Yogi Adityanath, the incumbent Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, has been a member of Nath Sampradaya of monks. In his countless assertions, he has spoken about the distortions in the narrative of Indian history especially after the arrival of Islam in India. It is an expected behavioral feature under the current regime in India which is emotionally fixated on the distant past, probably for the sake of political mileage. It becomes a necessary task to examine the historical background of the Sampradaya of which he is a part and Mahant, before judging the veracity of his claims.

In early medieval India, Nath sampradaya had taken shape out of a socio-religious movement which began as a part of the Shaivite culture. The Sampradaya was influenced by the traditions of Shaivism, Budhhism, and Yoga. Matsyendra or Minanatha was a yogic saint described in many Buddhist and Hindu traditions and texts. He is known to be historically associated with Kaula Shaivism which is linked with the worship of Shakti. Minanatha was known to have revived Hatha Yoga and was also identified as the founder of the Nath Sampradaya. He is counted among the 84 mahasiddhas, identified as the Guru of Goraknath (one of the nine Navnaths) and symbolized as an incarnation of the Avalokitesvara (a reverent figure in both Hindu and Buddhist cultures).  Goraknath became a prominent and widely identified beginner and proponent of the Nath Sampradaya.

The current CM of Uttar Pradesh, had been since his formative years been a part of the Goraknarh Math, under the Sampradaya, of which he is currently a Mahant. His right wing populist leanings can be traced and understood in terms of the spiritual pedagogy of which he has been an ardent follower. His Guru in the Math was Mahant Avaidyanath, who was a member of Hindu Mahasabha and the successor of Digvijay Nath. Hindu Mahasabha was a right-wing Hindutva body formed in pre-World-War II India by splitting out of the Indian National Congress as a socio-political reaction to the formation and consolidation of the Muslim league. Digvijay Nath like Avaidyanath was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha. He was elected from Gorakhpur on a Hindu Mahasabha ticket in 1967. He was one of the driving forces behind the Ayodhya movement in post-Independent India. He took it to the next level when he had placed Ram idols inside the Babri Masjid.

But one would be surprised if one goes on the temporal scale nearer to the time when the Nath Yogi tradition was taking shape in India. This tradition has generally been resistive in fixing a specific religious identity to itself, whether it be Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam. Social anthropologist Veronique Bouillier had noted that Nath Yogi Sampradaya had generally made the religious borders irrelevant by involving in the philosophical, normative, and epistemological dialogues. Numerous poems in vernacular have been attributed to Guru Gorakhnath. The poetry had many references from multiple religions. The Nath Sampradaya poems of Gorakhnath somehow resisted the idea of watertight compartmentalization of religions. C.Marrewa Karwoski, an American scholar pointed out a line in a study on these poems which states that Yogis as defined under the Nath Sampradaya meditates in the open where there is neither temple nor mosque.

The Yogis of this Math were known to have a syncretism based, co-existential and ecumenical ties with the Sufi saints. Sindh had a famous Sufi Poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai who had described in his poem his unconditional admiration and respect for the Yogis of Nath Sampraday. Though the current dispensation in UP symbolizes the pressing imposed need for exclusivity and superiority of one religion over the others, the pre-twentieth century history of the Nath Sampradaya hints at the use of inclusivity for political consolidation. Examples can be found in two never before printed Nath teachings that have been recently discovered. These texts are known as the Kafir Bodh & Avali Siluk. Gorakhbani, a seminal work on Nath history and literature was written in 1942 by Pitamber Dutt Barthwal which has been a strong foundational work on the Nath Sampradaya history. Closer study and examination of the Gorakhbani reveals that Kafir Bodh & Avali Siluk were removed from the Nath canon. It can be debated whether the removal was deliberate or not, but it has led to a polarized understanding of the Nath Sampradaya. The two omitted texts of the Avali Siluk and the Kafir Bodh presented the idea that the Nath people accepted the Islamic beliefs and held the desire to form a bridge between the Hinduism and the Islamic culture. They intended to present the native religious cultures of India as a continuation of the Islamic culture for the purpose of greater harmony. These two texts present the notion that the Nath Yogis did not differentiate between the two cultures.

The Avali Siluk highlights those ideas in Hinduism which have Islamic features. For example, it talks about the idea that the Yogi needs to go beyond duality (Dvaitvaad) and elevate into the understanding of the non-duality (Advaitvaad) to be a proper Yogi. It must be realized that the non-duality is an idea present in the Islamic theology as well. The words used in the Avali Siluk were highly persianised to target the Islamic followers to bridge them with the Nath school. The text of the Kafir Bodh describes the Yogis beginning with a defensive tone and concluding on the description of the Yogis as the fakirs who search for eternal bliss in the inaccessible and what cannot be perceived.  Even regarding the exchanges of ideas between Nath Sampradaya and the then new faith of Sikhism, there are texts which speak about the interaction of Guru Gorakhnath of the Sampradaya with Guru NanakDev.

Digvijay Singh, the guru of the guru of the current CM of UP, wanted to consolidate his powers as a majoritarian leader under the Hindu Mahasabha, in an India which was under English rule, and witnessing the rise of sectarianism and religion-based politics pushed forth from behind the scene by the English. He wanted to get his hold as the leader of the Nath temple complex. That led him to go away from the inclusive agenda of the Nath tradition. He did it through a lawsuit to control the Nath temple complex, which he won. He subsequently became the Mahant and set the new tradition which his successors have followed.

Seemingly out of sync with the idea of his tradition, Yogi as expected maintained his usual stand on the Mughals. He renamed the under-construction Mughal museum at Agra as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum. His ideas about which he is so vocal betray the ignorance of the multi-religious, dynamic and syncretic history of not only India, but also of his own monk tradition of the Nath Sampradaya. The literature, history, and the canon, including the recently discovered ones suggest that the Nath Yogis had cultural links with Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Tantric schools. He is probably in the dark about how his own tradition had used and incorporated the ideas from other traditions of various religions. Nath Yogis worked with saints from other religious denominations to attain transcendence above all the earthly divisions. It would be wise and prudent for him to first check into the history of distortions carried out by his predecessors before blaming others for the same. The religio political moves of Digvijay Singh in capturing the gaddi at the Nath temple complex and the specific erasure of two texts from Gorakhnama would be more than enough to educate in this regard.