Elevating Yogi Adityanath is becoming PM Modi’s biggest blunder now, not demonetisation

PM Narendra Modi being greeted by Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath and Governor Ram Naik on his arrival in Varanasi | PTI

Yogi Adityanath is Modi-Shah’s Frankenstein’s monster who can divide but not deliver. He may also wreck Modi’s immediate political future.

There is a wise Punjabi metaphor that applies universally: One who’s a disaster in Lahore will also be a disaster in Peshawar.

In our politics today, it perfectly fits Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. He is going around rabble-rousing in other states as the BJP’s Grand National Polariser. He fires the imagination of the faithful and entertains them with cheap thrills. But they are going to vote BJP anyway. His inability to swing the vote of any of the rest is now evident.

So far, I had maintained that Narendra Modi’s biggest blunder as prime minister was demonetisation. I have changed my mind.

Demonetisation continues to be a blunder. Even if it paid rich dividends in the Uttar Pradesh elections soon after, Modi erred in gifting away that incredible success to Yogi Adityanath. Demonetisation broke his government’s economic momentum. Yogi Adityanath may wreck his immediate political future.

The first issue with Adityanath isn’t that he is doing anything different from what he was hand-picked for. He was expected to polarise not just Uttar Pradesh but also the rest of the country, especially the Hindi heartland. He is doing that with aplomb.

Just that he is defying two presumptions of his party bosses. One, that they will be able to control him. And two, that as he goes parachuting around the country as a bigotry-commando, he will make sure that his state is properly governed, and he will deliver the seats there. Without at least 50 seats in Uttar Pradesh BJP will find it near-impossible to reach even 250 nationally.

Now he looks incapable of either. He can’t deliver the seats in Uttar Pradesh, and isn’t swinging elections elsewhere. That’s why, a disaster in Lahore and a disaster in Peshawar.

It was also said that if Modi could keep Gujarat in control while campaigning nationally, so could Yogi. But Modi had already been entrenched in Gujarat for 12 years, and Yogi isn’t Modi. Modi left Hindutva behind in Gujarat in 2013-14 and took the more inclusive idea of a reformed, growth-driven Gujarat-model of governance to the rest of India. Yogi, on the other hand, is exporting his Gorakhpur-style gau-bhakt Hindutva, Uttar Pradesh’s completely broken governance model and divisive discourse. His rise is enabling a new lumpenised class of semi-literate, unemployable saffron power to surface across the country. He is unleashing an emotional and physical malevolence so dangerous it will take some doing to put down.

Further, while Modi and Shah work on living out their fantasy of building a Congress-muktBharat, Yogi is building on his ideal of Muslim-mukt power structure in Uttar Pradesh. He is also hoping to export it to other states.

Actually, his Ali versus Bajrang Bali, Hanuman-is-a-Dalit, Owaisi-will-have-to-leave-India, Congress-loves-Tipu-not-Hanuman, Hyderabad-will-become-Bhagyanagar, who-killed-the-cow after his police inspector was killed in a mere “accident” etc., may not have embarrassed his leaders. His brief, or KRAs (Key Result Areas as HR people prefer to say), include saying what others would rather not. But he is going too far and too fast. And solo.

If his language doesn’t embarrass his leaders, why should they complain?

For two reasons. One, that it is not translating into votes and yet he has emerged as his party’s most sought-after campaigner. In recent travels through poll-bound states, we found that he’s the campaigner BJP candidates wanted most of all. As India’s Greatest Polariser, he has begun to overshadow his bosses. You can’t dismiss him as BJP’s Navjot Singh Sidhu because he has India’s largest state under his belt. And when it comes to his party’s ideology, he is even more a “native” than any Modi or Shah.

Narendra Modi had firmly put down Pravin Togadia when he was doing some of this. Yogi isn’t so easy to tame. He isn’t just a shaven-headed, saffron-robed Togadia. He’s the reigning spiritual and temporal head of a huge Hindu temple-sect. His following is rising among his party’s faithful. On his own ambition, he hasn’t said much yet. Just note that at Dainik Jagran’s conclave, he did let slip a boast that left to him, he would settle the temple issue in 24 hours.

He isn’t an immediate threat to Modi. But he’s becoming bigger trouble. Unlike when Modi ventured out of Gujarat, Yogi’s own state is slipping out of his grasp. Unemployment and frustration have ruined the optimism Modi’s campaign had generated, and remember, no one had voted for Yogi except in Gorakhpur. His party will probably overlook cow-related violence. It suits them. It is his diminishing political control that would worry them. In the general elections due within six months, how many seats does BJP expect to win in Uttar Pradesh even if there is no SP-BSP alliance?

For all their supposed Kautilyan genius, Modi and Shah have created a Frankenstein’s monster in their front-yard. He can divide—his own state and the rest of the country—but can’t deliver the seats anywhere. Yet, if the party fails to get sufficient numbers in 2019, he will become a key player. Given a free rein for another six months, he will go destroying social cohesion across the country and be adored by the minority-hating faithful. For Modi in election year, Yogi is now a lose-lose-lose proposition: Bad optics, worse governance, and the worst politics.

Which is the reason we now elevate him, the third most powerful man in the BJP, above demonetisation, as Modi’s greatest blunder.