The new chief min­is­ter of Ut­tar Pradesh -Ma­hant Yogi Adityanath is the new sym­bol of Hin­dutva-in­spired de­vel­op­ment. WSN pre­sents you the per­son be­hind the face.

Meet Yogi Adityanath

• 45-year-old Yogi-as­cetic, monk, bach­e­lor for life.
• Re­li­gious head of the Gorakh­pur mutt -a highly revered Hindu tem­ple in the pan­theons of top sa­cred Hindu tem­ples of In­dia.
• Deeply steeped in the RSS (Rashtriya Swayam­se­wak Sangh) tra­di­tion.
• Five-time mem­ber par­lia­ment from the Gorakh­pur con­stituency, with an in­creas­ing num­ber of votes every time. In his first elec­tion in 1999, he won by a mar­gin of 7339 votes and in 2009 with a whop­ping 2,20,000. The con­stituency has a size­able num­ber of Mus­lims in the con­stituency. Per­sona Drama­tis in the In­dian Par­lia­ment.
• Founder of the Hindu Surak­sha Vahini -a right-wing group fo­cussed on pro­tec­tion of Hindu cit­i­zens of the coun­try.
• Prime Ac­cused in the 2007 anti-Mus­lim ri­ots in Gorakh­pur. A se­nior jour­nal­ist from Gorakh­pur -Manoj Singh has com­piled a long list of in­ci­dents in which Adityanath’s vol­un­teers have been in­volved in anti-Mus­lim pro­pa­ganda and acts.
• NOW Chief Min­is­ter of Ut­tar Pradesh -biggest state in Cen­tral In­dia.
• His pre­de­ces­sor was Avaidyanath and he was pre­ceded by Ma­hant Digvi­jayanath. Ma­hant Digvi­jayanth was the leader of the Hindu Ma­hasabha. In 1949, he was in­stru­men­tal in launch­ing a long re­li­gious cer­e­mony in Ay­o­d­hya, af­ter which sud­denly idols of Ram Lalla and Sita ap­peared in the Babri Masjid. Digvi­jyanath was anti-par­ti­tion.   

Me­dia rhetoric:

“If they (Mus­lims) take one Hindu girl, we will take 100 Mus­lim girls. If they kill one Hindu, we’ll kill 100 Mus­lims.”

“In­dia must be­come a Hindu state.”

What is hap­pen­ing across UP in the last 10 days since he as­sumed power:

• Pan and to­bacco chew­ing banned in the cor­ri­dors of power.
• Abat­toirs, es­pe­cially those con­sid­ered il­le­gal for not com­plet­ing ALL con­di­tions and gov­ern­men­tal com­pli­ances, or­dered shut in the cap­i­tal Luc­know and other vil­lages, towns and cities across the whole state.
• The meat in­dus­try on ten­ter­hooks. This is the buf­falo meat in­dus­try. Cow slaugh­ter is banned.
• Tigers in Sa­faris and re­serves in UP made to eat chicken in­stead of black meat.
• Young cou­ples not al­lowed pri­vacy in pub­lic parks.
• Me­dia scared.
• Mus­lims dou­bly scared.
• Vig­i­lante Cow pro­tec­tion­ists and Romeo vol­un­teers have a field day.

…And the Re­sponse:

Mi­lan Vaish­nav -the au­thor of When Crime Pays -Money and Mus­cle Power in UP Pol­i­tics and fel­low at the Carnegie En­dow­ment for Peace says, “His hard­line rhetoric may be toned down, but it won’t dis­ap­pear. It is who Yogi is. The chal­lenge for Modi is to en­sure that it does not com­pletely over­take the de­vel­op­ment agenda, but every­one — es­pe­cially Modi — knows what you are get­ting when you pick an Adityanath. There should be no il­lu­sions about that.”

Aakar Pa­tel of Amnesty In­ter­na­tional In­dia chap­ter has writ­ten to Yogi Adityanath. Amnesty has de­manded that, “Adityanath’s toxic ideas must not be­come part of his gov­er­nance. He must pub­licly re­tract from all his di­vi­sive rhetoric of the past.”

An ex­pert com­men­ta­tor on con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal af­fairs says, “Yogi Adityanath is heir to a his­tory and legacy of a mutt that has long be­lieved in mil­i­tant in­volve­ment in pol­i­tics.”

With a thump­ing ma­jor­ity win of 324 seats out of 403, Ut­tar Pradesh has given thumbs up to the likes of Yogi Adityanath, BJP Pres­i­dent Amit Shah and the Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi.  A siz­able chunk of the coun­try is al­ready un­der BJP rule. Will the whole of In­dia fol­low Ut­tar Pradesh in 2019 Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions? Will Yogi Adityanath over­take Modi and be the Prime Min­is­te­r­ial can­di­date in the 2024 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions?

I ask, “Will power go to his head or will power tame him? Is he the BJP can­di­date for Prime Min­is­ter­ship in 2024? Is this a march to give com­pe­ti­tion to Nepal as be­ing the only pro­claimed con­sti­tu­tional Hindu coun­try in the world?

The world is watch­ing!