TO SOME he is both hero and saint: a shaven-headed, saffron-robed servant of the Lord Shiva who has been elected five times in a row to India’s national parliament and elevated, at just 44 years of age, to the highest political office in a state of 220m people. To others the choice of Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (or UP as the state is often abbreviated) seems ominous. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a columnist in the daily Indian Express who rarely uses such blunt language, describes the Hindu priest-turned-politician as “the single most divisive, abusive, polarising figure in UP politics”.
No one can argue with the word “polarising”. Since becoming India’s youngest MP in 1998, Mr Adityanath has championed a range of reactionary Hindu causes, from the banning of cow slaughter to the proposed construction of a temple to Lord Ram, protagonist of the ancient Ramayana epic, at the god’s supposed birthplace in the UP city of Ayodhya. Inconveniently, at the site selected for this honour, there stood a grand 16th-century mosque, at least until a mob of Hindu fanatics tore it down in 1992, sparking riots...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2nVRBPd
EmoticonEmoticon