BSP chief Mayawati. (File)Politics over the vote of Brahmins, often seen as “opinion makers” in UP, has begun to engage both national and regional parties. Brahmins make up about 12%-14% of the vote in the state, and up to 20% in some Assembly seats in eastern UP — but they are believed to wield influence over a much bigger chunk of votes. And yet, they are seen as being neglected when it comes to forming the government.
Over the past few months, opposition leaders have been alleging atrocities and bias against Brahmins. Congress leader Jitin Prasada launched a Brahmin Chetna Yatra and Brahmin Chetna Samwad, while Abhishek Mishra of the SP started the Bhagwan Parshuram Chetna Peeth. Some leaders of the BSP have started WhatsApp groups with names such as “Friends of Brahmin Samaj”.
These moves have gained momentum after the series of encounters leading up to the killing of criminal Vikas Dubey. The opposition has alleged that Brahmins were targeted in the name of fighting crime; the BJP has countered that by backing the criminal, the opposition has bared its real face.
The BJP has argued that not only does the state have a Brahmin Deputy Chief Minister (Dinesh Sharma), three top officers in the government — Chief Secretary R K Tiwari, Director General of Police Hitesh C Awasthy, and Additional Chief Secretary, Home, Awanish Kumar Awasthi — are all Brahmins.
Rajendra Nath Tripathi, national president of the Akhil Bhartiya Brahmin Mahasabha, said political parties were trying to cash in on the sadness and agitation that Brahmins were feeling in the face of atrocities in UP. This was because “Brahmins influence much bigger votebanks among Dalits and other communities, and take a greater share of votes wherever they go,” he said.
This is something that BSP chief Mayawati too, has underlined. Announcing that the BSP, if voted to power in the elections of 2022, would build a bigger statue of Parshuram than had been promised by the SP recently, she said on Sunday: “In the 2007 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, along with Dalits, Backwards, Muslims and other religious minorities, upper castes, especially the Brahmin community, voted for BSP.” And her government, Mayawati said, had given Brahmins proper representation in return.
The Brahmin card is something the Congress too had tried to play in 2017, but had failed after its alliance with the SP. Now, both parties are trying to reach out to the community.
Prasada, a former Union minister, claimed that Brahmins were facing “stepmotherly” treatment. “We are not asking for anyone’s share but only what we deserve. No one is siding with criminals, but in the name of action against them, a particular community is being targeted. Many Brahmins have been murdered in the past few months, and in each case there were complaints that the police did not listen,” he said.
Mishra, who was a minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government, and whose Bhagwan Parshuram Chetna Peeth has announced the construction of a 108-foot statue of Parshuram in Lucknow, has said that a holiday in Parshuram’s name would be restored if the SP came back to power.
BJP spokesperson Manoj Mishra told The Indian Express: “Opposition parties are presenting the wrong picture, as though only Brahmins are being encountered. It is wrong to look at the caste of a criminal. The BSP and SP have lost their votebanks and are looking for (caste) combinations. They do not see Brahmins as anything more than a vote bank.” The BJP has 52 Brahmin MLAs from all over the state, he said.
UP has not had a Brahmin chief minister since N D Tiwari in 1988-89. “The Congress does not do politics of caste or religion but the fact remains that all the prominent Brahmin chief ministers were from the party — Govind Ballabh Pant, Kamlapati Tripathi, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, Sripati Mishra, N D Tiwari,” Congress Legislature Party Leader in the Assembly and its lone Brahmin MLA, Aradhna Mishra, said.