Lucknow: When his younger son’s car went missing from outside his house in Lucknow, strongman-turned-politician Hari Shankar Tiwari did not want the theft to come out in public. Instead, he called up for help to avoid embarrassment of lodging an FIR, recounted a retired Uttar Pradesh police officer.
“It happened some time before 1993. He was the Chillupar MLA and had a reputation of being the biggest don. He dialled me saying that he was in trouble. A Fiat received in dowry in his son’s wedding was stolen. He lamented that he could not reveal this to anyone as people would laugh at him. What could the police have done? If the thief had found that he stole Hari Shankar Tiwari’s car, he would have burnt it out of fear,” said the retired officer.
Such was the terror of Tiwari, who went on to become a minister in five successive governments of the BJP, the Samajwadi Party, and the BSP in Uttar Pradesh.
The late six-time MLA is in the news with the SP attempting to appropriate his legacy as part of its Brahmin outreach after a controversy over the now-demolished ‘chabutara’ (platform) where his bust was to be installed at his village, Tada, in Gorakhpur district.
The SP is now trying to capitalise on the disgruntlement within a section of the Brahmins after the demolition on 31 July, a move which political watchers say is a part of its larger strategy in the run-up to the assembly byelection and the 2027 UP polls. .
Adityanath’s Gorakhnath Math and Tiwari’s ‘haata’ (a residential complex where he ran a parallel local government of sorts) have been the rival power centres of Thakur and Brahmin politics in eastern UP. Tiwari’s death in May last year marked the end of a bloody chapter in Purvanchal.
But the rivalry is again playing out after the Gorakhpur administration ran bulldozers at Tada and bluntly denied permission to install Tiwari’s statues in private land.
Adding fuel to the fire, Deputy CM Keshav Maurya indirectly blamed the politics dynamics of Adityanath’s Gorakhpur for the happenings at Tada. “Gorakhpur vale jaanen yaar, ye sarkar ka mamla nahin hai (Let those from Gorakhpur figure it out, it is not a matter of the government),” he said.
Demolition & spill out
In Tada village, where Tiwari was born in 1933, the gram panchayat passed a resolution to install a bust on his birth anniversary. A proposal to this effect was also sent to the SDM of Gola tehsil.
“The land management committee passed a proposal to install the bust but the lekhpal refused to sign saying that he needed permission from the SDM. The proposal was later submitted to the SDM,” Tada village head Dayashankar Tiwari told ThePrint.
Even before the proposal was submitted, a villager reportedly shot off a complaint on 21 July alleging that the bust was being installed on gram samaj land without permission.
“We sent the proposal to the naib tehsildar but he asked us to take the SDM’s permission. We approached the SDM, who directed us to the Gorakhpur DM. They kept dilly-dallying. Since we didn’t get a nod, we decided that the bust would be installed in a private land belonging to a distant relative of Tiwari… However, the next day, we read the DM’s statement in the newspapers stating that no statues will be allowed on private land,” Tiwari said.
The construction, meanwhile, continued at Tada. “We met the DM on 31 July, and he directed us to the ADM (City). The latter said that no one was stopping the installation, but did not give anything in writing. Nobody said the ‘chabutara’ will be demolished, but before we could return, we got information that a bulldozer demolished it. The debris was dumped in a pond,” he alleged.
SDM Raju Kumar told ThePrint that the ‘chabutara’ was built without permission. “According to a 2008 government order, a bust can be installed only after permission from the administration. There is also a Supreme Court ruling to this effect,” he said.
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Aftermath of demolition & politics
Demanding that the bust be installed on 5 August, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said that while the BJP’s bulldozers were running over shops and houses so far, it was not even sparing public figures now.
Subsequently, the National PG College, Barhalganj — whose manager is Tiwari’s elder son and SP’s Domariyaganj Lok Sabha candidate Bhishma Shanker Tiwari — organised a seminar commemorating the late strongman-turned-politician for which it invited Akhilesh.
Giving a call for a ‘revolution’ at the event, Leader of Opposition Mata Prasad Pandey exhorted the Brahmin community to regroup its power or face the ignominy of extinction. “Look at the condition of Brahmins today. Taking people from other groups together, we have to bring about a revolution in a peaceful manner,” he said.
SP chief Akhilesh, who skipped the event, posted on ‘X’ that Tiwari remained a strong proof that one needs indomitable courage to work for the public good.
— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) August 5, 2024
“In our country, there are statues of dignitaries at every second ‘chauraha’ (crossroad). 90 percent of the villagers want the bust to be installed. But the way the government demolished it, shows the BJP’s divisive politics on the lines of caste, religion and mandir-masjid,” SP Gorakhpur district president Brijesh Gautam told ThePrint.
Tiwari’s younger son Vinay Shankar Tiwari, who contested on a BSP ticket against Yogi in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, wrote a Facebook post decrying the demolition.
“Is this political anarchy…administrative hooliganism or the arrogance of power…the height of lowliness or personal enmity or the challenge to the Brahmin self-respect or murder of humanity? The decision will be made by the public of Chillupar at the right time but residents of the state too have to do so,” the former MLA wrote.
Target 2027?
Chhitranjan Mishra, former head of teacher’s association in Gorakhpur university, told ThePrint that the SP — which fielded Tiwari’s two sons in the general and state polls — was trying to send a message that it is not just an outfit of the pichchde, Dalit, and alpsankhyak (PDA).
“The SP has pitched for the PDA but is projecting that it works for the agada (upper castes) as well. The way the ‘chabutara’ was bulldozed, it is only going to increase public anger. The BJP lost the elections not because of the SP’s strategies, but because of the Yogi government’s excesses. The sentiments of the community are associated with Tiwari, and the demolition only shows disrespect,” he said.
Mishra explained that the ‘haata’ was synonymous with Brahmin politics, while the Gorakhnath Math was the epicentre of Thakur politics.
Shashikant Pandey, former HoD, political science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU) said that after delivering its best performance in the Lok Sabha elections, the SP is buoyed and the Brahmin outreach is Akhilesh Yadav’s efforts to expand its base — something what we saw in the general elections. “The SP has shunned its Muslim-Yadav image, and the PDA idea has worked,” he said.
“It is capitalising on any perceived anger within the Brahmins and consolidating its base among them. The community and the Thakurs align with the BJP, but a section still is from the generation, which was once a Congress vote bank. With the Congress by its side, the SP is seizing the moment in the backdrop of the Brahmin-Thakur tussle, which traditionally played out in eastern UP,” he said.
He noted that the parliamentary seats of Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Domariyaganj, Sant Kabir Nagar, Basti and Sidharth Nagar have 30 assembly segments, most of which have a sizable Brahmin population.
Currently, the SP and the Congress have only six and one of these seats, respectively, while the BJP and its allies control 15 and 4 seats.
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Life & times of Hari Shankar Tiwari
After entering student politics in the 1970s, Hari Shankar Tiwari earned fame by becoming the first UP strongman to win any election from inside jail in 1985 and emerged as a Brahmin ‘shiromani’ (messiah).
His rivalry with rival strongman Virendra Shahi gave rise to the Brahmin versus Thakur rivalry in Purvanchal, a bloody struggle that culminated in 1997 when Shri Prakash Shukla, a rising gangster, shot dead Shahi in Lucknow.
Soon after the 1975 Emergency, Shahi lodged an FIR against Tiwari after the murder of his friend Balwant Singh. In 1980, the killing of Shahi’s MLA friend Ravindra Singh turned the narrative into a Thakur versus Brahmin fight.
What made Tiwari a standout among other strongmen was the tacit support from the bureaucracy and politicians to blunt the Thakur dominance in Gorakhpur, several retired police officers vouched.
Shahi won from the Lakshmipur assembly seat defeating Amarmani Tripathi with his election symbol of a lion in 1985, earning the sobriquet of ‘Shere-e-Purvanchal.’
Ex-UP DGP Vikram Singh says that the animosity between two sides ran down to the block, panchayat, and village levels and that it became an epidemic across Purvanchal.
“Other than the North Eastern Railway headquarters, the town had a university but saw no development. While the Tiwari-Shah rivalry was well-known, the real fight emerged when the Gorakhpur university was established and differences emerged when the Math wanted to accommodate its people. S.N.M. Tripathi, the university’s founder president, resisted the move,” a retired police officer told ThePrint.
Former UP DGP Anand Lal Banerjee recounted his days when he was posted as circle officer and SP (rural) in Gorakhpur.
“It was a fine morning, and I heard someone calling for help. The man was bleeding from the shoulder, and told me he was shot. I took him to the hospital. He turned out to be Amarmani Tripathi, a protégé of Tiwari. That was my first experience with Gorakhpur’s crime. People getting shot at in gang wars was common,” he said.
Banerjee said that his bosses asked him to “tackle” Tiwari and when he went for questioning, he was disappointed to find a diminutive figure wearing dhoti and baniyan.
“He had made a ‘haata’, which was an isolated building, near Sonauli in Nautanwa. I was expecting to encounter a tall mafioso who may be six-feet tall with a big moustache, but instead met a diminutive person with a nasal voice.”
While Tiwari gradually established his hold over the Brahmin community in eastern UP, he soon realised the importance of political power. In 1974, he contested an MLC election but lost to Congress’ Shivharsh Upadhayay.
“After Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, several strongmen including Tiwari and Shahi were jailed. Tiwari then fought his first election from the Maharajganj parliamentary seat while in jail against his jailed arch rival Shahi. Tiwari came second, Shahi third; the Congress candidate won,” Banerjee recalled.
“With the Railways giving contracts, Tiwari jumped into the fight for contracts. A lot of shootouts took place,” he said, adding that Tiwari had the support of the local bureaucracy and politicians.
As his winning streak continued, Tiwari gradually transitioned from a strongman to a neta, who continued to run his criminal empire through his aides.
Banerjee revealed that when Vir Bahadur Singh became the Uttar Pradesh CM in 1985, he wanted to tackle Tiwari and thus the Gangsters Act came into force. “The Act was made for Tiwari, although it could never be used against him. He had a deep network in politics, bureaucracy, and the Brahmin community.”
Such was his influence that Tiwari faced 33 cases, including nine murders and 10 attempt to murder, but was not convicted in even a single one. This, according to former DGP Brij Lal, was because cases would not come up for hearing at all.
Another former UP DGP recounted how Tiwari emerged into a typical politician under successive governments and became a minister several times between 1997 and 2007 under Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta, Rajnath Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Mayawati.
Tiwari won thrice from Chillupar on a Congress ticket in 1989, 1991 and 1993 before he, along with others, founded the Akhil Bharatiya Loktantrik Congress (ABLTC) in 1997. His impressive run of electoral wins came to end in the 2007 UP polls.
It was Adityanath’s ascent to power in 2017 that brought a new chapter in Gorakhpur. That year in April, police raided the ‘haata’ and arrested six men who were booked under the Arms Act. In February, the ED raided the ‘haata’ claiming that Tiwari’s Gangotri Enterprises had duped banks of crores of rupees.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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