In its decision to not attend the Ram Mandir pran pratishtha in Ayodhya, is the Congress opposing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s day of political domination or standing up for an ideological principle?

The question becomes relevant because several well-respected public intellectuals on the ideological Left have hailed the Opposition’s response as a stand that takes the party back to its Nehruvian secularism roots.

Let’s for a moment put aside the question of whether Nehruvian secularism — as distinct let’s say from Gandhi’s embrace of faith — is politically counter-intuitive for the times. The truth is that you cannot invoke both Nehru and the Shankaracharyas to explain your position and then argue that you are ideologically distinct from the BJP.

And that is what the Congress — and several other Opposition leaders — have done.

The four Shankaracharyas, who have declined to attend the Ayodhya ceremony, head mutts established by the 8th-century Hindu philosopher Adi Shankara. Based in Uttarakhand, Odisha, Karnataka and Gujarat, these pontiffs are seen as the custodians of the scriptures, in particular the Vedas.

But if religion is a personal matter, which is what the Congress press statement argued when announcing that its........

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