RECLAIMING GORAKNATH: LALU PRASAD YADAV'S CULTURAL COUNTERSPIN

When Lalu Prasad Yadav decided to turn storyteller, it wasn't just nostalgia or literary curiosity that drove him.

- RASHEED KIDWAI

It was a strategy.

In his latest collaboration with journalist and folklorist Nalin Verma, Lores of Love and Saint Gorakhnath, [Penguin Random House], the former Bihar Chief Minister steps into the terrain of cultural politics—a domain long dominated by his political rival, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

But instead of wielding rhetoric or reforms, Yadav chooses lores. And instead of temple takeovers, he chooses storytelling. The target: Gorakhpur's Gorakhnath Mutt, an institution now synonymous with "militant Hindutva". The goal: to return Gorakhnath to the people who once danced to his ballads—Hindus and Muslims alike.

At first glance, the book reads like a collection of folklore and romance—tales of Sorthi and Brijbhar, Heer and Ranjha, Saranga and Sadabrij. But its true subtext is much more ambitious. Yadav and Verma are trying to dismantle a stranglehold—Yogi Adityanath's singular grip on the legacy of Saint Gorakhnath. They do this not through polemic, but through poetry; not through manifestos, but through mythology. In the process, they transform the spiritual core of a region where the personal is always political.

BREAKING THE MAHANT MONOPOLY

For decades now, the Gorakhnath Mutt has been seen less as a spiritual institution and more as a power base—one that has produced not just mahants but MPs, MLAs, and a sitting Chief Minister. The transformation began in the 1930s, when Mahant Digvijaynath aligned the Mutt with the Hindu Mahasabha. Avaidyanath followed suit. And finally, Yogi Adityanath turned it into a launchpad for majoritarian politics.

Adityanath's tenure as both mahant and Chief Minister underscores this metamorphosis. Once a centre of composite culture—where, for instance, Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah donated land to a Muslim fakir devoted to Gorakhnath—the temple now stands as a symbol of exclusionary politics.

But in the introduction to