Every Diwali, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath chooses to read the festival not as permission for spectacle alone, but as a summons to memory, service and belonging. This year, that understanding unfolded across the state with unusual emotional clarity. He lit lamps at Mansarovar within the Gorakhnath Temple complex, paying tribute to the men and women who gave their lives for India’s sovereignty. He stood in the sprawling, festive energy of Ayodhya’s Deepotsav, where the newly built Ram Temple has transformed the city’s skyline and self-image. But the most telling moment of his Diwali came when he traded the floodlit platforms of a heritage city for the muddy lanes of a forest settlement, continuing a ten-year ritual that has become, for him, a matter of personal as much as political commitment. In his speeches, Yogi was unsparing toward his opponents, accusing the Samajwadi Party and the Congress of spreading misinformation about Ayodhya out of fear. He argued that these parties, unable to stop the momentum of Ayodhya’s heritage and development, now sought to defame the city because they understood that the continuing journey would bury their politics forever. For Yogi, the political appeal was inseparable from the spiritual one: those who once created an identity crisis for Uttar Pradesh, he warned, were now facing a crisis of their own identity.
The heart of the Chief Minister’s Diwali itinerary was a visit to Vantangiya village, Jungle Tinkonia Number Three, where he arrived on Sunday morning after concluding the Deepotsav in Shri Ayodhyadham. It was the tenth consecutive time he had celebrated Diwali with the Vantangiya community as chief minister, but his connection with their forest hamlets goes back much further, to 2007-08, long before the mantle of office made the visit newsworthy. This year, the occasion was also an infrastructure statement. He inaugurated and laid foundation stones for 52 development projects worth ₹82.41 crore, covering gram panchayats, eco-tourism, and the proposed Global Nagar Bazaar. The specifics matter: an interlocking road connecting Rajahi Chauraha to Pipraich Road via Jungle Tinkonia Number Three, built at a cost of ₹3.65 crore; an Eco Park in Kusmhi Forest at ₹4.84 crore; and a Global Nagar Bazaar in Pipraich Nagar Panchayat at ₹1.95 crore. By pressing a button, Yogi inaugurated 26 completed works worth ₹77.97 crore and laid foundation stones for 26 more projects costing ₹4.43 crore. But he did not present these figures as mere administrative achievement. For Yogi, they were the arrival of Ram Rajya itself. “Ram Rajya arrives with Diwali,” he said, “and Diwali arrives when the period of exile comes to an end. Today, that very Ram Rajya has arrived in these Vantangiya villages.” The crowd, many of them members of extremely backward communities and Dalit families, heard in his words the story of their own liberation from a century of neglect.
Yogi anchored his message in a painful historical contrast. Lord Ram, he reminded them, returned to Ayodhya after fourteen years of exile, but the Vantangiya community had been abandoned first by the British and then by successive Congress and SP governments to wander in the forests for more than a hundred years, facing hardship after hardship. He spoke of 56 Vantangiya villages in Uttar Pradesh that no one cared for, villages that did not even find their names in voter lists even after independence in 1947. There were no roads, no electricity, no drinking water, no ration cards, no schools, no hospitals, no pensions, not even a single permanent house. These were Indian citizens, but their citizenship had been left at the edge of the forest. Then, in a direct and participatory gesture, Yogi turned to the people in a question-and-answer format. He asked whether they had a permanent road before 2017, whether any government had built a school for them, whether they had electricity, whether there was any arrangement for drinking water. The answer, each time, was no. He then asked what they had after 2017. Roads for commuting, ration cards, permanent houses, schools, and Ayushman cards. The crowd answered with a chorus of yes. Even highly studious children, he reminded them, had once been compelled to study under oil lamps because there was no electricity. Today, the same children have electric light to read by. For Yogi, the difference was not accidental. It was a matter of political will. The people could have received facilities before 2017, he said, but providing such facilities needs time and intention. Expecting people whose willpower had ended, and who thought only about their own families, to think about the poor, Dalits, deprived sections and extremely backward communities was, in itself, a pipe dream.
The Chief Minister’s political message, however, was never far from the surface. He reminded the Vantangiya community to preserve the history of their journey from struggle to access, and to tell their present and future generations that the houses, land and electricity they now enjoy were the result of the BJP government’s work. They were once deprived, poor, Dalit and backward, he said, and previous governments had kept them that way. He then returned to Ayodhya, not as a mere tourist destination but as a symbol of resurgent faith. Those who could not stop the momentum of Ayodhya, who could not restrict the procession of devotees of Lord Ram, and who failed in every attempt to obstruct it, are the very people now engaged in defaming the city. For Yogi, Ram Karya and Rashtra Karya are one and the same. As a devotee of Lord Ram, he said, he had embraced every forest dweller, every hill dweller, every deprived person and every Dalit; he had made them partners in Ram Karya, which is inseparable from the work of the nation. He also used the occasion to address social behavior. He appealed to everyone to share happiness with others during festivals and to stay away from intoxicants and gambling. The state government, he said, was taking action against drug traffickers, and after the elimination of mafias, the next phase of action had begun specifically against drug traffickers. He called upon young people to study hard, promising that the BJP’s double-engine government would take responsibility for guaranteeing jobs and employment. To food-producing farmers, he promised that the government would ensure several times the value of their produce through processing and value addition. In this way, the Diwali gathering became a town hall, a court of grievances, and a sermon on citizenship all at once.
Yet Yogi’s Diwali was not only one of big rallies and large numbers. It was also marked by small, personal gestures that spoke of a different kind of attention. At the Vantangiya event, he honoured beneficiaries of various government schemes from the dais, presenting Diwali gifts, certificates and other items to horticulture farmers, beneficiaries of the Agricultural Mechanisation and Crop Residue Management Scheme, tool kit scheme beneficiaries under the Halwai trade, Ayushman Scheme beneficiaries, and beneficiaries of the Chief Minister’s Rural Housing Scheme. He also honoured the heads of the Vantangiya settlements, a symbolic act that gave formal recognition to a community that had long existed outside the official map. A day later, he showed the same personal consideration in a moment of private grief. Setting aside protocol, the Chief Minister waited for around fifteen minutes at the residence of former Deoria MP and former Army vice-chief Shri Prakash Mani Tripathi in Barpar village, Baitalpur block, in order to personally meet Tripathi’s wife, Shashi Mani Tripathi, and offer his condolences. Tripathi had passed away at Medanta Hospital in New Delhi on Sunday after a prolonged illness. When Yogi learned that the widow was caught in traffic, he instructed the Superintendent of Police to ensure that she could reach the residence quickly, and then he waited. Upon her arrival, he consoled her gently, expressed his sorrow over the loss, and spent time with other family members, including Deoria MP Shashank Mani Tripathi, assuring them of his support. It was a quiet moment, easily missed in the pageantry of Diwali, but it revealed the human attention that his admirers often speak of and his critics rarely expect.
The Chief Minister carried that same spirit of responsiveness into the working day after the festival. On Monday, after a Diwali night at the Gorakhnath Temple, he held a Janta Darshan and personally met around 125 people, listening to their complaints and assuring them of effective action. He directed officials to ensure the prompt, sensitive and satisfactory redressal of public grievances, stressing that no complaint should be treated with negligence or allowed to face unnecessary delays. For Yogi, this too seemed to be part of the same sacred geography: the temple, the forest, the government office, and the waiting room of a grieving family are not separate worlds, but one continuous field of duty. His Diwali, in this telling, was not simply a festival of lights; it was an exercise in making the state feel present to those whom history had forgotten. He moved from the Ram Temple in Ayodhya to a forest village, from the inauguration of an eco-park to the bedside of a widow, from a public hearing to a promise of jobs and value-added agriculture. In all of this, he returned again and again to one conviction: that Ram Rajya is not a myth from the distant past, but a practical standard for the present. If there is political will, he insisted, everything is possible. And for the Vantangiya people who once had no roads, no electricity, and not even a vote, the proof of that conviction now glows in the permanent houses they inhabit, the schools their children attend, and the lamps that burn in their homes without fear of the dark.