By Sushil Kutty
A video doing the rounds of social media features Donald Trump and the 47th President-elect of the United States is heard saying, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a nice guy but threaten India and he’s a killer, I am telling you that.” Modi bhakts have picked it up and they are all over the Internet.
Perhaps, it is time for Trump to come face to face with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and maybe Trump will forget Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “killer reaction”. Of course, Modi is in a class of his own, specially in the eyes of people like President-elect Donald Trump. And without doubt, Modi must also be Yogi Adityanath’s inspiration.
The story is that Trump’s sweeping victory has spurred BJP politicians. Everyone who is BJP and “kattar rashtrawaadi” can’t stop talking of Trump doing a Modi in the United States and why Modi and Trump will take the world to a better place in the years to come.
It is impossible to think that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is not one of them and that he is not aware of Trump’s landslide victory and hasn’t heard of Modi’s story from Trump’s mouth?
“I have been told that stone pelting during the shobha yatra of Ram Navami and Durga Puja has become common here. Vote for the BJP-led alliance to have a safe Shobha yatra,” Yogi told a rally in Jamshedpur, a day after he told Jharkhandis to show their strength and watch how stone-pelters will sweep the street ahead of them when you’re taking out “Shobha yatras”.
Yogi Adityanath told enthusiastic crowds at rally after rally he addressed in Jharkhand, where assembly elections are just days away, how he was warned soon after he took charge in Uttar Pradesh that if he allowed “Kanwar yatras”, there would be riots and people will get killed. “I told the bureaucrats, let them take out the yatra, and let there be a one-time ‘aar-paar ki ladai’, we will see what happens?”
The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said there were no more communal riots in his state Uttar Pradesh but that he has heard of the government in Jharkhand going out of its way to protect stone pelters. Yogi Adityanath said the BJP governance model should be replicated in Jharkhand to get rid of stone-pelters and ensure a riot-free state.
“Since I took over the reins in Uttar Pradesh, Kanwar yatra has been taken out on a grand scale every year with four crore people participating during the holy Shravan month,” the Yogi said, criticising the JMM-led Jharkhand government’s inability to stop Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltration into “adivasi Jharkhand”, leading to declining tribal population in Santhal Pargana, and dangerous demographic changes in many Jharkhand districts.
Much like Trump’s Republican Party, which says only a Republican administration can curb infiltration by illegal immigrants, Yogi Adityanath also says that only a BJP government can put a stop to infiltration from Bangladesh, and protect tribal women from the wiles of Bangladeshi and Rohingya men, who allegedly hide their religious identity to lure adivasi women into matrimony and then become owners of tribal lands and properties.
Call it fear-mongering or genuine concern, Yogi Adityanath’s tactics are having their effect, on the opposition-run government of Jharkhand and on the people of the state who had elected the government to power. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is electrifying crowds at his rallies with his aggressive speeches. Unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Yogi is more used to telling it straight, part of the reason why Modi did not do well even in Varanasi, his own parliamentary constituency.
Trump probably is unaware that his friend Modi, with an incomplete mandate given to him in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, isn’t the same Modi of his and Modi’s first terms. Things have vastly changed in the interregnum when Trump was out of power. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wings have been clipped to some extent by the opposition INDI-Alliance and the fate of the Modi government is always hanging in balance.
But the Yogi Adityanath government of Uttar Pradesh faces no such risk, there is still two and a half years to go for the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Yogi Adityanath’s “Hindu focussed” campaign with “Batenge toh Katenge'” as its central message is different from Modi’s “Sabka saath Sabka vikas” pitch, and is leaving its effect on the electorate as well as on the opposition parties.
Especially hit is the Samajwadi Party of Akhilesh Yadav whose ‘PDA’ won him more Lok Sabha seats than the BJP could in the recent Lok Sabha polls. However, post-Yogi Adityanath’s ‘Batenge toh katenge’ game-changing slogan, the Samajwadi Party is a bit confused and Akhilesh Yadav is behaving exactly like Kamala Harris did, talking while addressing the electorate in battleground states.
Kamala Harris lost the narrative when she went on tangent and lost the plot, exactly like Akhilesh Yadav is doing when he tells the people of Uttar Pradesh that ‘Batenge toh katenge’ is a direct derivative of “Angrezon ka Divide and rule”. Akhilesh is making the same mistake President Joe Biden made when he called Trump’s supporters “garbage” and Kamala Harris happily accepted it.
Akhilesh Yadav forgets that today’s electorate aren’t babes in the woods who will miss the woods for the tree! You can’t fool them with “Divide and Rule” while trying to explain away ‘Batenge toh katenge’ with “Angrez chale gaye par divide and rule chodd Gaye!” Akhilesh Yadav is trying to convince Yogi Adityanath that his ‘Batenge toh katenge’ will not work while the Yogi is engaged in convincing the electorate that it is only solution for them. Exactly like Kamala Harris who was always calling Trump fascist and Hitler while Trump concentrated on exposing the Biden-Harris economic and immigration policies, which resonated with the “garbage” Biden mocked much to Kamala’s delight. Who won and who lost tells the story to all and sundry. (IPA Service)