As BJP drops controversial Ramgarh MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja ahead of the assembly elections, here’s all you need to know about him.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not believe that the man who once counted the number of condoms in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) will help the party win the upcoming Rajasthan assembly elections.
On Wednesday, the party dropped Gyan Dev Ahuja, the controversial BJP MLA from Ramgarh, from its second list of 31 candidates for the elections. The BJP has now announced candidates for 162 seats in the 200-member state assembly, dropping 15 sitting MLAs, including three ministers.
With judgment day set for 7 December in Rajasthan, it appears that the moustachioed MLA, notorious for his contentious stands, hasn’t quite made the cut for the state or the party.
Here’s all you need to know about Ahuja — from his moustache to his hate for Muslims:
The first thing you notice about Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja is his moustache — a piece of carefully maintained facial ornamentation so outrageously large that Ahuja says he has only shaved it three times in his life. The first two were to honour the passing of his parents, and the third was when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency in 1975.
The Rajasthan legislator has become infamous for his controversial statements that range from justifying the killings of alleged cow smugglers to counting the number of condoms in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Most recently, Ahuja claimed that India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was “not a Pandit because he ate pork and beef”.
On 1 August, Ahuja made a statement asking members of the Muslim community to “return the women they have lured away in the name of love jihad”. If they failed to do so within 15 days, Ahuja continued, then “double the number of daughters — 20 for 10, 80 for 40 — of the other community will not be safe”.
In the living room of his house in Alwar, over 20 residents of the district sit around Ahuja in a semi-circle, each waiting their turn. They stand when called upon, touching Ahuja’s feet before placing their plight before him. In the room next door, a glass case of antique guns shines underneath a rarely used flat screen television. Next to it is a picture of goddess Durga.
“Hindus can never be terrorists,” Ahuja tells ThePrint in an exclusive interview. “The saffron colour can never be one of terrorism. It is a colour of sacrifice and devotion, it is the epitome colour in itself. When we Hindus give milk to snakes and grain to ants, when our daughters and mothers give bread to dogs in the evening, then how can we be terrorists? We’re not even meat eaters,” he says.
Also read: Alwar lynching is the result of manufactured Hindu fury that I saw three years ago
“Terrorists are 100% Muslims, whether it’s Kashmir or the world. In China, the towers in the US, or France, it’s not Hindus. Hindus never spread terrorism anywhere or betray their nation. I don’t condemn all Muslims, however, just the ones that have a disposition towards violence and crime. I don’t think all Muslims are bad, but largely you find terrorists in Muslims,” he adds.
Ahuja is a three-time elected representative from the Ramgarh constituency in the Rajasthan legislative assembly, having lost two of the five elections he has fought since 1993.
The guru of gau rakshaks
Ahuja, the man at the helm of Ramgarh’s local politics, is an unapologetic Right-wing Hindu nationalist. For him, the only truly acceptable way of life is the Hindu one. Before speaking to camera, Ahuja asks a member of his team to bring him his red tika from the designated mandir (temple) within his home.
“I don’t need a mirror for this,” he says, applying saffron-red to his forehead with practised ease.
He tells ThePrint that he has been visiting temples for the past week to give offerings for the 221 cows that were found skinned in Govindgarh earlier this month. Over 40 kg of beef were also discovered.
“I cleansed the place where the meat was found by sprinkling ganga jal and rose petals,” he says, adding, “a list of all the people in Mewat who bought or ate that meat has also been collected, but I won’t disclose now what actions will be taken.”
His face is one of palpable disappointment, and his voice softens at the word ‘gai’ (cow). For Hindus, he explains, “cows are considered to be matas (mothers)”.
Born into a religious Hindu family, Ahuja says he inherited his deep-rooted dharmic beliefs from his parents, but “my nationalism,” he adds, “I received in the shakhas.”
Ahuja started attending RSS shakha in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, daily from a very young age, not because his parents asked him to, but because he “really took a liking to the nationalistic songs and activities”.
In the last two years, the district of Alwar has made a name for itself as the centre for Muslim lynchings at the hands of cow protection groups. With self-admitted patronage from Ahuja, these gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) roam Alwar’s highways with significant impunity.
In 2017, ThePrint reported that the six suspects named by lynching victim Pehlu Khan were absolved of any involvement after their mobile phone location allegedly placed them away from the scene of the crime on the said date. Of the 9 others on trial, seven are out on bail, while two were never caught.
Ahuja makes no secret of his absolute love for gau mata. Days after Rakbar Khan was allegedly lynched in Ramgarh in July, Ahuja responded to the incident by first labelling the deceased as a criminal. “This man was a criminal. He used to buy cows for slaughter and sell cow meat, there is a criminal case against him,” Ahuja had told ThePrint at the time even before condemning his murder. “If he was actually taking the cows for dairy purposes, why was he doing it surreptitiously at 12 in the night through a kuchha road?” he asked.
The BJP MLA has also previously justified the killing of Pehlu Khan in Alwar in 2017, saying that while citizens should not take the law into their own hands, “we have no regret over his death because those who are cow-smugglers are cow-killers, sinners like them have met this fate earlier and will continue to do so.”
Nawal Kishore Sharma, chief of a cow protection squad in Ramgarh and a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, meets with his political protector regularly, and was on his way to visit Ahuja the same morning as ThePrint’s interview.
“In every way, I am Hindu and nationalist,” Ahuja says proudly. “I believe in Ram and Krishna and all the crores of avatars in Hinduism. Our nationality is Hindu and our way of life is Hindu.”
A murky past
For Ahuja, a man whose caller-tune alternates between prayers like ‘itni shakti hame dena data’ and monologues from priests extolling the virtues of Ram, the RSS and its affiliated organisations were a perfect fit growing up. Until he entered politics on a BJP ticket in 1993, the Hindu hardliner had already spent many years as a pracharak in the RSS, going on to become a labour leader in affiliate Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) for over 20 years.
The BJP legislator says he completed only one year of a bachelor’s degree from Raj Rishi Bhartrihari Matsya University in “political science, geography and economics.” The 12th standard graduate lists his profession as ‘journalist’ in his official legislative assembly profile, owing to his stint as managing editor of a now-defunct weekly named Mat Sammat, as well as his work with the RSS publication Organiser.
In the 1990s, while Ahuja worked as a leader in the BMS, reports claim that he allegedly slapped a local police officer. As a man climbing the RSS political ladder, Ahuja evaded arrest for over a decade, until the BJP came to power in the state in 2003. As a BJP MLA, Ahuja petitioned the then home minister to ask the police to drop the charges against him. However, he was forced to bow to Alwar chief judicial magistrate R.K. Maheshwari’s integrity, and was eventually sent to judicial custody.
The report states that on arrest, Ahuja spontaneously developed a stomach ache, and sought emergency hospitalisation where he bided his time until he was granted bail.
Also read: Mob lynching is a complete failure of law and order, says former CJI T.S. Thakur
In 2015, the BJP MLA was caught throwing Rs 500 notes at female dancers at a Lohri Mela organised by the Youth Punjabi Seva Samiti. The event went largely unnoticed until Ahuja’s 2016 comment on the numbers of cigarettes, chicken bones, used condoms, and abortion injections allegedly found in JNU. These, he said, showed the “the misdeeds they commit with our sisters and daughters there.” After the statements, media houses used the Lohri Mela incident to draw attention to the MLA’s hypocrisy. It was also widely reported that Ahuja was summoned by Amit Shah to explain his JNU data.
In his interview with ThePrint, the MLA denies any such summon. “I have never been called by any minister, to the contrary, I have always been the one to visit them,” he says.
What the ‘others’ think
For a section of the Muslim community in Ramgarh, Alwar, every day is lived in fear. They choose to voice their plight inside the safety of their local masjid, from whose window a saffron painted stage is visible.
“That’s the Ramgarh tehsil community stage,” Dr. Mustaq Qeen tells ThePrint. “They stage Ramleela and other performances there.”
Fifteen men gather in a circle, approaching the subject with caution. “How would you like it if you were constantly told how bad you are?” an elderly Yousuf Khan asks. There is consensus among the community that the BJP wants them to “go back to Pakistan.”
“It doesn’t matter what the cow is for, even if it’s just for milk, they will catch you and beat you to near death,” says Qeen, adding, “just the other day, five-six Hindu men stopped three Muslim boys on their way and took off their skull-caps. They then beat them for no reason. They were aged between 12 and 18 years old.”
They know the cow vigilantes by name, but with the same determined knowledge of facts comes a declaration of defeat.
“It is Gyan Dev Ahuja who has brought communalism to Ramgarh. It never used to be like this, but now every small fight between two people becomes a Hindu-Muslim matter. Ramgarh is on the edge of a riot, you can feel it,” says Qeen.
For a seventy-plus Sukha Lamder, the Modi government has been nothing more than a series of disappointments.
“Modi promised women’s safety and all you read are rapes in the newspaper. He also said he would put 15 lakhs to every bank account, but after he won the election what happened?” asks Lamder. “You don’t even see 15 paise.”
| ThePrint.in
For these Muslims of Ramgarh, the divide between the Hindus and their community is a politically motivated one. Bunty Khan, whom the men refer to as their Ramgarh representative, says the two communities used to live in harmony until they were divided by the ruling party. He further adds that even if a Muslim is a criminal, it cannot be up to a mob of civilians to decide his fate. “What are the institutions we have in place – the police and the courts – supposed to be for then?” he asks.
“Even if we did vote for the BJP (in the upcoming legislative assembly elections), they wouldn’t count our votes. What don’t matter to them, they don’t want us,” an elderly Basir Khan says.
As of August this year, Ahuja was optimistic of another victory in the state elections, both for him and his party.
With the Rajasthan assembly elections due later this year, Ahuja is optimistic of another victory, both for him and his party. Despite the Muslim community sparking incidents of violence and taking our girls in love jihad, I have maintained the peace, he says. “There hasn’t been a single incidence of Hindu-Muslim conflict under my watch,” he adds.
Giving too much coverage to this type of idiots with cruel mind set, does not make good sense….he is the son of pig
If he loses later this year, it would be a good idea to shave off that moustache for a fourth and final time.