By Rajdeep Sardesai
In Uttar Pradesh’s notorious gang wars, even crime is seen through the prism of caste and community. Which is why the sharply polarized reactions to the killing of criminal-politician Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf in police custody and in the full glare of live tv cameras by ‘Jai Shri Ram’ chanting assassins should come as no surprise. While senior BJP ministers in UP have defended the cold blooded murder as ‘karmic’ retribution, opposition leaders have been just as strident in their denunciation of the Yogi Adityanath government. AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi even went as far as likening the case to the gruesome murder of Ehsan Jafri during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The celebratory note struck by right wing internet Hindu groups on social media is deeply troubling: is Atiq’s murder in brazen violation of the rule of law justified because he is a mafia leader who happens to also be a Muslim?
Atiq’s projection as a ‘Muslim’ gangster is not an exception. In 2020, when gangster Vikas Dubey was killed in an ‘encounter’ with the UP police, social media narratives revolved around an element of Brahmin pride and victimhood. The Yogi government then was attacked for killing a ‘Brahmin Bahubali’ (strongman). The Yogi government, in fact, has been routinely accused of being partial to Thakur gang leaders, with the Samajwadi party media cell even coming up with a list of alleged criminals who are reportedly flourishing only because they belong to the same caste as the chief minister.
The Brahmin versus Thakur gang rivalries are not new in Purvanchal or eastern Uttar Pradesh. Nor are the Muslim versus Hindu gang battles. In the 1980s, Gorakhpur was the epicenter of an infamous gang war between ‘Brahmin’ don Hari Shankar Tiwari and Thakur ‘don’ Virendra Pratap Shahi. While Shahi was murdered in 1997, Tiwari – probably the first politician to win an election from jail – went on to become a key minister in several UP governments cutting across party lines. Likewise the war in the Varanasi-Ghazipur belt between Mukhtar Ansari and Brijesh Singh gangs, both again led by criminals turned politicians, has assumed a distinct Muslim versus Hindu character, Singh’s supporters even branding him as a ‘desh-bhakt’ don.
What explains this unique caste, community, crime and politics nexus in UP? Rewind to the late 1980s as the Congress began to decline in UP in the face of the Mandal-Mandir twin challenge. Between 1993 and 2017, UP only threw up one single party majority government – the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj party in 2007 : for almost a quarter of a century, unstable coalitions were the norm. Every seat mattered and ‘winnability’ mattered above all else. The criminal dons had the clout and resources to win seats in their areas of influence, often even when contesting as independents. Where once the criminals were dependent on politicians for patronage, rickety coalitions ensured a role reversal: around a third of UP’s MLAs had criminal cases against them in the 1990s.
Secondly, the aggressive ‘Mandalisation’ of politics where caste identities determined voting preferences meant that political parties were constantly searching for mascots of key caste groups. A caste badge was more important than a character or education certificate. For example, when ‘Bandit Queen’ Phoolan Devi was given a Lok Sabha ticket from the Samajwadi party (SP) in 1996, her Mallah or fisherfolk caste identity was a crucial factor in her selection: the SP was looking to widen its Yadav base to include other backward castes. Phoolan, who was later assassinated, went on to win her first election by more than 30,000 votes.
Thirdly, post the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, religion became deeply entwined with UP’s coarsened vote bank politics. Where once UP’s gangs were seen as ‘secular’ in their composition, the religious divide was now acute. Each gang leader brought along with him the guarantee of their community’s vote. Mulayam Singh’s Yadav-Muslim vote bank meant that the likes of Atique found refuge in the Samajwadi party, contesting and winning on an SP ticket in 1996 from Allahabad West, having won twice previously as an independent. A Mayawati, also competing for the Muslim vote, made another criminal strongman in Mukhtar Ansari her posterboy, calling him a ‘messiah of the poor’. The BJP, in turn, provided space for the likes of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, once accused of sheltering Dawood Ibrahim’s aides. Ironically, Dawood’s gang too was a ‘mixed’ one until the 1993 Mumbai blasts divided the Mumbai underworld too.
Finally, UP’s gang culture must also be located within the political economy of the state, especially in Purvanchal. A region beset with poverty and backwardness, private entrepreneurship has never really taken off here. This has increased the dependence on state funding and government contracts through political patronage. Guns are often available more easily than jobs and crime is seen as a lucrative form of illegal capital accumulation. Kidnapping, extortion, land grabbing: a parallel economy has revolved around the ‘bahubalis’ and their political affiliations.
When he first came to power in 2017, Yogi Adityanath vowed to finish this ‘mafia raj’: ‘agar apradh karenge, toh thok diye jayenge’ (if they commit crimes, we will knock them down) was the blunt message from a saffron-robed neta, ironically himself once accused of leading his own private vigilante army. More recently, he warned in the UP assembly that ‘Maafiyao ko mitti mein mila denge’ (we will destroy the mafias). These hard-hitting one-liners are designed to boost his tough on law and order ‘strongman’ image, a key factor in his re-election success last year. They have also provided a cover to the police to pursue with complete impunity an ‘encounter raj’ where the men in khaki have a licence to kill. The UP police only last week boasted of having gunned down 183 alleged criminals in the course of nearly 11,000 encounters in the last six years.
This ‘thok do’ policy must surely have its limits. While Atique’s killing may yield political dividends in UP’s communally surcharged milieu, it has dangerously short-circuited the criminal justice system. As a feared gangster with over a 100 cases against him, Atique deserves no sympathy; he did deserve though, like anyone else, Muslim or Hindu, the assurance of due process.
Post-script: At a media event last year, when Yogi Adityanath was asked about gangster Vikas Dubey’s car mysteriously over-turning leading to him being killed in an encounter, the chief minister shrugged it off by remarking ‘accidents do happen’. The audience clapped. Is Atique’s killing also to be seen as an ‘accident’ and be similarly celebrated?
(The writer is senior journalist and author. mail: [email protected])