JOIN USUP polls: Bijnor's Jats, OBCs say they voted for RLD, not SP
Local legend has it that the village of Swaheri in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor district was entirely a Muslim village till the middle of the 18th Century, a period during which Nawab Najib-ud-Daulah of Najibabad was a powerful figure in the region. During that period, a military rival of the Nawab sought the assistance of a band of Jats, who had come from Rajasthan and camping in the vicinity. The Jats readily agreed and assisted him in beating back the Nawab's troops in one skirmish. In gratitude, the rival "emptied" Swaheri of its residents and handed it over to the ancestors of its present occupants.
Dhirendra Singh, or "Chhota Pradhan" as he is known here, recounted this story, adding, with a touch of pride, "My family goes back at least 11 generations in this village." Today, the Jats – like Dhirendra Singh – have replaced the Muslims in both parts of Swaheri, Swaheri Khurd and Swaheri Bujurg, as the numerically largest community. This came through visually as I walked through this remarkably uncongested village: the Jats live in large, sprawling homes; the Muslims, reduced to a tiny minority here – and who are apparently all related to each other – are confined to a barricaded and crowded ghetto. One Jat simply said, "Most Muslims have been driven out of this village."
A 20-minute drive from Bijnor city, a national highway runs past Swaheri. Between them, the residents of this village farm approximately 10,000 acres of rich agricultural land, where the most significant crop is sugarcane. The village has a Kendriya Vidyalaya, a GST office, a Lekhpal's office and an Electricity House.
The mood
The "mahaul" (mood) in Swaheri when I visited the village, 48 hours before voting day, appeared to signal an impending change. Unlike in Muzaffarnagar's Bhainsi, where the Jats were all solidly behind the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), here the impact of the more than year-long farmers' protest could be felt strongly. Many farmers from this village, largely but not all Jats, had spent several months on UP's border with Delhi during the agitation – and a majority were rooting for the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal(RLD) combine.
Mahipal Singh, a Jat and village patriarch, apologised for greeting me from his bed, where he sat, wrapped in a quilt – he said he was not well; his nephew later told me he is paralysed. But that did not stop him from speaking his mind: "When (the SP's) Akhilesh Yadav was chief minister, he had laid the foundation of a big hospital cum medical college near our village, but the BJP did not follow up on it. Now, just before the elections, the state government has announced it will build the hospital but has decided to take the medical college to Bijnor city. Doesn't this neighbourhood require a medical college?" he asked.
Warming up, Mahipal Singh then listed the farming community's major complaints - mounting electricity bills, the menace of stray cattle destroying the crops, and reducing of the 50 kg urea bag to 45 kg, "duping people into believing that the prices had gone down" (typically, calculations in rural areas are made by the number of bags, rather than weight). "This is an anti-farmer government that wants to hand over our lands to Ambani and Adani (a reference to the farm laws that have been withdrawn)," he concluded, as his nephew and village associates nodded.
Have there been any Hindu-Muslim clashes here? No, said Mahipal Singh and added the dominant religious influence here was that of the Arya Samaj: "It has helped us resolve any differences that might crop up peacefully in the village."
In the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019, and the last Assembly polls in 2017, most Jats in Swaheri said they voted for BJP, but not this time. One Jat family I visited was even split: the matriarch and her favourite, jeans-clad grandson, bound by affection and a common ration card, were voting the BJP; the two sons, engaged in agriculture, and their wives the RLD. Of the other two grandsons, one had lost his job at a multiplex in the nearby town during the pandemic and had, therefore, decided to vote the RLD; his wife, however, was still rooting for the BJP. The third grandson, who has a job in Himachal Pradesh, said he would stick with the BJP because he liked the "government's handling of law and order".
The mood in this area has been sustained by the local panchayats and the district branch of the Bharatiya Kisan Union Lok Shakti (BKU-Lok Shakti). Right up to polling day, local newspapers ran reports about local panchayats demanding speedy payment of sugarcane dues, a resolution of the stray cattle issue, an increase in the crushing capacity of the farmers' co-operative mill and repair of local roads. Some panchayats even threatened to start an agitation if these issues were not sorted out soon. Simultaneously, the BKU-Lok Shakti continued with its now two-month-old strike in the district, demanding cattle shelters, drinking water, cleaning of canals and an early settlement of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) issue.
The death last year of the RLD's Ajit Singh – who had been a cabinet minister at the Centre in several governments – has also created sympathy for his son, Jayant Chaudhury, who is leading the party's charge among members of his community here. The older Jats recall his grandfather, former prime minister Charan Singh, and the pride of the community. Jats express their anger at how Ajit Singh was evicted from a bungalow in Lutyens' Delhi by the BJP government, which they had hoped would become a memorial for Charan Singh.
Finally, the anti-BJP mood has been bolstered by the unpopularity of the BJP sitting MLA – and current candidate - Shuchi Chaudhary, and her husband, Aishwarya Chaudhary, who was jailed for allegedly inciting violence in Peda, where communal clashes claimed the lives of four people and injured 12 others in September 2016. This has led to a rebellion in the local BJP unit and ended with many BJP members here actively campaigning for the RLD.
A story told with great relish here is one about Shuchi Choudhary. In December 2021, she was invited to launch a seven-kilometre stretch of road built at the cost of Rs 1.16 crore. At the ceremony, the customary coconut was produced, but it failed to break; instead, under its impact, the road itself cracked, making a big hole in the asphalt. Furious, she cancelled the inauguration ceremony and demanded that the matter be investigated. But it was a huge loss of face.
Sainis and Pals
If in many parts of UP, Sainis and Pals — both Other Backward Castes — are still in the BJP camp, in Swaheri, Jats, who constitute well over half the population here, have made some impact among the members of these two communities. Rajesh Saini, a grizzled old man, was taking a snooze in the winter sun on his cart when I met him: last time, he said, he voted the BJP; in these elections, in solidarity with his fellow farmers, he would vote the RLD. Another BJP supporter, Hariya Saini, said he would vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) because its candidate in the Bijnor assembly segment, Ruchi Veera, had helped him get medical treatment in Delhi.
The Pals were similarly split. Dikshit Kumar, a first-time voter, said that, like his family, he would vote for the BJP because the party "speaks for the Hindus". He passed his Class 12 exam last year and now hopes to qualify for a government job. Sudhanshu Kumar, who had cleared his ITI exams, is also currently studying for a government job. His family own 20 bighas of land, and so, this time, they have all decided to ditch the BJP and vote for the RLD to protest against the BJP's anti-farmer policies.
Interestingly, the Sainis and Pals who said they would vote for the RLD stressed that if the Bijnor candidate had been from the SP, they might not have voted for the combine; it was only because the RLD had been given the ticket that they were voting for the combination.
Muslims and Jatavs
The Muslim quarter is a cramped and crowded rectangular space, a row of small tenements, with an outdoor corridor, the width of the dwellings running past them, and a high wall surrounding it all. The outdoor corridor is where the women sit, chopping their vegetables and gossiping while the children play.
"We don't have any land," said Ruksana, a young married woman, "but we are happy that we are getting rations, now twice a month. Some of the older people are getting their pensions. All the Muslims here, she says, live by doing mazdoori (labour); not everyone has a NREGA job card and, in any case, NREGA employment is erratic at the best of times." With prices skyrocketing, her family of five, including her husband and three children, was finding it hard to feed themselves adequately. "On the days that my husband gets work, and that is not every day, he earns Rs 250," she said, "so, even if you add the rations, that's not enough."
What about the elections? Mimia said that no government would make a difference to their lives, but "We want to see Akhilesh Yadav as chief minister." The other women nodded. Mohammad Imran, a medical doctor, concluded, "We just want peace, no riots. So, we will vote for the SP-RLD combine." Physical, rather than material security, top the concerns of the Muslims.
The Jatavs – the Scheduled Caste community to which Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati belongs – here, like their caste fellows elsewhere, are voting en masse for the party. Given that they constitute almost 20 per cent of the population in Swaheri, theirs is a significant vote. Aware that this act alone may not make Mayawati chief minister, they said it was to keep her core vote base intact and remind people of their existence.
Bijnor holds a special place in the BSP folklore as Mayawati made her political debut in the Lok Sabha in 1989 from the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat. While campaigning in this region, this time, Swaheri's Jatavs tell me, she described herself as the "daughter of Bijnor". In her speeches, she said, "The people of Bijnor say that I belong to their land, I am their daughter. The people of west UP played an important role in making the BSP strong."
Clearly, the Jatav vote is not enough to get the party through. Bhuda Prasad explains the party's strategy here: there are eight assembly seats that form the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat, he says, and in four of them, the BSP has fielded four Muslims, two Dalits in the reserved seats, and two upper castes. By doing so, he explained the Muslims would join the Jatavs in the seats that the BSP had a better chance than the SP-RLD candidates of defeating the BJP.
Qatl ki Raat
As I left the village, I caught up with Dhirendra Singh, at the home of Jat patriarch Mahipal Singh. Since they had assured me that the RLD's Neeraj Chowdhury would win this seat, I asked them again about the election. "The RLD will win," repeated Dhirendra Singh, and then paused, "That is, provided nothing untoward happens on the last two nights before polling, describing them as the "qatl ki raat", a metaphorical night of the killings, when major decisions are made and sometimes, unmade.
(Smita Gupta is a journalist. She is profiling assembly segments in western Uttar Pradesh that go to the polls in the first three phases of the elections to the UP Assembly. This report is from Swaheri, a village in the Bijnor assembly segment, located in Bijnor district.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.