BJP will ensure Dalit-Muslim conflicts in UP, feel observers

The violence in Saharanpur last week was not an accident, feel political leaders in Uttar Pradesh. They believe the pattern will get repeated at other places in the state in the run-up to the general election of 2019. They point out that:

• Local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders would not have taken out a procession in defiance of police and administration without the tacit support of the leadership.
• BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal, a Brahmin, studied in Doon School and the International Management Institute at New Delhi. They argue that the MP would not have led an unruly mob to the residence of the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) and encouraged them to vandalise the house without any motive.
• He is not known to have taken any leading role in the past in celebrating BR Ambedkar.
• The decision to take out a procession on Ambedkar’s birth anniversary on April 20, which otherwise is marked across the country on April 14, is suspect and no central leader of BJP is ready to take the ownership.
• For the BJP to give it a Dalit versus Muslim colour, they feel, is a dead give-away of the plan already set in motion.

Officially, BJP leaders in Delhi condemned the violence and disowned the vandals. “We condemn the violence and categorically declare that people involved were not from the party,” said BJP’s SC cell chief Sanjay Paswan.

One of the political observers though felt that the flare-up in Saharanpur was somewhat similar in nature to the communal violence that rocked Muzaffarnagar in 2013.

“The BJP may have secured 39% of the votes polled in Uttar Pradesh, but its core strength is still confined to 15% or so, with the remaining support coming from floating votes, including those of OBCs and Dalits. Therefore, the BJP will continue to foment such situations so as to cement the Hindu coalition,” he added.

Professor Sudhir Pawar explained, “The BJP would like to be seen as a party that does not compromise on law and order. But the irony is that its belief system involves conflict and can rarely grow in peace.”

He added that the Dalits in UP were in conflict with the Yadavs on the one hand, and increasingly with Muslims on the other, because of their “Hinduisation” by the BJP.

Professor Pawar highlighted that with castes such as Rajbhars, Mauryas and Patels having been imported to the BJP through alliances, only Dalits remained out of the BJP’s fold.

“The BJP has sensed an opportunity in the decline of Mayawati and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and would like to engineer an exodus. That is why conflicts between Dalits and Muslims will recur again and again until 2019,” he said.

A leader from Samajwadi Party noted that the incident in Saharanpur had put Mayawati in a spot. “Have you seen Mayawati speak against Saharanpur violence or the BJP? If she speaks out against Muslims, she will be declared anti-Muslim, and if she speaks out against the BJP, which by default is representing Dalits here, she risks being branded as anti-Dalit!” the SP leader said, as he grudgingly admired the “social conflict engineering” of the BJP.