Let me admit it. Like many other people, I too received news of Yogi Adityanath’s election (or was it selection?) as the next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh with ‘shock and awe’.  The shock was because of the yogi’s unsavoury reputation among the legions of his detractors in elite, English language media. Naturally, as a consumer of the warped secularism peddled by the left-liberal English media, I did feel a little queasy. The awe was at the breath-taking audacity – a friend in the army called it a political ‘surgical strike – of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s top brass in picking as controversial a guy like him as UP’s CM. But then on calmer reflection, which was partly prompted by a talisman given by a friend long years ago – if the Lefties oppose something you do, it means that you are most likely on the right (metaphorically and literally) track – the Yogi choice seemed to make some sense.

The hysterical, verging on apoplectic, reaction of the Left-lib mafia was both amusing and somewhat irritating. It was almost as though they couldn’t fathom, much less handle, how someone they had summarily rejected could be so brazenly, and against their wishes and in the face of their strident opposition and demonization, become CM of India’s largest state. That the Yogi has an in-your-face, politically incorrect, unapologetic and unvarnished view of communal relations – in a sense, he can be compared to Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon and others in Western countries who speak bluntly about things that others are chary of talking lest they get labelled as Islamophobes or racists – is something that is well known. But to prejudge how he will captain the ship of the state, and pass a Left-lib version of a ‘fatwa’ on him even before he assumed office, was not just a little unfair but also reflective of a classist abhorrence of someone who doesn’t subscribe to the distorted version of secularism that exists in India.

Sample this: a newspaper editor who I love reading gives a sound byte to a foreign newspaper that Yogi’s elevation is a message to Muslims that “we’ll be nice to you if you behave yourself”. In an effort to sound profoundly clever, this sound byte betrays the mindset of the liberal elite and is almost a sort of confession that until now what was happening was that governments were ‘nice’ even when people didn’t behave themselves. Quite frankly, how can anyone who subscribes to the concept of rule of law ever take exception to a government sending out a clear message that it will not be nice to anyone who doesn’t behave himself? Since when has minority empowerment meant the government giving a free pass for any flagrant violation of law just because someone belongs to a particular minority community? Of course, a caveat is in order here: the government, any government for that matter, must not be nice to anyone who doesn’t behave, regardless of what community the person belongs to. But this wasn’t what was said. Therefore, if the Yogi is even-handed and doesn’t discriminate against criminals, arsonists, trouble-makers on basis of their community, then there is little for anyone to crib or complain about.

To be sure, many Muslims would be very apprehensive at the prospect of a polarising figure like the Yogi becoming CM. But while it is quite likely that he will not indulge in the sort of tokenism and even appeasement of the past, he is also unlikely to be the ogre that he is being made out to be by many commentators and political scientists who have been busy writing character and psychological profiles about him without even ever having met him. This is not to say that communal relations are not likely to remain fraught in UP. They are, but part of the responsibility for this must also rest on the shoulders of the Muslim community.

The Muslims have been working themselves into a psychosis, a process that started far before Narendra Modi became Prime Minister or Adityanath became CM, and drawing themselves into a shell. The sense of grievance, even alienation, dogging the Muslims has unfortunately been nurtured, even promoted and propagated, by so-called secular parties. The fact that a lot of what the Muslims face is more or less faced by their other compatriots belonging to other religions is somehow conveniently ignored. Instead bizarre conspiracy theories are floated – Batla House was a fake encounter, 26/11 was a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh conspiracy, the Lucknow encounter in which an ISIS acolyte was killed was a drama, and many other such utterly crazy theories that fly in the face of facts – which are then pandered to by ‘secular’ politicians and the Left-lib mafia to create a narrative of deprivation, discrimination and victimhood among the Muslims.

The sort of ‘secular’ political narrative that has taken root in India is quite like the one that the Muslim League peddled to such a devastating effect in the 1930s and 1940s. If the complete rout of the Muslim League in the 1937 elections became the catalyst for Muslim separatism, today it is the virtual decimation of the so-called Muslim or ‘minority veto’ (I have never agreed with this formulation, but time and space prevent me from going into details) – 20 per cent of the Muslim vote determining the results of an election – that is providing the fuel for the growing disaffection among sections of the Muslim community. The logic of the Muslim Leaguers back then was quite akin to the logic of the ‘secular’ parties and their camp-followers in the media today, and revolved around the issue of representation in the assemblies. The difference is that back then, everything the Muslim League used to say about the Congress, is today being said by the Congress and its loyalists embedded in the media about BJP. And, interestingly, the communists who in the 1940s backed the Muslim League, today back the Congress!

Be that as it may, it is important for everyone to understand that despite whatever reservations and concerns anyone may have about the yogi becoming UP’s CM, the heavens are unlikely to fall anytime soon. The mandate received by the BJP is not a mandate that will stay forever. If Adityanath’s government doesn’t deliver then the people of UP will snatch this mandate away. The fact that despite warts and all, he is believed to be incorruptible and has no kids who love to drive ₹5 crore-worth cars, gives some reason to expect that the sort of loot that was carried out in UP in the name of Samajwad and Dalit Samman will become a thing of the past. But being incorruptible isn’t going to be enough. He will have to deliver good governance, which means improving law and order (without fear or favour) and giving a fillip to development activities which unleash the productive potential of the people. Alongside, he will have to ensure communal peace and harmony without kowtowing to any unreasonable demands of any community, or browbeating any community into submission.

If Adityanath follows Raj Dharma (just because it sounds clichéd doesn’t reduce its importance) then he could end up changing not just the face of UP but also of Indian politics; if he doesn’t and instead becomes a parochial and petty-minded communal leader, then come next election, he will receive his comeuppance. The BJP brass has taken a huge gamble because even they must know that winning an election by lighting a communal inferno or even pushing a community against the wall, will only give them a pyrrhic victory which won’t be good for the country.