“Have you seen the Bharat-Pakistan match?” asks Baba Balak Nath, the BJP candidate for the Tijara seat in the upcoming Rajasthan Assembly election, addressing a small gathering at the village temple in Bubkhera. The crowd, consisting largely of Meghwals, a Scheduled Caste community, listens to him impassively.
The clean-shaven, saffron-clad seer, who has traded his diamond studs for wooden hoops this election season, thunders: “Match Pakistan ke saath jitna hai ki nahi? (Don’t we have to win the match with Pakistan?)” The Bharat-Pakistan euphemism for the Hindu-Muslim divide is not lost on his audience.
The Tijara Assembly seat is part of the Alwar Lok Sabha constituency that the 39-year-old Mr. Nath currently represents as an MP. In an election that could go down to the wire, his immediate concern is voting percentage. He does not name any community, but asks, “How much is their voting percentage?” Someone remarks that it goes up to 90%. “And how much is ours?” he asks. There is only a scattered response. He exhorts his listeners not to leave any voter behind.
Ahirwal vs Mewat
The Congress has fielded 36-year-old Imran Khan, a former Bahujan Samaj Party leader who has not formally joined the party, but was granted a ticket just days before the deadline to file nominations.
The battle lines are laid down clearly in the “us versus them” metric, and the binary that Mr. Nath drew in his election pitch is as old as time itself. The new political map has not erased the ancient Ahirwal-Mewat boundaries. Ahirwal was a post-Mughal principality ruled by Ahirs or Yadavs. The Mewat region is populated by Muslims and Dalits. Development is uneven on the two sides of the Delhi-Alwar highway, which divides the two regions.
In the 12 Assembly elections held since 1967, the seat has been held by Muslim candidates seven times and by Yadavs five times. The list of winning candidates include former Rajasthan Chief Minister Barkatullah Khan.
Mr. Nath, who is a mahant of the Nath sect of Hinduism, was born into a Yadav family and is also one of the aspirants for the Chief Minister’s post in the faction-ridden State unit of the BJP. The only time the BJP has won the Tijara seat was in 2013.
Dalits play decisive role
As one crosses over to Rajasthan from Haryana, trudging through dusty Nuh, there are no motorable roads to the villages. At Mansingh Ki Thani, a small hamlet of 50 Meghwal households, voters are waiting patiently for Mr. Nath to arrive, though it is nearly 1:00 p.m., and he is running late. “We want to show him the condition of our village. Every year, I have to change the tyres on my bike at least twice and sometimes thrice because no one has cared enough for us to get us an asphalt-topped road here,” says Ravinder Kumar, a 26-year-old electrician who works in the nearby industrial town of Bhiwadi. With his next breath, he adds, “But I have heard that he could be the CM, so I guess it would be good to place our bets on him.”
Another man in his mid-40s listening in to the conversation offers his perspective. “No Muslim legislator has ever worked for Mewat. Last time, we had BSP MLA Sandeep Yadav, who later joined Congress. He also worked only for Ahirwal. No one wants to bring development to Mewat,” he proclaims, refusing to divulge his identity because he is a central government servant. For the last two consecutive terms, the legislators from Tijara have been Yadav.
In this battle between the Yadavs and Muslims, it is the significant population of Dalits who could play a decisive role. Most of the Dalit voters are waiting for a cue from the Meghwal Vikas Samiti, whose president Mangat Ram says will take a call in a day or two. “All I can say is that we have been happy with the Congress government in the State and the same can’t be said about our MP,” says Mr. Ram.
‘Communal agenda’
This is the same pitch adopted by Mr. Nath’s opponent. “Our honourable MP can’t point to a single foundation stone that he has laid in four and a half years,” says Mr. Khan. “He never talks about development. He has a single point agenda of ‘sanatan dharma’. No religion is in peril here, neither Hinduism nor Islam, but he is trying to fan communal passions,” he adds. Mr. Khan has been busy lodging complaints against Mr. Nath, including a claim that he drove bulldozers while campaigning without holding a heavy vehicle driving license.
The use of bulldozers in the BJP campaign is an ode to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, whose moniker Mr. Nath has adopted to brand himself as “Rajasthan ka Yogi”.
Mr. Khan fears that as the polling date nears, the campaign will become more and more divisive. He carefully selects his words and has also given a diktat to his followers not to make any remark that could be misconstrued as a communal slur. “I am not holding big public meetings or rallies, I don’t want to give any opportunity to my opponents to raise religious slogans,” he says.
