UP Assembly elections: Castes blend seamlessly into SP-RLD alliance

In UP's pot boiler, will communities be united by caste or religion?

Posters in the Vrindavan region of Mathura are promoting the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (SP-RLD) alliance in a uniquely symbiotic manner.

The picture positioned next to Chaudhary Charan Singh, the Jat leader of the region and once India’s prime minister, is not of his grandson (Jayant Chaudhary) but of Akhilesh Yadav, the SP chief.

Placed next to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s (Akhilesh’s father) visage is Jayant Chaudhary. 

The emphasis: A shared caste heritage.

“I have seen Chaudhary Charan Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav campaigning together in the 1970s. Today, I am excited to see their heirs coming together,” says 80-year-old Rajpal Singh as he walks to reach the Mant Tehsil’s Sri Braj Adarsh Inter College, where the duo campaign for the alliance candidate Sanjay Lathar.

“Brothers have united; nobody can divide and defeat them,” Singh adds. Red and green caps form a colourful leitmotif. Excitement is in the air. With tractors circling the boundary of the rally ground, symbolising the region’s agrarian culture, the crowd is heaving. The stage has the same Vrindavan posters but bigger. Thousands holding SP and RLD flags in hand shout “zindabad” in response to the sound of dozens of speakers saluting Akhilesh “Chaudhary” and Jayant “Yadav”.

Jayant’s address starts with “ram-ram” and an appeal to not get divided on caste and religion. “We are farmers. Charan Singh’s politics was for farmers, not caste.” The RLD chief also invokes his legacy as Chaudhary and urges people to forget the past and vote for the alliance. Jayant won the Mant seat in the 2012 Assembly election.

Reetu Devi, standing at the corner of the stadium holding SP flags, shouts: “We are with you and your alliance.”

The ground is filled with people from 7-year-olds to 80-year-olds but what attracts everybody’s attention is the number of differently-abled people who have joined the rally. “Uttar Pradesh is on the crutches of caste and communal hatred. I am here to be witness to an alliance which will set Uttar Pradesh free of these crutches,” says Amit Kumar, a differently-abled participant. “This time we will send Babaji (CM Yogi) and his doots (stray animals) which are destroying our crops to Gorakhpur,” adds Kumar, ruing the problem of stray animals.

Akhilesh describes the alliance as a combination of different colours. “Lohiaji was anti-caste,” Akhilesh said, adding, “Our party and alliance are committed to his ideology.”

After speaking to the crowd for about 10 minutes, about the BJP’s failure on the economic front, doubling farmers’ income, paper leaks and corruption in recruitment, Akhilesh promises to create a memorial in memory of farmers who have lost their lives in agitation and Rs 25 lakh assistance to their families, increasing the age limit in government jobs, free electricity, and a farmers’ corpus for sugarcane payments.

Rishabh Krishna, a 25-year-old Army aspirant, who has crossed the age limit of getting into Army, cheers to the announcement and says, “At least now, I will be able to get into state services.” The decision would benefit thousands in the region of

western UP, which is known for its contribution to the armed forces, he says.

Vikram Singh, a villager in Mant, feels that the alliance will give a tough fight to the BJP, which won 53 of the 58 seats which go to the polls on February 10. “Is bar mukabala takkar ka hai (this time the fight is strong).” Though Singh feels that the BJP will definitely win seats on communal grounds he is confident that the RLD-SP’s strategy to bring all farming communities together will give them mileage.

Political commentators believe if the SP-RLD alliance wins western UP, the politics of not only the state will change,  it will have a bearing on national politics too.

“An alliance of farming communities will have an impact on national politics, not just UP. But if it fails to dent the BJP’s strategy of consolidating Hindu votes, the opposition will fail to challenge the saffron party —  both on the state and national front — for years,” a commentator said.