While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) keeps questioning Muslim loyalty by cherry-picking episodes from history, Samajwadi Party MP Ramjilal Suman took a leaf out of the BJP playbook when he questioned the patriotism of Rana Sanga. He held the 16th century Rajput ruler of Mewar responsible for inviting the Mughal empire’s founder, Babur, to India to end Lodhi rule.
When violence, allegedly orchestrated by the Karni Sena — a self-styled group that espouses the cause of Kshatriyas — erupted outside Mr. Suman’s residence in Agra, the SP leadership stressed his Dalit identity, while condemning the attack. Assailing the Yogi Adityanath government, party president Akhilesh Yadav described the violence as an attempt to frighten the PDA, an acronym for Pichhdas (backwards), Dalits, and Alpsankhyaks (minorities), and termed the Karni Sena as “Yogi Sena”.
Earlier, citing a video of the alleged miscreants where they thanked the law and order machinery, Mr. Yadav claimed that the Sena had the blessings of Mr. Adityanath. For context, Mr. Adityanath hails from a Rajput family that falls under the Kshatriya group.
By holding Rana Sanga responsible for Mughal entry into the subcontinent, Mr. Suman sought to take the wind out of the Aurangzeb controversy that erupted after senior party leader Abu Azmi reportedly described the Mughal emperor as “not cruel” during the Chhaava wave. Mr. Azmi’s family roots are in U.P.’s Azamgarh. Mr. Adityanath responded saying, “Send him to U.P., we will give him treatment.”
The way Mr. Yadav has put his weight behind Mr. Suman indicates that he wants to build on the Rajput versus Dalit narrative and consolidate the Dalit-Muslim alliance that worked for the SP during the Lok Sabha polls.
One of the proponents of the party’s PDA pitch, Mr. Suman, in a chat with The Hindu, underlined the ideological proximity between Ram Manohar Lohia, the ideological fountainhead of the SP, and B.R. Ambedkar. In October 2024, he came up with a private member’s bill to restore the minority status of Aligarh Muslim University. It was seen as a reply to the right-wing ecosystem that claimed to safeguard the interests of Scheduled Castes (SCs), as the concept of SC/Scheduled Tribe reservation did not apply to minority institutions.
Mr. Suman is not alone in building the pro-Dalit narrative for the SP. Indrajit Saroj, a Dalit MLA, said at an event that if temples had power, Mohammad Ghori and Mahmud of Ghazni would not have invaded India. Carrying forward the debate started by former party leader Swami Prasad Maurya, SP spokespersons highlight the alleged caste and gender-based discrimination in ancient texts on TV debates.
The Dalit outreach worked for the party in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Of the 17 reserved Lok Sabha seats for the SCs in U.P., the SP secured seven, and Congress won one. Besides, in a historic first, the party’s SC candidate emerged victorious from the general seat of Faizabad (Ayodhya).
Political observers feel that the SP peddled the perceived injustices of the past because, unlike the BJP, which weaves a new episode in its Hindutva narrative every fortnight, the party has not been able to reinvent its PDA pitch after the gains of the Lok Sabha elections. Mr. Adityanath, for instance, made voting for the BJP a matter of life and death by invoking the ‘Batenge toh katenge (divided we perish)’ slogan to scuttle the SP’s call for ‘roti and reservation’.
However, cherry-picking from the past doesn’t work for anyone. A 2016 video, where senior SP member Azam Khan is seen describing the statues of Ambedkar as exhorting people to grab land, has resurfaced. “The statue with a raised finger indicates that this land is ours and that land where the finger points at is also ours,” Mr. Khan could be heard saying. Political observers say the social behaviour of Muslims towards Dalits has been no different from that of upper caste and Other Backward Classes Hindu groups.
The desecration of Ambedkar statues in the State is reported in newspapers with disconcerting regularity. Observers point out that the SP workers do not take to the streets with as much conviction as Dalit parties because, often, OBC groups indulge in vandalism. The SP has to find a way to create social cohesion between Pichhdas and Dalits, to take on polarisation. A Muslim party activist suggested that if the party declared that all its candidates in the Assembly polls would be from PDA, it could outwit the BJP.
anuj.kumar@thehindu.co.in
Published – April 24, 2025 01:51 am IST
