SHIKHA DUGGAL
He’s not a full-time politician; he’s not a politician at all, but provocatively, Shantanu Gupta is involved in politics and its surroundings. A political analyst by career, who is trending in the bulletins for his new celebrated work by the title The Monk Who Transformed Uttar Pradesh — in the middle of turbulent weather—verbalises about his literary prowess and how Yogi Adityanath comes into the picture.
About the book, he stated, “I was glued to his background. Why did he transform into a monk? What made him lay hold of ‘Sannyasa’? And, in conversation with the chief minister, I discerned that he had a hard life too. I grew up with so many siblings in a tiny room. But why did I choose him as my motif? I was a witness to the Uttar Pradesh election before he was anointed as the chief minister of my state. I have seen my state in dreadful conditions. In the middle of that, I was fascinated by his lifestyle because, again, I noticed how his guru’s name is written in place of his father’s name in his passport! Even during our head-to-head, he didn’t discuss his parents. He has abandoned his previous life thoroughly.”
For his second and upcoming work that will complete the trilogy, something sliced into him when he was taking a flight to someplace. While going through the New York Times, he read something retaliating about Yogi Adityanath! The subtext called him a militant, and as an author, he felt attacked.
He shared, “I couldn’t understand why the international media would strike back at us like this. They don’t find enough farce about other chief ministers of our country, especially from the south, so they shoot at the prime minister or his allies. What followed was a pip! All the media started writing ill about him, and I knew where he was coming from. My emotional interests begin to subside with him organically. The Bharatiya Janata Party was failing miserably in the north; it was Yogi Adityanath who elevated the party there. Day and night, I continued to wonder, “Why was the media against him?”
Shantanu Gupta packed his bags and left for Uttrakhand, where Yogi Adityanath spent most of his time getting to know each and every background detail about him, and he did extract all of those. Moving ahead, he reached Gorakhpur and then Lucknow. His research was not at all coordinated with all the defeatist stories written by the international media and otherwise.
He decided to fill this aperture: “I have met him before he set off as a chief minister, and I have met him after he became one. There were no distinctive discrepancies that I could point out! I went to his ‘darbar’. I have seen him resolve the common man’s problems in Gorakhpur. My camaraderie with him turned out to be so exquisite that he even wrote some recommendation letters for me. But I can still call to mind when, after becoming chief minister, he was slightly apprehensive about releasing the sequel. He was assuming he was already a public figure, so why print work on him? My intention was to give grounds for the absconding statements made against him; he felt like a man because of our shared backgrounds. I wasn’t speaking for him, though! There was an unspoken attachment that was formed.”
Is he or is he not affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party? He simplifies it for us, and his seat as an author takes precedence here. He explained, “Even I keep wondering why I support pro-right ideologies so much. But I don’t hold an official position in the party as of now. I think it comes from my brooding space, and that’s Hrishikesh—my father was working for the public sector company, and in the place I was brought up, the culture of my country is far superior to that of the administration. Spirituality, or a dharmic connection, could be another reason. I saw my state bifurcating.”
Writing politically inclined books is a task in itself. He needs to have the power to analyse and the audacity to criticise! In all likelihood, maybe he did, and therefore we saw some critically acclaimed books, one of which, for example, Bharatiya Janata Party: The Past, Present, and Future, held strong at the book stalls.
“The media hadn’t visited Lucknow to see the state of affairs, and there were so many cynical comparisons already. By writing on such subjects, I like to retrogress someone else’s agenda. I try to set the record straight with these kinds of themes! When you read it, it may sound too inflammatory to you, but my agenda is to placate the emotional interests of my subject. Political biographies are quite sensitive to write!” he shared.
So what does a good political writer attribute to? Well, he regresses: “I work on perspectives and various ones. But sometimes, it’s impossible to escape your own biases! We had a guruji from the very beginning of my birth; I was entirely into yoga and meditation. Moving further in life, the purpose of livelihood turned out to be one of my survival instincts. And, whenever I saw a political party retaining the ancient-old culture of our country, that formed my political ideology very distinctively.”
