India Tomorrow
New Delhi, May 15—While campaigning for BJP in the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in February 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a speech at a rally in the town of Fatehpur which changed the winds in favour of his party which, according to many political observers, had not performed as expected in the first three phases of polling due to Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance. What was in that speech?
“If you create kabristaan (Muslim graveyard) in a village, then a shamshaan (cremation ground for Hindu) should also be created. If electricity is given uninterrupted in Ramzan, then it should be given in Diwali without a break. Bhedbhaav nahin hona chahiye (there should be no discrimination,” he said while throwing his tried and tested Hindutva card on the deck to counter the alliance slogan of ‘Kaam Bolta Hai’.
Media coverage of the speech, which proved to be instrumental in resuscitating BJP’s fortunes in the prestigious election in the state and helped it bag a mammoth 312 seats, was such that a year after forming the government in Lucknow, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced a budget of Rs. 100 crore in the year 2018-19.
But in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections 2019, Modi has not raked up the Shamshan-Kabristan issue so far. Why? One explanation of this enigma could be that the narrative came tumbling down soon as the masses realized that the government’s promise to give a facelift to the cremation ground all over the state was just an election gimmick. They may have their valid reasons.
Firstly, PM Modi’s promise to create a cremation ground in “every village” which had a graveyard for the burial of Muslims was superficial as common Hindus detest having a cremation ground in the midst of their village considering it as a bad omen, hence cremations in Hindu culture take place at select ghats at the banks of rivers.
Secondly, the people realized that the amount allocated for the work was at least four times less than the previous Samajwadi Party government’s budget of Rs. 400 crore for 2016-2017 to raise boundary walls for all graveyards in the state in order to stop encroachment. The plan, which was aimed at renovating 90,000 graveyards across India’s largest state, could achieve building of boundary walls in 5,314 locations and was underway on 1,121 locations as in early March, 2017.
But above all, the main reason is that his own party is in power in Lucknow for the last two years. Earlier, there was a Samajwadi Party government in the state and so attacking a rival was a cakewalk for Modi but after the Yogi government came to power, BJP has no vantage point of a resurgent opposition which they could project as a ‘Muslim appeasing’ government, anymore.
Moreover, the failure of many of the flagship schemes run by UP CM Yogi and lofty promises made to the common people have also made Modi vulnerable to counter-attacks should he raise the graveyard issue again as the BJP’s tactical armour is not impenetrable anymore.
Furthermore, the surveys conducted within a year of Yogi’s government formation revealed that there was a steep decline in his popularity.
Yogi’s farm loan decision flopped as farmers complained of being cheated and, in many cases, receiving as less as one paisa in their share of loan waiver amount. Cow protection in UP became synonymous with cow vigilantism and lynching. In December 2018, when inspector Subodh Kumar was killed by a mob that was protesting over alleged cow slaughter in Bulandshahr, Yogi called it an ‘accident’ which further incensed the people of the state. His cow tax decision in 2019 was also declared by the masses as a purely political move. His celebrated police encounters soon came to be interpreted by people as extortionist and oppressive ‘police raj’. The nail in the coffin was hammered in August 2017, when 63 infants died in Gorakhpur’s district medical hospital due to lack of oxygen cylinders. What further distanced people from the government was its decision to suspend Dr. Kafeel Ahmed Khan who saved the lives of many other children who could have died. Yogi’s image as the firebrand Hindutva leader had fallen so badly by 2018 that his 74 rallies in the poll-bound states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December last year also failed to influence voters.
Given all these factors, Modi perhaps knows that just by raking up controversial and communal topics like the shamshaan-kabristan issue in the on-going election campaign would not benefit the party much as the image of BJP under Yogi is on descending slope and magic of such rhetoric remarks will not work now.
