Stones and strategies

Since Uttar Pradesh is due to have its state assembly polls in or before February 2017, no one should be surprised over reports of renewed 'mandir construction activity' in Ayodhya.  A promise of a much-promised 'Ram Mandir' in Ayodhya has been the BJP's principal electoral ruse, especially in Uttar Pradesh.  The BJP leadership now finds itself in a bind. On the one hand it has to appease the Hindutva right-wing, whose raw energy and anger it had harvested cynically and calculatedly for electoral purposes. In its politics of Hindu vote-bank, the BJP has to keep humouring the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other aggressive hard-line outfits; from time to time, various BJP leaders assert that the party remains unwaveringly committed to a 'grand' temple in Ayodhya. On the other hand, in order to move out of its political isolation, post-Babri Masjid demolition, the BJP has promised its National Democratic Alliance partners to shift the 'mandir' issue on to the back-burner.

 All these years the BJP could conceitedly tell its ultra-ardent Hindutva fringe that this back-burnering of the ‘Ram Mandir’ was a compulsion because the party lacked a parliamentary majority. However, now the BJP does command an impressive majority in the Lok Sabha.  Uttar Pradesh had contributed handsomely to Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha tally.  Hence, the reported ‘construction activity’ at Ayodhya has to be seen as the Mandir crowd’s growing desire to encash its IOU. Just as the BJP has played games with the Mandir activists, they too sense a chance in view of the assembly elections. 

Whatever its internal compulsions and calculations, the BJP government at the Centre is bound by the apex court's injunction to maintain the status quo at the disputed site. So, also, is the Samajvadi Party government in Lucknow. Both governments have sensibly declared themselves to be respectfully mindful of the judicial orders. That is a responsible attitude.  Because India is precariously poised for a higher stage of economic takeoff, and this is not a stage when it can afford to squander its energies and attention in pointless brinkmanship, with a potential of a destructive communal flare-up. The very agenda of ‘vikas’ would come un-stuck. It can only be hoped that the Modi sarkar will be able to curb its clever-clever propensity to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.