[Maurya, a former VHP man, has 11 criminal cases against him,

including those of murder, rioting and arson.]



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/UP-BJP-chief-under-fire-for-criminal-record/articleshow/51758185.cms



UP BJP chief under fire for ‘criminal record’



Uday Rana | TNN | Apr 9, 2016, 09.17 PM IST



MEERUT: The appointment of Phulpur MP Keshav Prasad Maurya as the

president of Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP has ruffled many feathers

in the state politics. Both insiders and outsiders have raised

questions about his chequered past - ***Maurya, a former VHP man, has

11 criminal cases against him, including those of murder, rioting and

arson*** [emphasis added].



Party insiders feel his appointment may send a wrong message among

workers who have been asked to spread awareness among people about the

party’s fight against corruption. Maurya had himself declared the

criminal cases against him in his affidavit to the election commission

during the Lok Sabha polls in 2014, which he won from Phulpur.



Defending his position, Maurya told TOI, “Most of the cases against me

are related to protest movements that I led. Everything I did was for

the people. The cases against me are politically motivated. It doesn’t

matter what sections I was booked under. Besides, a lot of water has

flown in the Ganga since many of these cases were imposed against me.

In many cases, I have even received a clean chit.”



He added, “The reason I was booked under such harsh sections was

because the government of the day has always been our political

opponent. Some cases were filed against me when the SP was in power

and others when BSP was in power. We are more committed than ever to

end Gundaraj in UP. We will convert Uttar Pradesh into Uttam Pradesh.

We will do this by coming to power in 2017.”



The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday asked the BJP

how they plan to end the Samawadi Party’s ‘Gundaraj’ in UP when their

own state president is accused of murder.



All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary and west UP in-charge

Naseeb Singh lashed out at the BJP’s choice, saying, “The PM had said

that he would remove all people with a criminal history but his

right-hand man and party president Amit Shah still has several serious

cases against him. It is no wonder that Shah chose a man with a

tainted record to lead the party in Uttar Pradesh. We can’t expect

good politics from such people.

It seems that in BJP, a bigger case against someone means that there

is a bigger chance of them succeeding. The fact that Keshav Prasad

Maurya also has the image of being a Hindutva hardliner proves that

BJP has no real issues to fight. They only want to polarize society in

their bid to grab power.”



The AAP also stepped up its attack on Maurya with party leader Ashish

Khetan tweeting, “New UP BJP chief has only 10 crime cases. Just one

murder. Rest are of conspiracy & riot. Venkaiah was right. Modi is

God’s gift to India.” Sudhir Bhardwaj, AAP state secretary, said,

“Before becoming PM, Narendra Modi talked of a crime-free India. They

say they want to end the SP’s Gundaraj in UP. However, now the BJP has

appointed a man accused of murder as their party chief in the state.”



Latest Comment



Criminal record is like degree certificate in BJP’s political university !

mohan



Former party leader Prashant Bhushan also tweeted saying, “A Chaiwala

with 10 Criminal cases & serially corrupt CM/godfather of Reddy Bros

for UP & Karnataka chosen to head BJP!”



For many within the BJP, however, Maurya’s image of a Hindutva

firebrand works well for the party. “He is a street-fighter. He will

consolidate the Hindu vote for us. The problem with Laxmikant Bajpai,

his predecessor, was that he only gave statements from afar and never

came to the ground. For people in western UP, where communal clashes

are an everyday experience, a leader who is willing to take to the

streets will be a welcome change. He is the right choice for the

party,” said a source in the BJP.



–

Peace Is Doable

[Adityanath’s template of communalism is Gujarat. Cries of “UP will

also become Gujarat” are common at his rallies.]



https://video.scroll.in/832182/watch-this-documentary-explains-how-up-cm-adityanath-used-communal-poison-to-build-his-politics



COMMUNAL POLITICS



Watch: UP CM Adityanath used communal poison to build his politics and

this documentary shows how

Adityanath has used a virulent brand of Hindutva to build his career.



Yesterday · 10:25 pm.

Scroll Staff



[Video: Not working]



After the Bharatiya Janata Party’s sweeping win in the Uttar Pradesh

Assembly elections, it has at last announced its chief minister: Yogi

Adityanath. Head of the Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur, Adityanath is

a Far Right leader known for building his politics on religious

polarisation.



How did Adityanath rise to become the chief minister of India’s most

populous state? This 2011 documentary by Rajiv Yadav, Shahanawaz Alam

and Lakshman Prashad explains Adityanath’s rise from a priest to one

of India’s most powerful politicians.



The film opens with a chilling threat. “If a single Hindu is killed,

we will not go to the authorities, but instead murder 10 people [in

return],” declaims Adityanath fiercely to a large crowd. “We will not

let any tazia processesions take palce inside Gorakhpur city. And

along with these tazias, we will also celebrate our Holi.”



Clearly, Adityanath is unconcerned with even sugar coating his

bigotry. His organisation the Hindu Yuva Vahini is driven by the same

ideology. At a Hindu Yuva Vahini meeting, speaking from the same stage

as Adityanath, a speaker digs even deeper into the violent pysche of

Hindutva: “At present what we need is to dig out the corpses of their

[Muslim] mothers and sisters and rape them.”



The Gujarat model

***Adityanath’s template of communalism is Gujarat. Cries of “UP will

also become Gujarat” are common at his rallies.*** [Emphasis added.]



Adityanath wants Muslims to bow to the Hindu majority. “If any

organisation refuses to chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ or sing Vande

Mataram, like we smashed the Babri Masjid, we will smash it,” the

documentary shows Adityanath saying. A popular chant for BJP workers

in the area: “If you want to live in this area, you’ll have to take

the name of Yogi.”



The documentary points out that the Hindu Yuva Vahini was one of the

accused in the Mau communal riots of 2005. Adityanath was arrested for

causing communal violence – an act which led to more violence, with

his supports setting fire to a train.



His politics means he has changed the history of Gorakhpur to erase

all Muslim influences. Areas such as “Urdu Bazar” have been renamed to

“Hindi Bazar”, “Alinagar” to “Aryanagar” and “Miyan Bazar” to “Maya

Bazar”.



Hindutvaising lower castes

The documentary points out that while he has used his position as the

head priest of the Gorakhnath temple, his ideology goes against the

historical message of its founder. The temple was founded as a

reaction to Brahmanism and once was a multi-faith institution which

included both lower caste Hindus and Muslims.



In 1952, the head priest of the temple, Digvijay fought elections on a

Hindu Mahasabha ticket, effectively ending Muslim participation at the

temple. The institution’s lower caste character in turn was used to

introduce Dalits to Hindutva.



In effect, the Gorakhnath temple, by marrying lower caste mobilisation

and Hindutva provided a template for the massive BJP win in the 2017

Assembly election.



–

Peace Is Doable

[While Modi is rather well known for systematically sidelining people

who’re capable of taking their own stands, “good” or “evil”,

Adityanath very well belongs to that category.

That makes the “choice” all the more scary.



If Modi has opted to take such a high “risk”, even without any

apparent hint of compulsion, the “gain” that he’s driving at must be

that stunning big.]



I/II.

https://kafila.online/2017/03/18/a-leaf-from-the-illustrious-life-of-the-cm-designate-of-uttar-pradesh/



A leaf from the illustrious life of the CM designate of Uttar Pradesh



ON 18/03/2017 BY APOORVANANDIN BAD IDEAS



Account of a ten year old story : Helps you understand the CM designate of UP



What happened in the eastern Uttar Pradesh town was not a conflict but

violence unleashed by MP Yogi Adityanath and his henchmen



If one tries to understand the developments in Gorakhpur and its

neighbouring areas of eastern Uttar Pradesh (Poorvanchal) from January

26 to 31, 2007 through the eyes of the print and electronic media, one

moves further away from the truth. It is a sordid story of a highly

communalised media conjuring up a riot, collaborating with BJP MP Yogi

Adityanath, a Bal Thackeray clone and heir to the Gorakhnath Peeth

operating from the Gorakhnath temple. Adityanath is a BJP MP for

‘technical’ reasons and cares a damn for the niceties of party

discipline because he knows that the party cannot dissociate itself

from him. Though he mocked the party by holding a Vishwa Hindu Maha

Sammelan at the same time as the BJP’s National Council meet in

Lucknow, the party did not mind. It had earlier swallowed the defeat

of its candidate in the Assembly election by Adityanath’s candidate.

One should know that he is a Thakur; and a Thakur heads the BJP now .

The Thakur spread across party lines ensures that Adityanath is

allowed to have his own way in his fiefdom, i.e. Poorvanchal. He makes

it a point to give calls for a Gorakhpur bandh whenever the chief

minister visits the town.



Poorvanchal mein rahan hai to Yogi-Yogi kahan hoga (You have to chant

Yogi’s name if you want to live in Poorvanchal) is a slogan

popularised by his gang. But how true is the claim of his hold on

Gorakhpur, leave alone Poorvanchal? He has lost all local elections

held recently in and around Gorakhpur, and could only manage to lure

the relatively respected Samajwadi Party (SP) member and mayoral

candidate Anju Chaudhary to his side.



Apparently, Chaudhary fell a victim to the myth spun around him during

the last 15 years. Adityanath has been called the Yuvak Hindu Samrat,

Narendra Modi of Poorvanchal, the premier of the Hindu Rashtra of

Poorvanchal. He has used the wealth of the Gorakhnath Temple to

sustain his army of lumpen youth. Adityanath has followed the rss

methodology in creating organisations with different names that he

calls cultural bodies. Among these are Hindu Yuva Vahini, Sri Ram

Shakti Prakoshtha, Gorakhnath Purvanchal Vikas Manch, Hindu Mahasabha

and Vishwa Hindu Mahasangh. Adityanath himself is the main functionary

of these unregistered outfits. He also controls much of the

functioning of the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu Jagran Manch. He holds

his durbar in his temple that is attended by local police and

officials.



Adityanath has perfected his technique of manufacturing riots. An

insignificant incident like a Hindu’s clothes getting stained

accidentally by the paan spat by a Muslim is turned into an act of

humiliation of Hindus. A rape in which the victim is dalit and the

perpetrator Muslim is used to substantiate the allegation that

“Muslims rape our women” and all hell is let loose on the Muslims. The

last 11 years are witness to several such acts. No criminal case has

been registered against him except once in 1999 when a case was

registered against him in Maharajganj after the killing of the

official gunman accompanying sp leader Talat Aziz. The police and

administration have remained mute spectators with the political

leadership looking the other way. All this has given him an air of

invincibility. Muslims have been given to understand that neither the

Bahujan Samaj Party, nor the sp is willing to rein him in. Perhaps the

SP is seeking to counter Mayawati’s Brahmin card with its own Thakur

card by indulging him. The Congress is nowhere and also lacks a will

to take him on. All this leaves the Muslims here with no option but to

resign themselves to their fate.



This time, however, his plans went awry. On the night of January

26-27, Pankaj Rai, a history-sheeter, and his gang chased a dance

party performing at a marriage. They mingled with a Muharram

procession and the processionists thought that they were being

attacked. Suddenly a gunshot was heard, which the then administration

thinks was Rai’s act. As panic set in, more people — both Hindu and

Muslim — were beaten up and a young man, Raj Kumar Agrahari, was badly

injured and hospitalised. The District Magistrate (DM) was informed at

1.30am and he told officials to brief Adityanath that he should not

visit the site. Initially, the MP agreed. But as Agrahari died,

Adityanath declared that now he would go to the spot and seek revenge

for the killing of a Hindu by Muslims. He reached the spot with his

lumpen who destroyed a mazhar. He declared his resolve to ensure

justice for the Hindus, swords were flashed before the dm and senior

police officers. Short of policemen, the administration tried to

persuade the MP to vacate the place but he didn’t budge.



When the now-determined dm took the dagger away from a goon, they

charged towards him and demanded the dagger back. Upon this, the dm

ordered the police to disperse them by force. Suddenly the MP found

himself facing a situation that was not in the script. Afraid that the

lathis might find Adityanath, his well-wishers cried out for

compromise. The MP demanded that curfew be imposed and withdrew.

Though the dm didn’t think a curfew was required as the violence was

designed to disrupt Muharram, he agreed to the MP’s demand.



Later, however, Adityanath announced a torchlight procession. The

administration succeeded in preventing it from moving but it was

captured on camera and a non-procession was turned into one by the

willing media. Emboldened, he announced a Shraddhanjali Sabha the next

day at the town’s busiest crossroad. By this time, the dm had resolved

not to allow it any further as the police reinforcements were in. He

issued orders that no meeting was to be allowed and that any violator

was to be arrested. With unambiguous orders, the police moved.

Adityanath dismissed the warning as a hollow threat but landed in an

unforeseen situation. He and his ‘followers’ were taken to the police

line. Soon, a police van arrived and the detained people were asked to

board the jail-bound vehicle. Adityanath jumped into the bus,

declaring that he cannot leave his followers. To their surprise, the

bus started moving and they realised that they were in trouble. The

three-km journey to the jail took more than 90 minutes as his goons

pelted stones and every other means to block the van but to no avail.

For the first time in his life, Adityanath is jailed under Section

151A of the crpc only to find later that he has also been booked under

Sections 146, 147, 279, 506 of the Indian Penal Code for leading the

attack on the mazhar. On the strength of this fir, Adityanath is

remanded to 14-day judicial custody.



On January 29, his followers assembled at Gorakhnath Temple that falls

in an area where more than 50 percent of the population is Muslim.

They start hrowing stones and burning tyres in the direction of the

Muslim locality and on the road. But there is no retaliation from the

other side.



Dr Hari Om, the then dm in-charge, wishes to put it on record that not

a single incident of slogan-shouting or stone-pelting was resorted to

by Muslims. He wants the world to know that although much grieved by

the decision to impose curfew as it hampered Muharram, the Muslims,

led by the venerable Miyan saheb, assured the administration of all

cooperation as peace was more important and kept their word.

Meanwhile, the media kept screaming that Gorakhpur was burning, the

walls of the Gorakhnath Temple were demolished. Which, of course, was

a naked lie.



And all of a sudden, the dm was informed that he’s been shunted along

with the superintendent of police. As he moved away, Rashid, a Muslim

youth, was killed. It is a matter of discussion in Gorakhpur that it

was done by a Hindu Yuva Vahini man who injured himself to use it as a

cover. Newspapers flashed the pictures of the Yuva Vahini man’s

bandaged leg, obliterating the killing of Rashid altogether.



So where was the riot, as imagined by the interested media, asks Hari

Om. From January 27 to 29, Adityanath and his goons laid siege to

Gorakhpur without any provocation from Muslims. A mazhar was gutted,

masjids and shops of Muslims destroyed, government properties damaged

by the gangs, stone pelting on the police by his goons: do these make

a perfect riot? A riot involves some degree of involvement of two

warring groups. How is it that areas with substantial Muslim

population did not experience any untoward incident barring the

planned attacks of Adityanath’s gangs? Why did cm Mulayam Singh Yadav

remove the officers who jailed the BJP MP who was hell-bent on

destroying peace? Why did the officers’ successors go straight to

Adityanath for forgiveness? Why did the media fail to report the facts

as facts?



Hari Om has one regret — that he had assured Muslims that by giving a

reprieve of 7-8 hours in the curfew on January 29, he would ensure

that the Muharram tradition was not disturbed. However, the moment he

was removed, Rashid was killed to celebrate it as Adityanath’s victory

and the curfew was extended. Tazias remained where they were. The

Muslims kept their word, he did not. This young officer has just one

question for his country: can a community feel at home where it is

prevented from even mourning by all kinds of machination? Can a

community celebrate its existence in a country where law-keepers look

over their shoulders when it is attacked? Such is the sad story of

Uttar Pradesh, the truth of one of the many riots that were not.



First published in Tehelka.com, Feb 17, 2007

https://communalism.blogspot.in/2007/02/riot-manufactured-in-gorakhpur.html



II.

http://www.business-standard.com/elections/uttar-pradesh-assembly-elections-2017/yogi-adityanath-the-way-of-the-sword-and-the-monk-s-cowl-114040200025_1.html



Yogi Adityanath: The way of the sword and the monk’s cowl

How BJP’s Yogi Adityanath has used religious polarisation to trump

caste divide in Uttar Pradesh



Aman Sethi | Gorakhpur

March 18, 2017 Last Updated at 19:34 IST



Business Standard is republishing this April 2014 profile as the

Bharatiya Janata Party’s legislature has unanimously elected Yogi

Adityanath as its leader and the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.



From 8 am to 10 am each morning, Yogi Adityanath, high priest of the

Gorakhnath mandir and Gorakhpur’s Member of Parliament from the

Bharatiya Janata Party since 1998, tends to his constituency from a

low desk in a spacious room in the administrative block of the

temple’s sprawling lands.



Assisting him is a team of scribes, seated cross-legged on the ground

before a set of ancient Devnagari-script typewriters, balanced on

bricks wrapped in old newspaper. Petitioners pass through a security

check, leave their shoes at the gate, and approach the priest with

folded hands and bowed heads.



Adityanath - short, stocky, and clad in saffron robes, thick

transparent plastic earrings, and vermillion socks - listens with the

fragile patience of a self-consciously busy man. “Write an

application,” he occasionally declares. The clerks nod dutifully and

slide another sheet of paper into the typewriter.



Recent reports describe Adityanath - a Hindutva hardliner, and prime

accused in Gorakhpur’s 2007 communal riots - as a key coordinator of

the BJP’s election strategy for Uttar Pradesh, the state with the most

Lok Sabha seats. He first won the Gorakhpur seat when 26-years-old;

now 42, he has fashioned himself as the BJP’s most recognised face in

east Uttar Pradesh.



The BJP has spoken of a wave in favour of their prime ministerial

candidate, Narendra Modi, but Lokniti-CSDS post-election surveys over

the past 15 years establish that a quarter to a third of the

electorate vote on the individual qualities of a candidate rather than

the party she represents, suggesting many seats could turn into

head-to-head contests between candidates with specific local

histories, rather than the competing narratives of Modi and Rahul

Gandhi.



In 1999, Yogi Adityanath won Gorakhpur by the slimmest of margins -

7,339 votes; 10 years later in 2009, he romped home with a winning

margin of 2,20,000 votes. This year, locals are speculating on the

winning margin, rather than the possibility of his victory, despite no

particular signs of progress in this constituency.



Gorakhpur appears a melancholic border town on the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal

border, yet to overcome the loss of its fertiliser factory, shuttered

in 1990, its sugar mills that collapsed over the next decade, and its

children - claimed by the hundreds every year by Japanese

encephalitis. Male and female workforce participation is amongst the

lowest in the country and a little more than 70 per cent of households

still do not have an indoor toilet.



Over 15 years, Adityanath, an upper caste Kshatriya, has sunk deep

roots in Gorakhpur. His clerks resolve squabbles in city

neighbourhoods; his foot soldiers from the Hindu Yuva Vahini have been

criticised for engineering riots in the countryside. His inflammatory

anti-Muslim rhetoric has polarised eastern Uttar Pradesh, while his

position as the mahant of the Gorakhnath temple lends his

pronouncements an air of mystical profundity.



This election season, the BJP has publicly focused on the need for

good governance and development and steered clear of overt communal

and regional propaganda but on the ground, Modi is banking on regional

satraps like Adityanath to bring in the votes at all costs.



“We solve problems,” said Dwarika Tiwari, Adityanath’s head clerk,

gesturing to his typewriter, his telephone, and a stack of tattered

notebooks filled with telephone numbers gathered over decades, “We

write to the appropriate authorities, we telephone the superintendent

of police, we inform the district magistrate and tell him to

investigate.”



Jung Bahadur, a retired infantryman, has come on behalf of his

grandson, “Rajbir, my grandson ran away with a dhobi caste girl. Her

parents say she was kidnapped. He is in police detention.” Chandra

Prakash Gupta, dismissed from a private distillery eight years ago,

has been coming ever since in search of a job. Suresh Sharma, a

Gorakhpur resident now employed as an accountant in Chennai, has

dropped by to have his photograph taken with the yogi, “I go to the

BJP office in Chennai; it is good to have a photo to show them.”



No problem is too small for Adityanath’s attention, no trouble too

trifling. “We’ll do whatever is needed,” Tiwari said, as he churned

out the latest application on official MP letterheads, “This? This one

is for someone who urgently needs a train reservation using the MP

quota.”



An MP is expected to legislate, hold the executive to account and

represent the interests of her constituency in Parliament. Adityanath,

for his part, has sponsored five Bills - there was one in 2009, asking

the Centre to pass a national law banning cow slaughter, another to

change the country’s name from “India that is Bharat” to “Bharat that

is Hindustan”, and a third banning forced religious conversions. He

has also called on the Allahabad High Court to set up a bench in

Gorakhpur, and for a uniform civil code.



Yet, in their constituencies back home, MPs aren’t judged by House

attendance, questions asked, or participation in debates, but on their

ability to leverage the state on behalf of their constituents.



Most MPs have neither the funds nor staff to implement big-ticket

projects that could ensure re-election.



For example, a representative can spend Rs 5 crore per year on her

constituency under the MP Local Area Development Scheme, which works

out to a total of Rs 400 crore a year for Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha

members; a minuscule sum compared with the state government’s budgeted

expenditure of Rs 221,201 crore for this year. This is where

Adityanath’s morning meetings prove crucial.



“Voters perceive the role of MPs as that of a problem solver,” said

Chakshu Roy of PRS Legislative Research, explaining MPs are often

voted for doing everything apart from their constitutionally mandated

jobs, “Voter expectations, therefore, align the incentive structure

for MPs to address constituency concerns at the cost of their

legislative responsibilities.”



Further, before selling their message to their electorates,

prospective MPs must first convince their own parties of their

candidature - this makes the creation of a committed base and local

politics even more critical. Rajnath Singh could replace BJP stalwart

Lalji Tandon in Lucknow, but no one is likely to replace Adityanath in

Gorakhpur.



“The public is deeply attached to my name, to my thought process, to

me,” said Adityanath in an interview soon after his durbar, “The

public wants their elected representative to be in touch with them.”

Through his daily hearings, he said, “I have a constant conversation

with the public about their personal problems, problems with the

administration, problems with a powerful oppressive person. That is

why they vote for me.”



Yet, any other candidate could arguably set up an equally efficient

grievances cell. Adityanath’s biggest asset, his critics said, is an

amorphous vigilante army of youth organised as the Hindu Yuva Vahini

and tasked with protecting the Hindu faith.



In 1999, Yogi Adityanath made front-page news as an MP. “BJP out to

protect trigger-happy MP” ran the second lead on the March 6 Lucknow

edition of The Times of India, detailing an extraordinary story that

began as a minor dispute over the fate of a peepul tree in a Muslim

graveyard in a faraway village, acquired increasingly communal

overtones, and ended with Adityanath desecrating the graveyard and his

supporters fatally shooting a 26-year-old policeman in the face.



“A pattern emerged,” said Manoj Singh, a senior journalist in

Gorakhpur, “Yogiji or his supporters would interfere in a

village-level fight between two communities and turn it into a big

case of Hinduism under threat.”



An anecdotal list of communal incidents compiled by Singh describes

the vigilante group’s involvement in at least 18 separate incidents of

communal violence since 1999. While the 2007 Gorakhpur riots, in which

a Hindu man was killed and hundreds of Muslim shops burnt, were widely

reported, the incomprehensible banality of minor incidents makes for

more chilling reading.



In 2002, for instance, Adityanath and his followers arrived at

Gorakhpur’s Turkmanpur locality and escalated a squabble between a

Hindu and Muslim over who spat paan on whom into a full-blown communal

confrontation in which stones were thrown, a street brawl erupted and

the police were called in.



Adityanath insists the Yuva Vahini is simply a cultural organisation.

“Our philosophy is to live and let live, but if someone puts their

hand on our throats, we have the right to remove that hand by force if

need be,” he said.



Yet, his critics, both inside and outside the BJP, said Adityanath’s

vigilante army was set up to build a power base and grassroots network

independent of the the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. BJP

leaders begged off from commenting on Adityanath or his politics. “To

be honest, I don’t have the time,” said Varun Gandhi, the BJP’s other

star campaigner in Uttar Pradesh, before hanging up.



His critics in the Congress were more forthcoming.



“Adityanath is undoubtedly a rabble rouser. His speeches are venomous

and vitriolic even in Parliament,” said Jairam Ramesh, the Congress

leader who most recently served as the Union minister for rural

development, “He is more of a politician than a sanyasi, peddling a

very destructive ideology of hate and prejudice.”



In the meantime, the Yuva Vahini has expanded its influence across the

region and its strategy of casting routine street fights as

ideological struggles is paying dividends.



Last month in Rasoolpur, a village in Azamgarh constituency, 100 km

south of Gorakhpur, a group of Hindu youth decided to build a brick

enclosure around a Hindu deity installed under a roadside tree. The

Muslims protested, a fight broke out and a young Muslim man was shot.

He survived but his friends grabbed Vijay Pratap Yadav, a father of

four and the brother of the sarpanch of Rasoolpur, and beat him to

death.



Days after Yadav’s death, the local representative of the Hindu Vahini

contacted his elder brother, Uma Shankar, and asked him to join the

vigilantes. “Of course, something will have to be done,” Uma Shankar

said in a recent interview at his house, “The Muslims have terrorised

us.”



Despite the fact that Mulayam Singh Yadav, leader of the Samajwadi

Party, will contest from Azamgarh this time, Uma Shankar said the

family was switching allegiance from the Samajwadi Party, the party of

choice for most Yadavs, to the BJP.



“The Samajwadi Party thinks it wins because of the Muslims, so let’s

see what happens when the Yadavs leave it,” he said, “I think we will

join the Yuva Vahini, and if we do, we will bring another 50 men with

us for Yogiji.”



UTTAR PRADESH’S PRIESTLY POLITICIANS

With each generation, Gorakhpur’s mahants have harnessed the Goraknath

temple to consolidate their unchallenged hold on power



1967: The high priests of the Gorakhnath Mandir have played a role in

Eastern UP’s politics since Mahant Digvijai Nath represented the

constituency in the Lok Sabha from 1967 to 1971 from the Hindu

Mahasabha



1984: Digvijaynath’s successor, Mahant Avaidyanath, sets up the Sri

Ramjanmabhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti and leads a march from Sitarmahi,

Bihar, to Ayodhya to “liberate” the temple. Avaidyanath served as an

MLA from nearby Maniram from 1962 to 1980 and as Gorakhpur’s MP from

1989 to 1996, frequently using the Ram Janmabhoomi issue to garner

votes



1992: Avaidyanath plays a crucial role in mobilising crowds around the

destruction of the Babri Masjid. On the eve of the demolition, the

mahant is spotted on the terraces of the ‘Ram Katha Kunj’, the

building facing the Mosque, among senior leaders such as L K Advani

and Ashok Singhal, according to court documents



1998: Avaidyanath retires from politics and his role as the head of

the Goraknath temple. His protege, Ajay Bisht - a disciple from

Uttrakhand who takes on the moniker Yogi Adityanath - wins the

Gorakhpur constituency at the age of 26



2014: With the Ramjanmabhoomi issue losing its appeal, Adityanath

recasts village level conflicts as religious ones and is set to win

his fourth full term



–

Peace Is Doable