<p>Prime Minister Narendra Modi has initiated the battle for Uttar Pradesh (UP) from his parliamentary constituency Varanasi. Besides inaugurating the Japanese funded Rudraksh Convention Centre, he has launched developmental projects worth Rs 1,583 crore. These include new wings and oxygen plants for hospitals, smart schools, girls hostels, residential flats for teachers, road over-bridges, multi-level parking lots, renovation of sewer lines, and cruise boats.</p>.<p>Prime Minister Modi is expected to throw open the Lucknow-Ghazipur Poorvanchal Expressway after August 15 and inaugurate the new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and a fertiliser plant with an employment potential of 4,000 jobs in Gorakhpur, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s pocket-borough.</p>.<p>Yet, none of this means that the BJP will contest the UP polls only on a developmental narrative. It will offer voters a buffet of issues with communalism as the reliable main dish. </p>.<p>Communal polarisation is not just a pre-poll insurance policy for the BJP. More than a tactic for winning elections, it is meant to alter the long-term worldview of citizens. The BJP was conceived as a communal political instrument by its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Communalism is an integral element of its cosmology and will always remain central to its poll campaigns. Communal polarisation will be especially important in UP in the run-up to the general election in 2024.</p>.<p><strong>Also read: <a href="http://deccanherald.com/national/does-india-need-population-control-up-draft-policy-begs-the-question-1008155.html" target="_blank">Our vision is to build quality infrastructure in Varanasi for coming generations: PM Modi</a></strong></p>.<p>The Yogi government’s communal signalling has been relentless in the last 15 months. Its crackdown on organised crime led to the confiscation and destruction of gangsters’ properties worth Rs 1,138 crore. The UP police reported these as mainly belonging to mafia dons Atiq Ahmad, a former Samajwadi Party MP, and Mukhtar Ansari, currently in Sabarmati (Gujarat) and Banda (UP) jails, respectively.</p>.<p>About 89 associates of Atiq Ahmad have also been arrested, nine sent to jail, 21 FIRs registered against them and the arms licences of 60 cancelled. In the case of Mukhtar Ansari, properties worth Rs 178 crore have been seized or razed, 158 associates arrested, arms licences of 122 cancelled, and police inquiry initiated against 37. To be sure, the properties of some gangsters from the majority community were also seized. Still, the police told the media that most of the seized property belonged to Ansari and Ahmad. The public is free to draw whatever communal conclusions it wants from this information.</p>.<p>The Yogi government has also singularly targeted the minority community for protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act. Now, the Anti-Terror Squad of the UP Police has arrested two alleged operatives with Al-Qaida links for planning explosions and a suicide bombing in the state capital during Independence Day celebrations. According to the DGP of UP, “Investigations have so far acted on 30 per cent of the actionable evidence gathered in the case” and there is more to come. How the promised police action will pan out and fill voter mind space with fears of Islamic terrorism before the elections is anyone’s guess.</p>.<p>However, Yogi’s latest trump card is the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill 2021 to reward those with two children through preference in government jobs and social schemes such as free rations and deny them to violators. This, too, will contribute to a communal debate.</p>.<p>Anxiety about Muslims demographically swamping out Hindus has been a central and often revisited trope of the Hindutva imagination since the 1909 publication of “Hindus A Dying Race”. The RSS has long campaigned for righting “religious imbalance” in the population. Its 2015 resolution claims, “Vast differences in growth rates of different religious groups, infiltration and conversion resulting in a religious imbalance of the population … may emerge as a threat to the unity, integrity and cultural identity of the country.”</p>.<p>If the initial debate on relative population size of India’s religious communities evolved against the backdrop of separate Hindu-Muslim electorates in the British Raj, its new avatar pretends to address economic growth through population policy. Several BJP MPs have tried to bring this debate into the political domain through private members’ Bills. Among these are Rakesh Sinha, a nominated MP to the Rajya Sabha, Ajay Bhatt, BJP MP from Uttarakhand and now a Union minister and Ravi Kishan, actor-turned-MP from UP. The issue is being raised by the BJP in Assam and Gujarat as well.</p>.<p><strong>Also read: <a href="http://deccanherald.com/national/does-india-need-population-control-up-draft-policy-begs-the-question-1008155.html" target="_blank">Does India need population control? UP draft policy begs the question</a></strong></p>.<p>All these moves draw on the assertion that Muslims have a higher total fertility rate than Hindus and will eventually outnumber the latter. The minute anyone enters the debate they will give life to a discussion that is motivated and falsely constructed.</p>.<p>By pursuing a communal narrative in the guise of a developmental one, the BJP will be able to offer the voters and its campaigners a new item on their erstwhile spectrum of issues ranging from Islamic terror, Pakistan, the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, triple talaq, Ram Temple and Uniform Civil Code. It also serves to push anti-incumbency and the horrific mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic by the Yogi Adityanath administration into the background.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a journalist based in Delhi)</em></p>
<p>Prime Minister Narendra Modi has initiated the battle for Uttar Pradesh (UP) from his parliamentary constituency Varanasi. Besides inaugurating the Japanese funded Rudraksh Convention Centre, he has launched developmental projects worth Rs 1,583 crore. These include new wings and oxygen plants for hospitals, smart schools, girls hostels, residential flats for teachers, road over-bridges, multi-level parking lots, renovation of sewer lines, and cruise boats.</p>.<p>Prime Minister Modi is expected to throw open the Lucknow-Ghazipur Poorvanchal Expressway after August 15 and inaugurate the new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and a fertiliser plant with an employment potential of 4,000 jobs in Gorakhpur, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s pocket-borough.</p>.<p>Yet, none of this means that the BJP will contest the UP polls only on a developmental narrative. It will offer voters a buffet of issues with communalism as the reliable main dish. </p>.<p>Communal polarisation is not just a pre-poll insurance policy for the BJP. More than a tactic for winning elections, it is meant to alter the long-term worldview of citizens. The BJP was conceived as a communal political instrument by its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Communalism is an integral element of its cosmology and will always remain central to its poll campaigns. Communal polarisation will be especially important in UP in the run-up to the general election in 2024.</p>.<p><strong>Also read: <a href="http://deccanherald.com/national/does-india-need-population-control-up-draft-policy-begs-the-question-1008155.html" target="_blank">Our vision is to build quality infrastructure in Varanasi for coming generations: PM Modi</a></strong></p>.<p>The Yogi government’s communal signalling has been relentless in the last 15 months. Its crackdown on organised crime led to the confiscation and destruction of gangsters’ properties worth Rs 1,138 crore. The UP police reported these as mainly belonging to mafia dons Atiq Ahmad, a former Samajwadi Party MP, and Mukhtar Ansari, currently in Sabarmati (Gujarat) and Banda (UP) jails, respectively.</p>.<p>About 89 associates of Atiq Ahmad have also been arrested, nine sent to jail, 21 FIRs registered against them and the arms licences of 60 cancelled. In the case of Mukhtar Ansari, properties worth Rs 178 crore have been seized or razed, 158 associates arrested, arms licences of 122 cancelled, and police inquiry initiated against 37. To be sure, the properties of some gangsters from the majority community were also seized. Still, the police told the media that most of the seized property belonged to Ansari and Ahmad. The public is free to draw whatever communal conclusions it wants from this information.</p>.<p>The Yogi government has also singularly targeted the minority community for protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act. Now, the Anti-Terror Squad of the UP Police has arrested two alleged operatives with Al-Qaida links for planning explosions and a suicide bombing in the state capital during Independence Day celebrations. According to the DGP of UP, “Investigations have so far acted on 30 per cent of the actionable evidence gathered in the case” and there is more to come. How the promised police action will pan out and fill voter mind space with fears of Islamic terrorism before the elections is anyone’s guess.</p>.<p>However, Yogi’s latest trump card is the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill 2021 to reward those with two children through preference in government jobs and social schemes such as free rations and deny them to violators. This, too, will contribute to a communal debate.</p>.<p>Anxiety about Muslims demographically swamping out Hindus has been a central and often revisited trope of the Hindutva imagination since the 1909 publication of “Hindus A Dying Race”. The RSS has long campaigned for righting “religious imbalance” in the population. Its 2015 resolution claims, “Vast differences in growth rates of different religious groups, infiltration and conversion resulting in a religious imbalance of the population … may emerge as a threat to the unity, integrity and cultural identity of the country.”</p>.<p>If the initial debate on relative population size of India’s religious communities evolved against the backdrop of separate Hindu-Muslim electorates in the British Raj, its new avatar pretends to address economic growth through population policy. Several BJP MPs have tried to bring this debate into the political domain through private members’ Bills. Among these are Rakesh Sinha, a nominated MP to the Rajya Sabha, Ajay Bhatt, BJP MP from Uttarakhand and now a Union minister and Ravi Kishan, actor-turned-MP from UP. The issue is being raised by the BJP in Assam and Gujarat as well.</p>.<p><strong>Also read: <a href="http://deccanherald.com/national/does-india-need-population-control-up-draft-policy-begs-the-question-1008155.html" target="_blank">Does India need population control? UP draft policy begs the question</a></strong></p>.<p>All these moves draw on the assertion that Muslims have a higher total fertility rate than Hindus and will eventually outnumber the latter. The minute anyone enters the debate they will give life to a discussion that is motivated and falsely constructed.</p>.<p>By pursuing a communal narrative in the guise of a developmental one, the BJP will be able to offer the voters and its campaigners a new item on their erstwhile spectrum of issues ranging from Islamic terror, Pakistan, the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, triple talaq, Ram Temple and Uniform Civil Code. It also serves to push anti-incumbency and the horrific mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic by the Yogi Adityanath administration into the background.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a journalist based in Delhi)</em></p>