Devkinandan Thakur leads a body solely dedicated to opposing amendments to the SC/ST Act. He was recently arrested.
New Delhi: An Uttar Pradesh-based self-proclaimed ‘spiritual leader’, Devkinandan Thakur, is proving to be thorn in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) efforts to assuage upper castes, miffed by the amendments that the Modi government has brought in to the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Thakur, who has been protesting against the amendments, was arrested by the UP police earlier this week when he was going to address a public meeting on the issue in Agra. Police claim that they had imposed IPC Section 144 in Agra, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people in an area. Thakur, arrested under IPC Section 155, was later released.
Sources in the BJP said that Thakur, the national president of the ‘Akhand Bharat Mission’ — solely dedicated to opposing the SC/ST amendments — is “increasingly becoming a headache for the party” that is looking to mollify upper caste ire while trying to balance its outreach to backward castes.
The BJP believes that Thakur has a sizeable following among the upper castes in the state and that his mobilisation can hurt the party given the section is any way precariously on the edge.
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Thakur’s arrest and the government’s attempts to prevent him from holding his public meeting stem from the BJP’s worry about the damage he can potentially cause. With assembly and Lok Sabha polls due soon, the party is in no mood to take risks.
Upper caste outrage
ThePrint had reported on how the BJP is greatly worried about rising upper caste anger against it.
The matter was raised during the 28 August meeting of its 15 CMs and seven deputy CMs chaired by Modi and party president Amit Shah. During the meet, both Modi and Shah expressed concern about the unhappiness of the upper castes with the BJP and urged the CMs to address this backlash.
The party is facing upper-caste backlash across different parts of the country. In Madhya Pradesh, the Samanya Pichhda Alpsankhayak Kalyan Samaj (SAPAKS) is at the forefront of upper caste and OBC protests against the Centre’s amendments to the SC/ST Act.
The upper caste anger also stems, in part, from the Modi government’s other Dalit and OBC outreach programmes such as its constitutional backing to the National Commission for Backward Classes.
The anger is a concern as the party estimates upper castes constitute around 25-30 per cent of the population and thus, form a significant chunk of the electorate.
The party’s top brass, however, has made it clear that the outreach towards backward castes and Dalits will continue.
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An ‘orator of the Bhagavad Katha’
Thakur, who was born into a Brahmin family in Mathura in 1978, calls himself a “spiritual leader” and an “orator of the Bhagavad Katha”. Besides his following, Thakur has a sizeable social media presence — another factor that BJP sources say is worrying for the party.
On Twitter, he has around 3.33 lakh followers, while his Facebook page is followed by around 2.5 lakh people.
Describing him as “messenger of peace”, his Facebook page claims he left home at the age of six for Vrindavan, where he became a follower of the Nimbarak Sampradaya. The page goes on to claim that at the age of 13, Thakur had learnt the Bhagavad Gita, and has been holding discourses since.
Of late, Thakur has been spearheading protests against amendments to the SC/ST Act, and has claimed the changes “divide the society”. “Till I live, I will fight for the unity of the country,” he had recently stated.
“Today, all intellectuals and social workers who have come to Vrindavan from all over the world have decided to start a movement together under one organisation/banner against the SC/ST Act,” Thakur had tweeted on 9 September from his verified Twitter handle. “The organisation will be called the Akhand Bharat Mission and I am grateful to be made its national president”.