With an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Samajwadi Party is pursuing the twin strategies of soft Hindutva and mobilisation of caste based vote bank by launching the Samajik Janjagran Yatra.
The yatra was launched from Lakhimpur Kheri on Tuesday to raise the issues of caste census and social justice. The party has planned to take out the yatra in all 80 Lok Sabha constituencies across the state.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has been seeking a caste census for a long time and intends to make it one of the major poll planks in 2024. While taking out the first yatra in Lakhimpur Kheri, the SP chief said his party would make people aware of the significance of a caste census without which social justice was not possible.
Along with mobilisation of caste based vote bank, the SP is also concentrating its attention on soft Hindutva. Akhilesh Yadav’s visit to two towns, known for their importance as centres of pilgrimage and temples, is perceived as an attempt by the SP chief at playing the Hindutva card. Officially, the visits are in connection with the training camps being organised for the party’s booth workers at Naimisharanya and Devkali in Lakhimpur Kheri.
Akhilesh Yadav presided over a cadre training camp at Devkali in Lakhimpur Kheri, a place known for its Shiva temple. Later on Friday, he was in Naimisharanya, one of the major pilgrimage centres in Sitapur district. Akhilesh’s visit to the two towns has especially attracted attention as it follows the controversy triggered by the statements of SP MLC Swami Prasad Maurya targeting the Ramcharitmanas. Many in the SP are against the campaign by Maurya against Ramcharitmanas, which they feel has damaged the party’s image.
In January this year, Maurya had sparked a row when he said some of the verses of the epic were derogatory to the Other Backward Classes and Dalit community and hurt their sentiments and demanded that they be removed from the Ramcharitmanas.
It is against this backdrop that Akhilesh Yadav’s Devkali and Naimisharanya visits are being interpreted as an attempt at playing the Hindutva card. An SP leader said that while some party leaders had voiced displeasure at Maurya’s statement at the time of the controversy, the party leadership was seen to have not expressed any major disapproval of the same.
A section of the SP leaders have expressed concern over the impact of the party’s perceived Hindutva stand on its Muslim vote bank. Political observers feel that the SP is doing what most other regional parties, even the Congress, are doing –playing a soft Hindutva card, after the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s narrative on ground.
“Political parties across the country, including the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress, have realised that the BJP’s Hindutva politics is working for the party on ground and have started to send a message to Hindu voters by temple visits ahead of elections, or in AAP’s case, demanding images of Hindu gods on currency notes,” said a political analyst.