Varun hate talk has limited impact

Varun Gandhi’s hate speeches against Muslims may have polarised Pilibhit, a small town nestled in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh (UP), but the question is, will religion trump caste considerations in the state in the coming election.

Even in the BJP, opinion varies whether the leadership should allow religion to take precedence over moderation. While several leaders are enthused by the idea of a road show across UP, perhaps hoping that it will invoke old religious animosities in a region that has a history of communal tension, others are not so sure.

A BJP leader pointed out that Varun may have won his constituency hands down, “but will that mean that those of us who have focused on development will be marginalised? Moreover, what is going to happen when he is released?”

There is a real fear that the future of the BJP as a centre-right party is at stake.
Travelling through Pilibhit, Bareilly, Rampur, Badaiyon, Amroha and Moradabad, the overwhelming impression remains that while Varun’s attempts at rabble-rousing have certainly polarised his constituency as well as the one where his mother Maneka is fighting, neighbouring Aonla, it has had a limited effect in the rest of the region. In fact, in most other areas, local development issues and caste affiliations are taking precedence over religion.

In Moradabad, which has a history of communal tension, Varun’s speeches have not gone unnoticed, but issues such as the government’s apathy towards the ailing brassware industry are exciting people more.

“What he said may or may not be true, but I am looking for a party that will show us the way out of the recession that has hit the brassware industry that was already ailing. Varun’s anti-Muslim speeches are not going to solve my problems,” Praveen Agarwal, president of Moradabad Vypar Mandal, says.

Significantly, it’s not as if the region’s Muslim community is voting en bloc in favour of a Muslim candidate. In neighbouring Rampur, 100-odd km from Pilibhit, it is not likely to dictate the voting pattern either. Rampur is one of UP’s 25-odd constituencies where Muslims are a majority, yet the foremost issue is not Varun but “outsider Jaya Prada”.

“Varun ki baton se kuch nahi hone wala, hamare liye toh sabse bada mudda hai ki hamara numainda yaha ka ho (His speech doesn’t matter, the issue for us is to ensure we have an MP who is from Rampur),” Rustom Khan, a functionary of the famous Raza library, says.

Further inwards, towards the Ganga, former Samajwadi Party MP Saleem Sherwani is contesting on a Congress ticket from Badaiyon, against Dharmendra Yadav, nephew of Mulayam Singh as well as the legendary DP Yadav of the BSP, whose criminal past has earned him great notoriety.

But Sherwani hardly ever mentions Varun in any of the meetings this correspondent heard him address during the course of a day. He talks of development and of all communities being equal partners in progress. “This communal madness will get us nowhere. My community is the people of Badaiyon. A majority of the people are Hindus, yet they have voted me to parliament for five terms,” he says.