When the dust has settled, it may well be found that in launching a campaign in Ayodhya, VP Singh has once again rendered great service to the Bharatiya Janata Party. As in 1989 when he brought down his own government by deciding to implement the Mandal Commission ‘report’ without reference to his BJP and Communist allies, he is doubtless guided primarily by electoral considerations. But his calculations turned out to be wrong at the hustings in May-June, 1990 and they may prove wrong in the forthcoming mini-general election as well.
While the BJP leadership was feeling extremely uncomfortable in 1990, it was reluctant to end its support to the Janata Dal government. VP Singh released it from its commitment to him and to its sterile anti-Congressism. LK Advani’s rath yatra was in reality directed more at him than at the Congress. It was the BJP’s answer to Mandal and it turned to be a pretty effective one in electoral terms.
Once again the BJP leadership had placed itself in an uncomfortable position. The UP government had greatly restricted its freedom of action in respect of the land (2.7 acres) it had acquired adjoining the controversial Ramjanambhoomi-Babri masjid site. In the very process of its acquisition, the government had committed itself to use the land for promoting tourism and providing facilities for pilgrims to the holy city.
The state government have justly exposed itself to criticism if it had stretched ‘promotion of tourism’ and provision of ‘facilities to pilgrims’ to include construction by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of even the main gate of the proposed Rama temple on the acquired land. In any event, it could not have done so after the Allahabad High Court had allowed it to take possession of the land in question on the condition that it did not transfer it and did not put up a permanent structure on it. Disregard of this ruling would create long-term problems for the BJP.
By launching the agitation, VP Singh may embarrass the Narasimha Rao government in the eyes of Muslims who, like the Janata leader, in all probability want it to dismiss the UP government and impose President’s rule in the state. But it can come only as a relief to the BJP leadership. It can now in effect put off the start of the construction work on the temple without loss of face.
It is commonsense that the presence of a BJP government in Lucknow had decreased rather than increased the possibility of a sudden assault on, and destruction of, the Babri masjid structure by the VHP and its supporters. Such an approach may be feasible for a party in opposition but not for one in office and its allies.
As such, the proper course for the BJP would have been to try and convince its supporters among the electorate that the Ram temple was an all-India issue not limited to UP and that since it had not gained a majority in the Lok Sabha, it could not claim to have been given a mandate by the Indian people to shift the masjid and build the temple. This should have been done as the poll results were out in June and the Kalyan Singh government was formed in Lucknow.
For reasons best known to it, however the BJP leadership did not take this logical and politically wise position. Instead, Kalyan Singh led his ministerial team to Ayodhya and reaffirmed the commitment to build the temple in front of the Ramlalla (child Rama) idol in the mosque structure. The party president, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, was present on the occasion as if to put it on record that the central leadership of the BJP stood behind the state government’s promise.
There was, however, no way it could have redeemed this commitment. So it had to find a way out of it. The feeling of unease among BJP and VHP leaders was patent. One has only to put together various statements by Ashok Singhal and others to be convinced that this was indeed the case. Out of this unease emerged the decision to take over 2.7 acres of land and the small temples on it. By doing so, the BJP had given up the highway of a powerful popular movement and got into an alley where it would need to grope to keep moving to nowhere.
The Prime Minister perhaps realized that the BJP had landed itself into a comer. Unlike others of his tribe, he is known to think carefully before he speaks or acts. So, he has refused to be provoked either by the UP government’s move or by VP Singh’s demand for dismissal. He has let events run their own course, knowing, as any discerning person must, that the UP government’s possession of land around the masjid could only increase and not reduce the safety of the structure. Rajput princes, it may be recalled, used to entrust their treasures to Meenas.
The BJP leadership would, by this reckoning have found itself in an unenviable position if VP Singh had not come to its aid, of course as unwittingly as in 1989. He has helped divert attention from the BJP’s commitment to the construction of the Rama temple to his party’s opposition to it. The electoral impact in the forthcoming mini-general election will be interesting to watch.
VP Singh has also helped focus attention sharply on the fact that the Ramjanambhoomi Babri masjid dispute is as much an intra-Hindu one as a Hindu-Muslim one, if not more. So if Muslim leaders are sufficiently shrewd and united, they would more or less sit back and let Hindu fight Hindus.
On the face of it, the contest has been and is between ‘communalist’ Hindus who equate Hinduism with nationalism and ‘secularist’ Hindus who believe that India has been, and is, larger than Hinduism. In reality, the picture has been more complicated inasmuch as ‘secular’ nationalism in India has been underwritten at least partly by casteism. All parties have been fairly attentive to caste arithmetic. The competition, as a shrewd Congress leader once said to me, been between ‘communalism’ and casteism.
The present moves are, however, diversionary. Since both the BJP and the Janata Dal have resorted to them with an eye on the by-elections to the Lok Sabha and various Vidhan Sabhas, they cannot have a long life.
A party like the BJP which claims to stand for India’s self-renewal and self-affirmation and invokes Lord Rama in that connection has to demonstrate that it is a different kind of party from others. It has to prove that Rama is a symbol of what it stands for and not merely an election campaign slogan.
This is, of course, easier said than done. The BJP too has to contend with the compulsions of electoral politics, which by its very nature is disruptive of norms. But that is precisely the challenge. Hindutva would be a negative and disruptive concept if that challenge were not met. The BJP leadership cannot claim that in power in such large states as UP, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, it has distinguished itself in any significant way from its predecessors.
It is not easy to work out a blueprint of action, especially when the party is still far away from power at the centre and indeed when its hold on office in the four states itself is precarious. Nehru could not have implemented his programme of economic development, for instance, if his party was not in power in New Delhi and had been confined to some states.
Even so, at least an outline of an action programme can be attempted. The BJP could, for instance, have transformed the scene if it had put elevation in the status and improvement in the emoluments of school teachers at the top of its agenda in the states under its control. Teachers and not administrators, political leaders and businessmen have been the revivifiers of India’s traditions. It is one of independent India’s great tragedies that instead of being so elevated, teachers have suffered a diminution in public esteem. The BJP leadership has not shown much awareness of this lacuna in our plans of national reconstruction.
It is to be hoped that the mass transfer spree is over in the BJP-run states as well. So it is pointless to refer to it, though it is rather shocking, in view of its brave declarations, that it should have followed so closely the discredited approach of Congress chief ministers who have been rather poorly thought of by the people.
But it would be relevant to say that one way for the party to demonstrate its commitment to good government is to restore the autonomy of the services. Tragically, this is not the only field in which the BJP has followed in the footsteps of the Congress. Its ministers, too, have demonstrated the desire to redecorate their residences and offices at fabulous costs and to travel by state planes to places as far away as Trivandrum. Style is not all. But it cannot be unrelated to espoused ideals.
Sunday Mail, 3 November 1991