IN THIS first week of 2024 if there is one thing on which there seems general agreement in India it is that the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is the most important political issue. The consecration ceremony is two weeks away, but it is hard to find a news bulletin that does not lead with the latest developments in the temple.
Every minor detail of the ceremony is discussed repeatedly from who will be seated in the sanctum sanctorum and how the puja will be conducted to the Prime Minister’s decision to fast on that day. Breathless TV pundits report that he always fasts before religious ceremonies because ‘you have to be pure, really pure’. Adding that he is good at keeping long fasts since he is in the habit of living on water for nine days during Navratri.
Even those who do not approve of temples becoming political seem gripped by the religious fervour that has spread everywhere just now. On social media platforms people not usually famous for piety are busy posting their favorite Ram bhajans. And from Ayodhya come new pictures every day of the Saryu River and its ghats glistening in the light of laser shows. The excitement reached such a hysterical pitch that the Prime Minister personally appealed to people not to come to Ayodhya on January 22, but to light up their own homes instead on that day and celebrate as if it were Diwali. Having made the temple the most important political issue in the country Modi himself took off to Lakshadweep for carefully choreographed meanderings and musings on pristine beaches and for a spot of snorkeling. It was ‘exhilarating’, he said in a post on social media.
As someone who has seen the harm caused in countries where religion becomes a political ideology, I have watched the events in Ayodhya unfold with growing concern. But you cannot argue with the box office so I concede that Modi understands better than most political pundits and politicians that there is a rage over what happened in Ayodhya 500 years ago that can be tapped into for political purposes.
As someone who travelled on L K Advani’s chariot 23 years ago, when it set off from Somnath for Ayodhya to demand a temple where the Babri Masjid stood, he knows how deeply Hindus feel about the desecration of Ram’s birthplace. When the Rath yatra arrived in Delhi, I was among the reporters covering the story and remember that on one side of Advani sat Pramod Mahajan and on the other Narendra Modi.
The chariot was surrounded by people dressed as characters from the Ramayana and religious songs blared out of loudspeakers. Riots followed in the wake of the chariot because among those in costume were lots of rabblerousers and fanatics who were determined to make ordinary Muslims pay for what an Islamic marauder did many centuries ago. At the time of Advani’s Rath yatra in 1990, moderate BJP supporters justified it as a necessary response to the divisions among Hindu castes caused by V P Singh implementing the Mandal Commission report. The eventual result was the demolition of the Babri Masjid and soon there will be a fine temple where it once stood.
There is not the smallest doubt that all this will work well for the BJP politically when the Lok Sabha elections come. But the question we need to ask is how well this will work for the future of India. Will hostilities between Hindus and Muslims deepen? Will jihadism increase? Will Hindutva now become an essential ingredient of India’s political story? Will demands for the demolition of mosques in Mathura and Varanasi become more violent? Nobody has the answers to these questions. And no political party has so far come up with an idea or ideology that would be an appropriate response to Hindutva.
The man seen as Modi’s main challenger has plans to take off on another Bharat Jodo Yatra in the week before Modi goes to Ayodhya for the consecration of the temple. Rahul Gandhi’s new idea, if it can be called new at all, is a caste census across the country so that we can, in his view, ensure that those castes whose population is highest get the highest share of political power and national resources. Was this not exactly what the implementation of the Mandal Commission report sought to do? If things did not work out well then, why should they now?
As I write these words, I am overcome by a deepening sense of déjà vu. With one crucial difference. Narendra Modi has introduced into his version of Hindutva ideas of development, modernity, and progress. When he talks about the religious fervour created by the temple in Ayodhya he explains that it is a symbol of India’s ancient heritage that he seeks to preserve so that a younger generation of Indians do not forget. This is a better reason than I have heard for openly mixing religion with politics, but it remains a mix that has ruined countries like Iran and Pakistan.
We must hope that at some point Modi remembers that this potion of aggressive nationalism infused with religious passion could end up impeding India’s march to modernity instead of speeding us onwards. Meanwhile, who am I to say one word against the temple in Ayodhya, at a time when Ram himself seems to have become a player.
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In this first week of 2024, the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is the most important political issue
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7
07.01.2024
IN THIS first week of 2024 if there is one thing on which there seems general agreement in India it is that the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is the most important political issue. The consecration ceremony is two weeks away, but it is hard to find a news bulletin that does not lead with the latest developments in the temple.
Every minor detail of the ceremony is discussed repeatedly from who will be seated in the sanctum sanctorum and how the puja will be conducted to the Prime Minister’s decision to fast on that day. Breathless TV pundits report that he always fasts before religious ceremonies because ‘you have to be pure, really pure’. Adding that he is good at keeping long fasts since he is in the habit of living on water for nine days during Navratri.
Even those who do not approve of temples becoming political seem gripped by the religious fervour that has spread everywhere just now. On social media platforms people not usually famous for piety are busy posting their favorite Ram bhajans. And from Ayodhya come new pictures every day of the Saryu River and its ghats glistening in the light of laser shows. The excitement reached such a hysterical pitch that the Prime Minister personally appealed to people not to come to Ayodhya on January 22, but to light up their own homes instead on that day and celebrate as if it were Diwali. Having made the temple the most important political issue in the country Modi himself took off to Lakshadweep for carefully........
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