“Will a dancing Brahmin be allowed to win from a Nishad area,” asks Devendra Nishad. “Will we go to Mumbai if we ever need him?”
The unemployed youth’s dismissive take on BJP candidate Ravi Kishan Shukla, a Bhojpuri film star, not only brings to surface the caste divide in Purvanchal but also reflects the sense of betrayal felt by a section of the community.
In Bankati, a Nishad-dominated village in the Pipraich Assembly segment of Gorakhpur, the community’s anger towards the BJP is perceptible. They accuse the party of insulting them after their leader Rajmati Nishad, a former MLA and runner-up in 2014, was lured from the Samajwadi Party (SP) just before the election with the promise of ticket only to be denied later.
A humiliated Ms. Rajmati, who had even started campaigning for the BJP, returned to the SP with her son Amrendra. The Nishad leader is the wife of Jamuna Nishad, an icon of the community here who came close to wresting the Gorakhpur seat from Yogi Adityanath in 1999, losing by just 7,000 votes.
That the SP has fielded a Nishad and former State minister Ram Bhual has further pushed the community towards the SP-BSP alliance. “We don't care if Modi becomes PM or what happens elsewhere. Here, we are defeating the BJP and choosing our own MP,” Raju Nishad, a farmer, says.
Significant vote bank
A riverine OBC community, the Nishads, along with their sub-castes Mallah, Kewat, Bind and Kashyap, are an important non-Yadav backward segment. Bandit-turned-politician Phoolan Devi is among their most popular icons.
With 3.5 lakh votes, they are critical in Gorakhpur. In 2018, Praveen Nishad, the son of Nishad Party chief Sanjay Nishad, who has projected himself to be the voice of the riverine castes, wrested Gorakhpur from the control of the Gorakhnath temple for the first time since 1989. However, right before the 2019 polls, he ditched the SP-BSP and joined the BJP, altering equations and splitting the Nishad community. The swing in their votes could decide the outcome in the tight contest.
A section of the Nishads feels betrayed that Mr. Sanjay “sold out” to the BJP even after they faced lathis of the BJP government during the community’s agitation in March demanding Scheduled Caste status. Mr. Sanjay had led the protests.
“Sanjay Nishad is merely promoting himself, while some others are fighting the legal battle,” says Brij Mohan Nishad, the headman of Arazi Bankat village.
Seated in his large house overlooking lush fields, Mr. Brij Mohan dismisses Mr. Ravi Kishan as an outsider and hails Mr. Bhual as the son of the soil. He also punches holes in the BJP’s pro-OBC claim.
“They talk of Dalit and OBC, but only work for the upper castes,” he says. The BJP government has shut down the pension scheme set up by the previous SP government, which was benefiting poor women, and the 102 emergency ambulance service, he adds.
However, not all Nishads agree. Mr. Sanjay still commands a following, while others laud Mr. Modi’s welfare schemes.
In Magalpura Badkatola village, one can spot newly constructed toilets and a pucca road leading into the settlement.
Vindhyachal Kewat, a labourer, stands outside his brick hut, which stands in sharp contrast to the smart white toilet next to it. “We got this eight months ago. There is also cooking gas for the house. This government gave us facilities others never did,” Mr. Kewat says.
Santosh Nishad, a mason from Magalpura Badkatola, is all praise for Mr. Modi and scoffs at the caste identity of the SP candidate.
“I don’t care for caste. I will vote for the one who has done development for me. That is Modi,” he says.
In 2018, the BJP lost Gorakhpur by a margin of 20,000 votes. The SP, backed by the core Jatav votes of the BSP, increased its vote percentage to 48.8% from 21.75% in 2014.
CM’s prestige
BJP leaders say the party was let down by low turnout in the Gorakhpur city segment in the byelection. “We want to increase it to 50-55% from 28%,” said Mahendra Pal Singh, Pipraich MLA. A close-aide of Mr. Adityanath, he was the Chief Minister’s choice for Gorakhpur ticket but the party eventually went with Ravi Kishan. Mr. Singh is a Sainthwar and the community is strongly backing the BJP.
Mr. Adityanath held the seat from 1998 to 2017, before vacating it to head the State government. He has taken it upon himself to increase the turnout and restore his wounded pride.
Then there are meetings to mobilise intellectuals, students and sportspersons to increase polling in urban areas, to offset any losses in the rural areas due to the Jatav-Yadav and Nishad arithmetic.
Kafeel Khan, the suspended doctor of the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur, says that unlike in the past, when Muslims thought it futile to vote against Mr. Adityanath, the community will come out in larger numbers behind the Opposition alliance just like they did in 2018.
The SP and the BJP are tightly locked in the four rural segments. In Gorakhpur city, there is no contest as Mr. Adityanath’s clout runs high amid a right-wing Hindutva resurgence.
For the rest, especially the non-Yadav OBCs, it was all about the PM, and like one Jaiswal voter in Pipraich said, “Hindus can now raise their head high unlike during the SP rule when only Muslims were pampered.”
The Congress hopes that by fielding a Brahmin lawyer Madhusudan Tripathi it can cut into crucial upper caste votes. But that didn't cut ice with Surya Prakash Pathak, who runs an auto near the Gorakhnath Temple.
“The country only wants development,” he said.
