Opinion | The politics of selective festivity: Akhilesh Yadav’s Deepavali outreach and his political dualism

Akhilesh Yadav’s Diwali greeting, following his highly visible participation in Eid celebrations, invites scrutiny of the consistency of his festival outreach. The question is not whom a political leader chooses to greet, but whether the same warmth and public engagement extend equally to every community and tradition. Recent announcements of a planned visit to the Ram Temple in Ayodhya with his family have been widely read as an attempt to project a softer cultural posture ahead of the 2027 assembly elections. Such gestures acquire meaning only when placed against the administrative record of his earlier tenure and against the contrast with the present government’s approach to the same festivals and processions.

Power as a Measure of Administrative Priority

Electricity is the most elementary public utility. Contemporary reporting from the Samajwadi period records special instructions for uninterrupted supply during Ramzan and Eid, including the deployment of additional capacity and the stationing of officials to monitor rural feeders. Parallel accounts from the same years describe shortages and outages during Holi, Navratri and Diwali, with religious cities such as Varanasi frequently affected. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has repeatedly cited this pattern. Under the present administration, formal directions for 24-hour supply from Dussehra through Diwali and Chhath have become routine, accompanied by instructions to avoid disconnections for dues during the festive window and to prioritize restoration of faults. The difference is not merely one of capacity; it is one of explicit prioritization. When additional power is wheeled in for one set of festivals and left to ordinary schedules for another, the administrative signal is difficult to miss.

Processions, Pilgrims and Uneven Facilitation

The same selectivity appears in the treatment of large religious gatherings. Kanwar Yatra under the previous regime was widely described as under-managed, with limited security and coordination for the volume of pilgrims. Deepavali firework management and Holi crowd control received similar commentary. In contrast, the present government has institutionalised arrangements for the Kanwar route while simultaneously providing security and traffic management for Tajia processions and other Muslim observances. The constitutional requirement is equal protection and equal facilitation, not identical cultural endorsement. A chief minister may be openly observant of one tradition, as Yogi Adityanath is, without withholding the ordinary administrative apparatus from another. The record of the earlier period suggests that ordinary apparatus was not always extended with equal diligence.

The Timing of Greetings and the Record of Engagement

Akhilesh Yadav’s Deepavali greeting arrived late in the evening of the festival itself. By contrast, his engagement with Eid and Iftar gatherings was prompt and highly visible, attending events organised by party leaders, offering greetings, and ensuring administrative attention well in advance. The difference in timing and intensity is difficult to overlook. A greeting issued after the main hours of Deepavali carries a different weight from the early, energetic outreach that characterised his participation in minority festivals. When the same leader has earlier stated that neither he nor his wife practiced daily Hindu rituals, the late Deepavali message reads less as spontaneous cultural affinity and more as a calibrated addition to a longer pattern of selective public warmth.

Equal Administrative Cover Across the Festival Calendar

Yogi Adityanath’s approach has been to treat major festivals of both communities as occasions requiring the same logistical attention: power, security, sanitation and traffic. He has not concealed his own religious practice, nor has he required that practice to be mirrored by every citizen. The result is a visible difference in the experience of processions and festival nights. Kanwar pilgrims now move under organised protection; Tajia processions receive comparable administrative cover. Power directives cover the calendar of major observances rather than a selective subset. These are ordinary functions of a state government. Their consistent performance does not constitute cultural majoritarianism; their selective performance does raise a legitimate question about administrative neutrality.

What the Pattern of Attention Reveals

The issue is not whether a political leader may greet one community more warmly than another or whether personal religiosity should be displayed. It is whether public utilities and public-order machinery are deployed with equal seriousness across the festival calendar. The earlier record on power allocation and procession management supplies concrete instances in which that equality was not observed. The present record supplies instances in which it has been. As the Samajwadi Party experiments with a revised cultural vocabulary ahead of the next assembly election, the administrative history remains available for examination. Citizens are entitled to ask whether the newer greetings and visits reflect a settled change in priority or a temporary adjustment of political signaling. The answer will be found less in the timing of a single greeting than in the continued, observable allocation of the state’s ordinary resources.

*(The author is an Assistant Professor at Ramanujan College, University of Delhi, and writes on contemporary issues. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Zee News.)