Is Yogi Adityanath taking a leaf out of V P Singh’s model of governance?

V P Singh became Prime Minister seven years after using his 'encounter’ model to the hilt. Surely Yogi could be following in Singh’s footsteps

History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce, said 19th century German author-philosopher Karl Marx.

We are now witnessing a rare social experiment that will be a test case to verify whether Marx was correct in saying so. The focus is on Uttar Pradesh under the chief ministership of Yogi Adityanath, where encounter killings are disturbingly frequent, reminiscent of the state when Vishwanath Pratap Singh was Chief Minister, during 1980-82. Will history repeat itself?

Singh became Prime Minister seven years after using his model to the hilt. Surely Adityanath, an ambitious man like Singh, could be following in Singh’s footsteps with a set purpose in mind.

After the recent killings of gangster-politician Atiq Amhmed‘s son Asad in an encounter, the Uttar Pradesh Police bragged that it was the 183rd encounter killing since 2017 following the ‘promise of eliminating crime and criminals’. It boils down to the raw fact that during these six years on an average at least one ‘criminal’ has been eliminated in encounter every month.

These are, of course, extra judicial killings, but may not be stamped illegal. A judicial commission, formed on the direction of the Supreme Court and headed by retired Supreme Court judge B S Chauhan on the sensational case of encounter killing of gangster Vikas Dubey after arresting him, did exonerate the police.

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There has always been, as it should be, criticism by Adityanath’s political opponents on this count. He, however, does not bother as this model of law and order has added to his popularity. He returned to power last year after completing a full term, and is now enjoying the longest uninterrupted tenure by any UP Chief Minister. Arguably, improvement of law and order situation is a major factor behind Adityanath’s popularity.

This model also draws flak from the secular liberal commentators and intellectuals, who see a vicious Hindutva-fascist mind. But this surmise does not pass hard scrutiny, as Adityanath is just imitating Singh, who in the last decade of the last century was held as an icon of the secular liberals.

Singh, who is remembered, if at all, for gunning Bofors against then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and implementation of Mandal Commission report when Singh became Prime Minister, built the edifice of his popularity by a series of encounter killings as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister for two years and 40 days.

How serious the problem was in those days can be understood from the fact that 20 Thakurs were massacred in Behmai, a village near Kanpur, on February 14, 1981, by ‘bandit queen’ Phoolan Devi. She later fled Uttar Pradesh fearing she would be killed in an encounter, and surrendered before the Madhya Pradesh Police.

Given this background, it is easy to guess that Singh earned kudos from the people in general, and his popularity soared, though the whole Opposition made a big issue out of it.

Janardan Thakur in his book V P Singh: The quest for power quoted both Mulayam Singh Yadav and V P Singh, bitter rivals on those days, on this encounter issue. Mulayam Singh, who submitted a list of 418 people killed in encounters, said, “So many people have not been killed in encounters in even a hundred years as during the past year and a half.” On his part V P Singh said, “Mere haath khoon se lathpath hain, par khooniyon ke khoon se lathpath hain (My hands are awash in blood, but bloodied with the blood of criminals).

The parallel between Adityanath and V P Singh ends here, as V P Singh resigned from his post when his elder brother Justice Chandra Shekhar Prasad Singh, a sitting judge of Allahabad High Court, and his 14-year-old son were killed by dacoits. It earned him a name at the national level, and seven years later, he became the Prime Minister of India.

Adityanath too is an ambitious man, but between him and the top job stands the RSS, which reportedly has its reservations about him as he is not one of them. V P Singh too faced a Himalayan barrier as he belonged to a family-led party, and he overcame it by resigning from the Congress, making the right noises, and becoming the Prime Minister soon.

Whether Adityanath too would succeed to clear the hurdle is to be seen in the future.

(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a Kolkata-based journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.