Why Yogi Adityanath decided to defy Noida jinx
The infamous Noida jinx is back in the news, thanks to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s decision to break away from a tradition laid down by his predecessors, who conciously avoided setting foot on Noida soil, because of a supersition that any visit to Noida costs every CM his/her job.
Way back in 1988, the then chief minister Vir Bahadur Singh was asked to step down no sooner than he made a trip to Noida. The following year his successor ND Tiwari lost his chair.
Significantly, the belief continued with different political generations and even a gen-next Akhilesh Yadav could not save himself from being bitten by the bug. And a self-proclaimed aetheist Mayawati, too, did not hesitate to attribute her debacle in the 2012 elections to this jinx.
The jinx also affected the intermediate stalwarts of UP politics. And that clearly cuts across different political parties. Mulayam Singh Yadav kept away from Noida even in an alarming situation like the Nithari killings that sent shock waves across the country following the discovery of skulls and bones of young girls and boys from a drain in Noida, exposing a series of brutal murky murders.
Back in 2001, the then chief minister Rajnath Singh preferred to inaugurate the DND flyway (connecting Noida to New Delhi) from the Delhi end because of the same superstition.
No wonder, what happened today has taken everyone by surprise. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath defied the Noida jinx and went ahead with the inauguration of a new Metro-rail link from the heart of Noida.
The saffron-clad Yogi Adityanath, who is better known for his religious background and spiritual fads, visited Noida which was shunned even by a foreign-educated modern chief minister like Akhilesh Yadav.
Yogi is a hardcore embodiment of Hindutva and chooses not to make any bones about it, even to the extent of earning the reputation of a rabid leader. He is in his religious robe 24X7. People have not seen him in the large part outside his typically priest-like attire, yet he chose to defy the jinx.
Isn’t it funny that only a monk-turned-chief minister could deviate from the beaten track and defy a jinx?
Does this set a new precedent, possibly a more rational one? Not quite, sadly. All it establishes is that it takes religion to fight "religion", and that the new behaviour of the UP chief minister will at most be interpreted through some other, equally erroneously inspired causal relation.
Akhilesh Yadav did not attend the Asian Development Bank Summit organised in Noida in May 2013, even as the then prime minister Manmohan Singh was the chief guest. He had also launched Rs 3,300 crore development projects, including access to the six-lane Yamuna Expressway, through video link from Lucknow, because apparently curses and spirits react to actual presence in spacetime rather than a mere video appearance. The family members of the victim of the Dadri lynching, Mohammad Akhlaq, were brought to Lucknow from there to meet Akhilesh Yadav, because he could not risk a visit to Noida.
Mayawati, on the other hand, decided to attempt breaking the so-called jinx, but lost her chair shortly thereafter. Even in that case, the fact that people could possibly link her defeat to an official visit of governance rather than anti-incumbency and lack of action as CM on her part was a repeat of the sort of blaming that Indian politicians indulge in from time to time, even if it is an alleged act of God (or demons), being made the scapegoat of ignorance.
To think that one should respect superstition and such matters on the idea of erroneous belief, stemming from nothing, but cognitive laziness on part of the decision-maker and some perceived ill-defined primacy of the act of religion, is also reflective on the part of other religious leaders of our country who claim to be enlightened, but actually apply cheap interpretations of "causality" in their day-to-day life.
Could Yogi’s decision to take this step have stemmed from an instinct to make a difference, or was it prompted by some desire to play gimmick, is not known. However, there could be no denying that he has scored a brownie point for the time being.