The Enemy

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Notwithstanding the results of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, it is now clear that Akhilesh Yadav has emerged as a major leader in Uttar Pradesh politics. The way he challenged the top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and their massive network in Uttar Pradesh with courage, confidence and tact has made him a representative of angry generation. Particularly, the youth of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) see him as a man who can challenge the saffron establishment.

Narendra Modi projected himself as an OBC leader to win the lower OBC votes, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, in 2014. There is now a feeling that he has not been true to himself and the public. He never supported the OBC cause at any time in his life before the 2014 elections. The RSS/BJP networks, which never supported the Mandal Commission’s recommendations for carving out an OBC category for reservations, suddenly projected himself as OBC for the sake of votes.

Akhilesh comes from an OBC family that has contributed greatly to the self-respect and political upward mobility of the OBCs in Uttar Pradesh. The nation knows his father Mulayam Singh’s stern handling of the Ram Rath Yatra led by LK Advani, in which Modi participated, as it tried to derail the Mandal train.

The BJP/RSS central and state governments have become pawns in the hands of what the BJP leader and former minister Arun Shourie calls tycoons in the industrial economy and of sadhus and sanyasis for whom abusing Mahatma Gandhi has become normal behaviour. As they are privatising the Public Sector Units (PSU) to deprive the Shudras (OBC), Dalits (SCs) and Adivasis (STs) of jobs, the tycoons are taking over many of these industries at throwaway prices and investing their money in foreign countries. They are also buying massive houses in safe havens (Ambani house in London is just one example) for such a time when the nation realises it has been hoodwinked. Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi have already done so under BJP rule. Gautam Adani’s investments in many countries is well known. The private companies do not employ Shudras and Dalits and Adivasis. The private sector in India means jobs only for the Dwijs—Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Kshatriyas. The notion of merit has become a tool of manipulation.

On the other hand, the RSS/BJP associate sadhus and sanyasis are organising their own Parliament (called Dharam Sansad) to declare war on the food producers and also on the democratic system. After the farmers’ struggle of 2020-21, the political discourse has shifted from the minorities to the Shudra, Dalit and Adivasi food producers. Historically, Hindutva forces have treated the Shudras and Dalits and Adivasis as enemies. The minorities are only a late addition to their list of enemies. They created the caste system and nurtured it to perpetually enslave the food producers. This enmity of the Dwijs with Shudras is millennia old.

The RSS/BJP associate tycoons swindle the food producers and the sadhus-sanyasis eat without participating in any productive activity. And in the RSS/BJP theoretical realm, the food producers are anti-nationals and the parasitical swindlers and consumers are nationalists. This is their theoretical paradigm. Ram Madhav and other Dwijs theoreticians write that this new paradigm of nationalism has ancient roots.

The battle lines are now drawn between all the food producers of India and RSS/BJP Hindutva anti-farmers. The likes of Asaduddin Owaisi are out there to assist the RSS/BJP even in this battle—which is very sad for Muslim intellectualism.

Most praiseworthy is the way he handled the Hindutva media with firmness and dexterity. He has nullified the tendency of the media to paint the Yadavs as being inclined to gundagiri and managed to convincingly portray Thakur Raj as Terror Raj.

The Hindutva media spread lies for decades, starting from the days of Mulayam and Lalu Prasad, that Yadavs are only good for grazing cattle but not for ruling. Now, Akhilesh and Tejaswi Yadav have disproved the theory that Mandalwalas are useless and meritless and only the Dwijs are meritorious.

With an absolutely weakened Indian National Congress and the communist parties failing to provide a national alternative to the RSS/BJP, Akhilesh Yadav, powered by a successful farmer’s struggle, is a ray of hope.

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Frontier
Vol 54, No. 34, Feb 20 - 26, 2022