Swami Prasad Maurya’s attacks on the right wing and Akhilesh’s silence: What explains SP strategy?

Without naming Maurya, SP MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey, the party’s chief whip in the state Assembly, told The Indian Express, “Sometimes, one has to adopt a human point of view if dealing with a person who is mentally disturbed.”

He said such statements were not in sync with the beliefs of the SP or Akhilesh. “Be it Lohia ji, Neta ji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) or Akhilesh ji, we all believe in giving respect to all religions. Samajwadi Party does not support any kind of attack on anyone’s belief or religion. If some individual is politically weak then should adopt other ways than attacking anyone’s religion. The SP’s actual fight is against unemployment.”

Some SP leaders, who did not wish to be named, said Maurya’s comments were part of a strategy to establish that apart from Brahmins no one has space in the BJP’s idea of Hinduism. “We have seen it in previous elections that BJP has been able to consolidate votes in the name of Hinduism bringing all castes together. Such statements aim to remind OBCs, Dalits, Sikhs about how Hindu Dharma does not accommodate all and thus making attempt to again segregate these votes in OBCs, Dalits and their sub-castes and bring them along with minority votes,” said an SP leader.

Hitting out at the Opposition party, state BJP vice president Vijay Bahadur Pathak said, “The kind of statements that are coming from Swami Prasad Maurya and the silence of their party chief show there are only two possibilities. Either the SP is utterly confused about what it stands for or it is doing it as part of a bigger strategy, like in the past, to keep different sections happy by speaking contradictions within. This is what Mulayam Singh Yadav did and now Akhilesh Yadav is also following the same.”

Previous controversial remarks

Earlier this year, Maurya, who jumped from the BJP to the SP before the Assembly elections in 2022, made critical comments about some segments of the Ramcharitramanas and sought their removal.

Last month, amid the debate on Sanatan Dharma, he spoke on similar lines saying Hinduism was a religion only for Brahmins. “There is nothing like Hindu Dharma. Hindu Dharma is only a hoax. In true terms, the Brahmin religion is being referred to as Hindu dharma to trap the country’s Dalits, STs, and backwards. If there was actually something like Hindu Dharma then Dalits, Backwards, and STs would also have been respected in it.”