|
Mosque demolisher
Hindutva brigade takes
Ram Temple turn
BJP says Bus Avsar Chahiye, Mandir Bana Denge; Badal working hard to
provide opportunity
Gian Inder
Singh
 NAGPUR:
Politics in India took a Jai Shri Ram turn this week. Communalising
Indian polity in one fell swoop, India’s Hindutva poster boys dyed
in color saffron — L K Advani- Rajnath Singh-Narendra Modi — have
turned back to methods tried and tested to whip up emotions,
hysteria, jingoism and communal riots, and gave out shrill calls for
construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya “at the exact same place”
where the Babri Masjid once stood.
At
a three-day conclave of the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) top brass,
there seemed to be a clear realisation that democratic norms and
conduct are not going to fetch enough votes for a serious Advani bid
at Prime Ministership. So shrillness quotient was raised, and on
Friday, Advani himself brought the
Ram
Temple to the forefront, and said the party had never left it from
its agenda.
For the five years that the BJP-led NDA ruled
India under Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP did not utter a word about
Ram Temple, much like its coalition partner in
Punjab,
the Akali Dal, which kept silent on Anandpur Sahib Resolution during
the years it shared power at the Centre with the NDA. In
Punjab,
Akali Dal again spoke of Anandpur Sahib Resolution but sensing that
it could become the proverbial blanket yet again if the NDA came to
power, the Badals rushed to ditch it.
After a long silence of several years, Advani, who had once led the
passion-inflaming Rath Yatra for Ayodhya temple and communalised the
country for all times to come, said he has not any convincing answer
as to why there should not be a grand Ram temple built at Ayodhya.
“Jai Shri Ram. There will be some who will say we have gone back to
Ram, but I say we never left Ram. Only when the Ram temple is built
at Ayodhya can a Jai Shri Ram slogan come from within the heart.”
Not to be left behind, BJP president Rajnath Singh, also a Hindutva
hawk who had once famously said no Hindu can be a terrorist and who
defended
Malegaon
bomb blasts accused, said the Ram temple would be built as soon as
the BJP got an opportunity to do so. “Avsar ki talash hai, Avsar mil
jaye to Ram mandir zaroor banega,” he said.
In
Punjab,
CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal are doing
their level best to get the BJP this opportunity. In the past few
months, the Badals have used every religious function, mela,
anniversary to seek votes for the NDA and to make Advani the Prime
Minister. After a strong rebuke over the Anandpur Resolution, Badal
publicly told everyone to stop even asking any question about
Anandpur Sahib Resolution and Sukhbir started extracting promises
from the journalists that they would not refer to the Resolution in
any question. All of this not behind the curtain but upfront and
publicly. Advani’s temple rhetoric was possibly forced by his fears
of being consumed by the even shriller rhetoric that Gujarat Chief
Minister Narendra Modi can manage. After all, if Advani is
responsible for Babri demolition and the communal riots that
followed, Modi claims credit for the far bigger number of killings
of Muslims in 2002. Asking the UPA government to get Pakistan to
deport all those guilty in the Mumbai terror attack, Modi asked:
“Who is stopping you [the UPA] from catching those [Indians] who
helped those who attacked Mumbai?”
Clearly, this is BJP’s way of damning all the Muslims in
India
as communal and unpatriotic. Clearly, Hindutva will remain the BJP
theme song and alliance partners like Akali Dal will be condemned to
live with it. “If we come to power with allies, we will take them
into confidence and set up a fasttrack court, if necessary. If we
have the numbers to form the government on our own in future, we
will ourselves build (the temple), with the help of a legislation if
need be,” said Rajnath.
Earlier, in September, Rajnath Singh had talked of three “symbols of
Hindutva” and demanded “nationalisation of the track leading to
Amarnath in the Valley”; asked various political parties “to help
build a consensus to abrogate Article 370”; and attacked the UPA
government for “changing the logo of Kendriya Vidyalayas only
because there was an inscription of lotus therein”.
In
the Delhi national executive last January, Rajnath Singh had spoken
on “how Hindutva is the symbol of India’s culture and traditions”.
“Those who dub Hindutva as a communal ideology should apologise to
the nation,” he had said. He had also sought to draw a common thread
through the issues of cultural nationalism, Ram Janmabhoomi, and the
abrogation of Article 370. It is with such a party that Akali Dal,
which is widely perceived in India as a mainstream party
representing the Sikh nation, is seen in alliance with. Suddenly,
the hawks’ agenda is to the fore and forgotten is the talk about
agenda for governance.
11
February 2009
|
Read Also