‘WATERLOO’ IN AYODHYA : WHO IS STIGMATISING HINDUS NOW ?
Subhash Gatade
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
'Zor ka Jhataka Dheere Se Lage' (roughly translated 'powerful jolt felt lightly')
The catch line of a song - or perhaps a famous ad campaign - very well describes the reverses faced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recently held Lok Sabha elections.
From a bombastic claim of ‘400 paar’ - not even getting majority within Parliament has proved to be an anti-climax.
This climb-down and now the compulsion of aligning with mercurial allies has led to strange reactions from its own cadre.
Social media is rife with such posts where this nascent frustration with the results mixed with anger is very much visible. Not so unexpectedly, it has suddenly spilled over - not to the 'usual suspects' - but fellow Hindus themselves who are being chastised for not showing unity at critical junctures. Names of stalwarts of the project of ‘Hindu Unity’ are being invoked to make this point and underline how 'disunity' has always been in their bones and it is natural that they have remained 'enslaved for hundreds of years.'
What is worth noting is that ordinary residents of Ayodhya - the same city which they yearned to turn into the 'undeclared capital of Hindu Rashtra - especially its Hindus have become an easy target of their attack. The fact that they voted out a BJP candidate, who had held the post for the earlier two terms, by more than 50,000 votes and elect a candidate of their choice, a veteran leader of the Samajwadi Party, is being construed as their 'disloyalty' to the ‘Hindu Unity’ cause. A torrent of hate and vitriol has been unleashed against them, abusing them, humiliating them in very many ways. Interestingly, even film stars who played a role in the serial Ramayana have joined this chorus to stigmatise them.
It is clear that the troll army and IT Cell of the Right Wing, which is adept at targeting 'anti nationals', the 'urban Naxals' or the 'termites' or 'ghuspaithiye/infiltrators' has been roped in to unleash this vitriol against fellow Hindus who still value their agency, who have realised through their long experience that for the Hindutva Supremacists, talking Hinduism is just a tool to get political power, nothing else.
For the peddlers of these hate messages and their masterminds, it is still difficult to fathom the fact that people of Ayodhya used their constitutionally granted right to vote to underline the big hiatus between claims and reality. It was also a smart tactics adopted by them to debunk the attempts to conflate issues of livelihood with identity.
Much has been written and documented earlier about the 'beautification' of Ayodhya executed by the government to facilitate the easy travel of tourist to this place. For example, it is now history how around 2,200 shops, 800 houses, 30 temples, nine mosques and six mazaars were demolished merely to widen a single road ‘Rampath’ for easy reaches of tourists to the Ram temple.
There was lot of arbitrariness in these demolition operation as the testimonies show and people are still waiting for compensation.
The fact is that for quite some time these ordinary residents had remained largely mute spectators to the manner in which their age old city of Faizabad-Ayodhya was slowly being handed over to land sharks aided and abetted by the powers that be or how 'beautification' of their city had benefited a section of the ruling party people only and the likes of the Adanis.
Finally, they decided to speak up to express their discontent over the state of affairs.
Perhaps, an ideal situation for the ring leaders of Hindutva Supremacist forces would have been that the people of Ayodhya meekly accept their fate, despite being left to the mercy of this deadly troika of land sharks, an insensitive and ruthless administration and the crony capitalists, who are engaged in supposedly turning Ayodhya a tourist-friendly city, where even international tourists can arrive for Darshan at the half-built Ram temple.
For BJP, it will be still difficult to comprehend that its impending defeat in Ayodhya was very much in the air.
An interview with editor of Janmorcha - a daily from Ayodhya/Faizabad, Suman Gupta, can be seen as an eye-opener which underlines how 'The Constitution of India defeated the BJP.
..“It is outsiders who never thought the BJP would be defeated in Ayodhya, but insiders always knew the BJP will not win the seat this time. There was an undercurrent against the BJP in the Awadh and Poorvanchal regions of Uttar Pradesh .. Secondly, the problem for the BJP came with the beautification of Ayodhya. Many people in Ayodhya lost their land, homes and shops to the government diktat. They did not get proper compensation too and this caused resentment among voters.”
“Nobody spoke because of the fear factor. They were worried if they complained over their shop being demolished the authorities will come and demolish their homes too for no reason.”
It is true that the debacle faced by BJP at Ayodhya is a big loss of face for the party and the broader Sangh Parivar.
If history can be a guide, they had similarly lost miserably from Ayodhya in the 1993 elections to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly – held after the Babri mosque demolition. (December 6, 1992). An alliance of SP and Bahujan Samaj Party, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshi Ram, had swept the polls then. A slogan had then become very popular ‘Mile Mulayam Kanshi Ram, Hawa Ho Gaye Jai Shri Ram’(When Mulayam-Kanshi Ram Join, Jai Shri Ram Vanishes Into Thin Air).
On closer scrutiny, one can find that the loss of face in Varanasi in these 2024 elections is equally worrisome for them where PM Modi nearly scraped through in the elections. Loud claims were made that Modi will win by a margin of more than 10 lakh votes, but in the end his victory margin was merely 1.5 lakh votes, which had reduced by around three lakh votes since last time (2019)
The fact that a quarter of Modi's cabinet colleagues lost these elections is equally a big loss of face for BJP.
It is not difficult to understand the reasons behind this puncturing of the Hindutva agenda.
No doubt, if instead of searching for 'fifth columnists' who supposedly sabotaged their hat-trick for a clear majority at the Centre, if the Hindutva Right Wing gets ready to look closely, they could have easily understood why the ruling dispensation, led by a ‘double engine’ government, took a serious hit in Ayodhya and rest of UP.
It was not a question of being Hindu or Muslim which mattered in this election, on the contrary, people's issues of life and livelihood dominated the discourse. Rise in inflation, unemployment, stray cattle, social justice everything mattered for the people.
The manner in which the talk on changing the Constitution after the elections was raised by a section of the ruling party in a cavalier manner, sent shock waves among a large section of socially oppressed and depressed classes. This affected BJP's tally in these elections not only in UP but rest of India as well.
A major lesson for the RSS-BJP (if they still have the ability to listen and comprehend critical voices) in this election, is very simple.
Every issue raised by political parties has an 'expiry date' and this has also happened with the Ram Temple issue. It has been around four decades they have been trying to gain political mileage out of it and have gained considerably also, but now it has reached its limit. A half- built temple is a reality now and it will no longer be possible for them to 'manufacture an angry crowd ' focusing around it.
Second, their politics of polarisation has also slowly lost much effectiveness in mobilising people.
All their attempts during these elections to corner Congress on 'Muslim appeasement' or targeting it by fabricating a narrative around Muslim reservation proved counter-productive.
Third, by now it must be clear to them that the key slogan of these elections became 'Save the Constitution', which helped the Opposition in garnering votes as well as support.
It is now an open question whether RSS-BJP will ever get over with their tremendous fascination for Manusmriti - since the days of Golwalkar and Savarkar – coupled with their unending discomfort with the Constitution, or will continue to maintain their ambivalence even as we are getting ready to celebrate 75 years of its adoption. (Despite the PM touching his forehead with the Constitution)