Yogi vs Azam: Rule of law or politics of vendetta?

The Supreme Court on Monday, 2 November, agreed to hear a petition challenging the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) decision to arrest Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan just as he was about to be released from jail. The petition could be heard later this week.

It is possible that the country's highest court may grant him relief. But the bigger question is whether the Uttar Pradesh government will allow him to remain out of prison. Does the ruling establishment want him to breathe the air of freedom? The question assumes particular significance at a time when electoral activity is gathering momentum both in the state and across the country.

When Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav met Azam Khan at Rampur district jail recently, it once again sent political temperatures soaring in Uttar Pradesh. Soon afterwards, during a hearing in the case involving two PAN cards, the high court suspended Azam Khan’s sentence and granted him bail. But just as he was preparing to walk out of prison, an ED team waiting outside arrested him again in another money-laundering case. In other words, barely had he secured legal relief in one case than another legal trap sent him straight back behind bars.

The hostility between Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Azam Khan, a prominent Samajwadi Party leader, is no longer merely a personal feud between two politicians. It has evolved into a larger and more complex question concerning the political character of Uttar Pradesh, the use of the administrative machinery, the future of Muslim leadership and the ruling establishment’s attitude towards dissent in Indian democracy.

On one side is the long list of more than 80 cases registered against Azam Khan, his repeated arrests, the government's bulldozer action against Jauhar University and the pattern of his being implicated in one case immediately after securing release in another. On the other is an increasingly pressing question: does all this amount merely to the establishment of the 'rule of law', or is it part of a calculated determination to uproot a formidable political opponent, right down to his foundations?

To understand the many dimensions of this question, it is necessary to examine the ideological conflict between the two leaders, the political equations in Rampur and Gorakhpur, and the change in the administrative approach after 2017.

Two opposing poles of Uttar Pradesh politics

In any political system, certain individuals represent more than just themselves. They become the most prominent symbols of the ideologies of their time. In Uttar Pradesh politics, Yogi Adityanath and Azam Khan have come to represent two such opposing poles.

Adityanath has established himself as the foremost standard-bearer of the Gorakshpeeth tradition and an assertive brand of Hindu nationalist cultural politics. Azam Khan, meanwhile, has for nearly four decades been regarded as one of the most outspoken, influential and ideologically uncompromising figures in Muslim politics in Uttar Pradesh.

Between 2012 and 2017, when the Samajwadi Party was in power, Azam Khan was among the most powerful ministers in the state. Rampur was then regarded as his political laboratory and an impregnable stronghold.

In contrast, Yogi Adityanath, then a Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur, was advancing the Hindutva agenda in mainstream state politics. When power changed hands in 2017 and Adityanath became chief minister, it was not merely a change of government or a shift between two political parties. It marked a historic transfer of the centres of power, administrative style and ideological dominance — with Azam Khan and his political empire emerging as central figures in this transition.

The historical roots of the feud

The bitterness between Yogi and Azam did not begin with the change of government. Its roots go back to well before Adityanath became chief minister. Between 2015 and 2016, whenever the two leaders confronted each other on the floor of the Assembly or at public gatherings, political decorum often took a back seat.

During the Samajwadi Party government, Azam Khan repeatedly adopted an aggressive and controversial position on Yogi Adityanath's personal life and the functioning of religious ascetics. Adityanath, too, responded with sharp attacks on Azam Khan's political arrogance and administrative style. Gradually, this personal hostility transformed into deep-seated political enmity.

When Yogi took over in March 2017, the personal feud acquired the backing of the administrative machinery, in keeping with his political temperament. Within the first few months of the new government, Azam Khan accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adityanath of persecuting Muslims. He even spoke of approaching international forums and the United Nations, seeking to put the government on the defensive.

At a Samajwadi Party convention in Agra, Azam Khan described Ram and Krishna as his ideals and openly challenged Yogi to declare Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ his ideals as well. It was a direct challenge to the political culture that Adityanath was seeking to advance. It was clear then that the confrontation was destined to become a battle for political survival.

Polarisation through rhetoric and the 'Rampuri knife'

As elections approached, the language and hostility between the two leaders became increasingly aggressive. During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the political battle in Rampur attracted national attention.

After Azam Khan made an objectionable remark about 'saffron-coloured underwear' in reference to BJP candidate Jaya Prada, Adityanath hit back at an election rally in Sambhal, saying that his government had set up 'anti-Romeo squads' precisely for people like him.

Political analyst Rajesh Malik says, "When a chief minister publicly links a political opponent to symbols of police action, it goes far beyond the bounds of ordinary political criticism."

During the same election campaign, Azam Khan, too, made sharp personal remarks against Adityanath. In October 2021, when the latter himself arrived in Rampur to campaign for the Assembly by-election, he accused Azam Khan, without naming him, of grabbing land belonging to the poor and farmers. In the years that followed, whether through references to the 'Rampuri knife' or barbs such as 'the rope may have burnt, but the twists remain', Yogi's speeches rarely seemed complete without an attack on Azam Khan.

For Yogi, who occupied the highest office in the state, Azam had by then become a symbol that had to be politically and ideologically dismantled.

The legal vice: Petty cases versus serious allegations

The mounting number of cases against Azam Khan is the most controversial and complicated part of this story. More than 80 cases were registered against him after 2017. Broadly, these can be divided into two categories.

Petty cases and administrative disputes: These include cases involving the alleged theft of buffaloes, goats and chickens; old books from Madarsa Alia; and municipal cleaning machines allegedly kept on the Jauhar University campus.

A large section of critics and legal experts views these proceedings as an instance of the excessive use of state machinery and malicious prosecution, allegedly intended simply to subject an individual to mental and physical harassment.

Serious financial and criminal allegations: However, the list is not limited to relatively minor cases. Dozens of serious cases were registered over allegations that land belonging to farmers, Dalits and the government had been forcibly occupied for the construction of Jauhar University.

There was also the case involving the alleged procurement of a forged birth certificate for his son, Abdullah Azam, and the use of two PAN cards and passports carrying different dates of birth. A court found Azam Khan and members of his family guilty in connection with these matters.

Another case relates to the alleged forcible demolition of houses belonging to poor residents in Rampur's Dungarpur area, along with allegations of looting and dacoity under Section 395 of the Indian Penal Code. An MP-MLA court sentenced him to a lengthy prison term in this case.

In addition, the ED is investigating allegations of money laundering and irregularities in the financial contributions received by the university. His latest arrest followed this investigation.

It is therefore clear that Azam Khan's prolonged incarceration is not merely the consequence of FIRs registered at police stations. It is also the outcome of an extended judicial process in which courts across the country have convicted him in several cases.

Rule of law or political vendetta?

But the real question is not about the technicalities of court judgments. It is about the intentions of those wielding state power.

When a state government deploys its entire might — intelligence agencies, the revenue department and the police force — to corner a single political leader, the exercise begins to look less like the pursuit of justice and more like political retribution.

Whether Azam Khan is a criminal or not is for the courts to decide. But the manner in which another case is swiftly activated as soon as he secures bail in one, and a fresh contingent of officials appears to be waiting at the prison gates even before he can walk free, sends an unmistakable message. The objective appears to be not merely to secure convictions, but to render Azam Khan completely irrelevant and politically incapacitated.

This is no longer just a battle between Yogi and Azam. It has become a deeply troubling political precedent for the entire Opposition and the country's minority communities. The message from those in power is that anyone who stands in the way of their ideological agenda could face the same fate as Azam Khan. Their political fortress could be demolished, their family members could find themselves behind bars, and their entire existence could be entangled in a legal labyrinth.

The determination to politically destroy Azam Khan has brought Uttar Pradesh politics to a crossroads where the 'rule of law' itself stands in the dock. The ruling establishment may congratulate itself on what it considers a ruthless success. But history may remember that when the law is turned into a weapon to crush democratic dissent, it ceases to be justice and becomes nothing more than the politics of unrelenting vendetta.

Prabhat Kumar, a lawyer by profession and a social activist, says the beauty of democracy lies in ensuring that allegations of crime and corruption are addressed through the law and an impartial judiciary, rather than through the arrogance of those in power or political animosity.

Ultimately, the Yogi-versus-Azam confrontation is a test of whether the rule of law in Uttar Pradesh is genuinely impartial, or whether justice has become a political weapon in the hands of powerful rulers operating from the corridors of power.