Can Ram mandir ever rise again?

Saba Naqvi

Asoufflé has to be baked at the right temperature to make sure that it puffs up and rises at the right moment and does not fall flat. It cannot be made to rise again and again, though a badly cooked and flat soufflé can be eaten up. 

The Ram mandir as a political plank has actually not worked for the BJP for over two decades. It lost its fizz decades ago and no one less than the man who helmed the emergence of the party on the national stage, LK Advani, knew so once the Babri mosque fell. He’s still facing criminal charges regarding the Babri demolition and does not say very much these days.  But the facts speak for themselves. In several elections in the Hindi heartland, the BJP floated the mandir card but it did not work as an electoral issue. Uttar Pradesh, in particular, appeared to be bored by the mandir as a voting issue. 

In the two significant sweeps that the party registered in 2014 and in the 2017 Assembly election in UP, the Ram mandir was not a primary ingredient in the cocktail of Hindutva. The Muzzafarnagar riots, love jihad, social cleavages with Muslims, the belief in Hindu rashtra, the hope in Modi, romeo squads, beef, meat and butchers, and so on were the various unstable chemicals thrown into the pot to create the combustion.

So, why are the BJP and the RSS so keen on the Ram mandir issue somehow being resolved before 2019? To an extent, it is indeed about personal faith and the belief that a temple should exist at a spot believed to be the birthplace of Lord Rama. Extend this to the charge that is coming from within the ranks of the cadre: you promised us the Ram temple, why is it still not there when you and our elected leaders are so powerful? If a simple majority BJP regime led by a powerful figure cannot build the Ram temple, who can? Hence, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s need to project a sense of urgency over building the Ram temple. He stated in his Vijaydashami address: “Bring in a law, bring in an ordinance.” This goes beyond the BJP’s position that a temple should be built either as a result on an agreement between Hindu and Muslim parties or from a court verdict. But it does dovetail with BJP president Amit Shah’s statements last month that the “original” demolition of the Ram temple at Ayodhya 600 years ago should also be relevant to any decisions taken by courts and he would like to see the temple built before 2019.   Beyond the personal faith, for those who see political projects as part of larger socio-cultural strategies, the Ram temple would indeed be an important symbol of victory.  It would mark a triumph against the foundational ideas of India and would be a totem of the new India. 

The BJP has always tried to calibrate the Ram temple issue carefully, but it has not always struck the right note. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the moderate PM, who did not derive his strength from the Hindutva issues, at times fell back on the Ram temple when he needed to shore up support from the RSS that did not have the best of relations with his PMO. 

In December 1999,  BJP’s Shahnawaz Hussain was then the sole Muslim minister in the Union Cabinet. He’d started hosting iftars  and the entire Vajpayee Cabinet attended. At the iftar, Vajpayee made a statement in support of the Ram mandir, saying  “the temple could be built at the disputed site” and a masjid elsewhere. This created a furore because it was Vajpayee saying it as many allies were with the coalition because certain issues were to be off the table. Mamata Banerjee was then part of the NDA and had a great rapport with Vajpayee. She, along with the TDP’s Yerran Naidu, went marching off to meet him and came back to tell the press that “he explained that there are some issues that the BJP as a party has to raise.”

What’s clear is that two decades later the BJP is still on the same ground. What has changed is the level of political and institutional power that the BJP enjoys. The Ram temple would be a crowning glory, but at this point it is still a mirage.