Lucknow: The brouhaha over the release of the movie with a controversial title is learnt to have alerted the BJP, which has been seeking to bolster its position amongst the Brahmin community, the core supporter of the saffron outfit since the early 1990s, when the Ram Temple movement peaked.Even as the Yogi govt registered an FIR against the director of the film, the party organisation pressed its Brahmin cadres to reach out to the upper-caste people and clarify the situation vis-à-vis the party stand vis-à-vis the upper-caste community.
“Any such narrative certainly creates a divide in society. This needs to be checked immediately,” said UP BJP spokesperson Hero Bajpai.He said that the party would not budge from its core principle of ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas Sabka Vishwas’ to cut through caste lines and cement the larger social coalition it stitched since 2014 when the BJP rose astronomically under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi. A senior UP BJP leader said that Brahmins, who traditionally formed the party’s ideological and organisational backbone since the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the early 1990s, continued to be a critical constituency—particularly in urban centres and among the opinion-making class.Not surprisingly, the swift registration of an FIR against the film’s director, analysts said, signalled the Yogi Adityanath govt’s intent to contain any perception of purported insult or stereotyping of the Brahmin community.Experts said that, of late, politics around Brahmins gained high ground in UP, which heads to state polls next year. It was less than 2 months ago when a group of Brahmin legislators, essentially from the east UP region, held a meeting—stoking a churn within the saffron camp. The meeting, called during the winter session of the state assembly last year in Dec, drew rebel MLAs from the Samajwadi Party as well as BJP legislators. It was held at the Lucknow residence of the BJP’s Kushinagar MLA, Panchanand Pathak. UP BJP chief Pankaj Chaudhury warned lawmakers against holding such caste-based meetings.
