ABSTRACT
On 19 March 2017, the most populous state of India, Uttar Pradesh, saw the inauguration and swearing-in of its thirty-second and latest Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, in a ceremony that The Times of India described as being ‘graced by a plethora of BJP luminaries, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior opposition politicians, and a raft of sadhus, sanyasis and sanyasinis’ (Times of India 2017). The swearing-in ceremony was an example of the highest levels of leadership of the Hindu Right showing off after a truly historic victory. It had been preceded by many months of campaigning and a phased two-month-long election period, during which more than 86 million people had cast their votes. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged from these elections with a landslide victory, winning 312 of 403 seats, an increase of 265 since the elections five years previously. The BJP had gone through the entire elections without naming a chief ministerial candidate, and, at least in mainstream media, the perception had been that the elections were a referendum on the performance of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his central national government in New Delhi.
