DM Monitoring
New Delhi: With just a week left for voting in the first phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is battling hard to douse the fire of resentment from the unlikeliest of quarters – the Rajput community – who have traditionally been its loyal support base.
A sudden wave of protest meetings and panchayats held in west Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Meerut by leaders of the dominant, landed community, has forced the BJP to address their question and try to gloss over the divisions in its electoral caste rainbow by ramping up the Hindutva card and sentiments of nationalism.
The region has over the past three to four years emerged as a playground of caste tension and battle for supremacy between two dominant communities—the “upper caste” Rajputs and the OBC Gurjars—especially over the claim to the legacy of ninth century Pratihara ruler Mihir Bhoj. While Gurjars claim Mihir Bhoj was a Gurjar ruler, Rajput groups say he was one of them and accused the Gurjars, a backward caste community in UP, of trying to appropriate their caste icon.
This feud resulted in a war of words and competing rallies and marches by both sides, giving rise to a complicated situation for the BJP, which wants to secure the votes of both communities as part of its consolidation of Hindus. The dispute first took centre stage months ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly election when chief minister Yogi Adityanath inaugurated a statue of Mihir Bhoj in a college run by the Gurjar community in Dadri, Noida. The Gurjar community was left fuming after the word ‘Gurjar’ was removed from the plaque before the inauguration. The plaque had initially read – Gurjar Pratihar Samrat Mihir Bhoj. The Gurjars alleged that the word ‘Gurjar’ was removed at the behest of the Rajput community and accused the Adityanath government of trying to change the identity of their icon.
The BJP’s ticket distribution in west UP and the outrage by Rajputs in Gujarat over BJP ‘s Union minister Parshottam Rupala’s controversial comments on Kshatriyas entering relationships of “roti-beti” (breaking bread and entering into marital relations) with the British provided the Rajputs the push to launch a fresh agitation for “self-respect” in Uttar Pradesh.
And, on April 7, Rajput groups assembled in huge numbers in Nanauta in Saharanpur under the Kshatriya Swabhimaan Mahakumbh and declared that the community would punish the BJP in the 2024 election. Thakur Puran Singh, founder president of the Kisan Mazdoor Sanghathan, who led the gathering, declared that the Rajput community would vote for the candidates best placed to defeat the BJP across the country.
The Rajputs are irked that the BJP has fielded Pradeep Chaudhary, a Gurjar MP in Kairana, for the second time despite reservations expressed by them over his stand on the Mihir Bhoj controversy.
A section of the Rajput community is also unhappy that BJP MP from Ghaziabad V.K. –Agencies
Singh was dropped and replaced by a Bania, Atul Garg, from Saharanpur, as the party’s candidate, while former BJP legislators from the Thakur-Rajput community Suresh Rana and Sangeet Som, both known for their Hindutva antecedents, have been sidelined after they lost their seats in 2022 Assembly polls.
“This fight is for our swabhimaan (self-respect), a fight against those who insulted our mothers and sisters. This election is not about making someone win or lose. This is only about your swabhimaan. Vote for the candidate who is defeating the BJP or else just don’t go out to vote and stay home,” Puran Singh said in Meerut on April 11. He was addressing a “Chintak Baithak” of the entire Kshatriya Samaj in Meerut’s Gram Sisauli Adda, one of the many meetings and panchayats lined up by the dissenting Rajputs in west UP leading up to the voting on April 19 and 26.
Puran Singh accused the BJP and Adityanath of “keeping silent” when Gurjar leaders insulted Mihir Bhoj by inscribing the word “Gurjar” before his name on his statue.
“They claim to be nationalist. We voted for it (BJP) in the name of nationalism but that party has become casteist. It is handing tickets to those MPs who insulted our icons,” Puran Singh said.
