A sudden wave of protest meetings held in 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.
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….
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