, Mr. Singh recalled, the officer
who arrested Adityanath stopped first to touch his feet as a gesture of
reverence.
For India’s frenetic 24-hour cable television
world, Adityanath’s first months as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh were a
windfall. Arriving in Lucknow, a city weary of a corrupt bureaucracy, he
projected a refreshing toughness and austerity.
His first orders were unabashedly populist.
The police were dispatched in “anti-Romeo squads” to detain youths suspected of
harassing women. Inspectors shut down dozens of meat-processing plants, a major
source of revenue for area Muslims, for license problems.
Vishal Pratap Singh, a Lucknow-based
television journalist, noted that Adityanath was a “totally changed man on
camera,” careful to avoid comments offensive to Muslims.
Still, Mr. Singh said, his ratings are
sky-high, and the reason is obvious.
“Like Modi, he speaks for the Hindus,” he
said. “Within his heart, he is a totally anti-Muslim person. That is the reason
he is so likable.”
Political observers in Delhi are watching him
as one might watch an audition. Journalists filed reports of his first 100 days
last week, and some were lukewarm, noting his failure to contain violent crime.
Neerja Chowdhury, an analyst, said Adityanath
has two years to establish himself as an effective administrator.
“Remember, he is 20 years younger than Modi,
and he is a known doer, so if he manages to deliver on some fronts, he would
then become a possible candidate” in 2024, she said.
“India is moving right,” she added. “Whether
India moves further right, and Modi begins to be looked upon as a moderate, I
think that only time will tell.”
Adityanath may be interested in rebranding
himself a mainstream politician, but his followers in the vigilante group do
not all agree.
During the days after the election, some
5,000 men came forward to join the organization every day, prompting organizers
to stop accepting applicants, said P. K. Mall, the group’s general secretary.
Sonu Yadav, 24, of Gorakhpur, who has served
in the group for five years, said he had been disappointed by Mr. Modi’s
tenure.
“We voted for Modi because Yogi endorsed him,
but we are disillusioned,” he said. He went on to refer to the 2002 riots in
the state Mr. Modi led, which his critics say he allowed to rage for several
days, leading to more than 1,000 deaths.
“All of us in our colony felt that Modi would
allow us to kill Muslims,” he said. “Muslims were scared. But nothing happened.
When Yogi became chief minister, they were scared again.”
For now, as Adityanath establishes a more
mainstream reputation, Mr. Yadav and his friends have been told by their
group’s leadership to cease all violent activities and instead perform
community service. Vijay Yadav, Sonu’s friend, openly chafed at the new orders.
“This thing is going on in Yogi’s head that
my shirt should not get a stain,” he said. “I couldn’t care less for his
stained shirt. I can’t do good work and avoid getting a stain.”
He noted, by way of example, the recent
beating death of a 62-year-old Muslim man whom vigilantes abducted and
interrogated about a neighbor’s alleged love affair with a Hindu girl.
Vijay Yadav’s comment on the man’s death was
a local proverb: “Along with the wheat,” he said, “small insects will get
crushed.”