Politics of the chameleon: BJP and the Ayodhya issue

"Mahant Ramachandra subordinated the Ramjanmabhoomi trust to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad", says Mr Sheetla Singh, the highly regarded editor of the Faizabad-based Jan Morcha daily.

A majority of Ayodhya Mahants found Ramachandra overbearing and untrustworthy--including Satya Das, the Ramlalla temple pujari, Gyan Das of Hanuman Garhi, Phalahari Baba, Bhavnath Das and Dharam Das.

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Ramachandra was responsible for stealthily spiriting images of Ramlalla into the Babri mosque in 1949. He thus helped launch hundreds of political careers.

But Ramchandra had little popular support. His Ayodhya-to-Delhi chetavani yatra last year evoked a poor response. Building the temple was an issue only for a few VHP leaders. The Mahant couldn't mobilise even one thousand people for this last year.

Therefore, it's strange that the Prime Minister of a supposedly secular nation attended the funeral of such a controversial person. Mr Vajpayee's first visit to Ayodhya in 14 years took place in the company of the VHP's Ashok Singhal and the RSS' Sudarshan.

Mr Vajpayee vowed to "fulfil the Mahant's last wish to build the temple... We swear on his funeral pyre to complete [his] mission." Mr Advani said building the temple "is the national wish".

Mr Vajpayee was trying to out-Singhal Mr Singhal on Hindutva. But two days later, he retracted his statement and said: "There's no change in our stand on the Ayodhya issue..."

The denial was neither convincing nor becom

ing of a Prime Minister. Mr Vajpayee shouldn't have stooped to partisanship on this divisive issue.

Mr Vajpayee's Hindutva turn at Ayodhya speaks poorly of him--just as did his remarks about a [Ram temple] in "the India of my dreams" (September 2000) or the Ayodhya agitation being a "nationalist movement" (December 2000).

In Ayodhya, Mr Vajpayee was either playing Hindutva politics, or got emotionally carried away. Both possibilities are unflattering. Even more unseemly was his gratuitous outburst in Parliament about not yielding to "compulsions".

Mr Vajpayee, who paid his annual gurudakshina to the RSS flag on August 6, periodically descends to the same position on the temple as the VHP, RSS or Bajrang Dal. He then becomes indistinguishable from the "extremists" from whom he is supposed to guard the BJP's allies.

There is a difference between the BJP's parliamentary wing and VHP-RSS bigots. The latter take the temple literally--and aggressively. The BJP is more schizophrenic. It is, on the one hand, bound by the NDA's programme and reluctantly accepts parliamentary accountability.

On the other hand, it invests mystical properties into the temple as a symbol of Hindutva hubris. The first posture provokes it to deny that its leaders conspired to raze the Babri mosque--in breach of a solemn commitment to the Supreme Court. The second position impels it to depict the Ayodhya campaign as an upsurge of "cultural nationalism".

This schizophrenia was on display last fortnight. The CBI dropped the charge of criminal conspiracy against the Union ministers inciting the mob in Ayodhya, viz. Messrs Advani, M.M. Joshi and Ms Uma Bharati. It mysteriously "disappeared" videotapes recording their speeches.

Law Minister Arun Jaitley's attempt at covering this up will convince nobody. He cottoned on to a procedural technicality. He failed to tell Parliament that the original 1993 chargesheet upheld in 1997 by Special Judge J.P. Srivastava, contained Sec 120B of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to "conspiracy". This combined two FIRs (197 and 198) without the High Court's consent.

But the High Court itself recommended in 2001 that the "defect" (not illegality) be "cured" through a minor governmental procedure.

All this reeks of an attempt to prevent a fair trial. The "disappearance" of the Babri videotapes is a serious matter. The Intelligence Bureau has nine hours of such coverage, as do private agencies. I myself know at least three individuals who have watched the tapes.

They confirm, as did the independent Citizens' Commission on Ayodhya, that there was a conspiracy, a systematic plan to mobilise and incite crowds to "get even" with "history" and destroy the mosque as an "ocular insult" (Advani).

Three who committed that grave offence or instigated others must be severely punished. But for more than 10 years, they haven't even stood trial. This speaks of the NDA's obstructiveness and shows its utter contempt for the rule of law, political probity and accountability.

Like the Best Bakery case, this is probably unprecedented. The BJP's predecessor governments were capable of great venality. But none subverted the process of law the way it has. The BJP's reaction to the National Human Rights Commission's appeal to the Supreme Court in the Best Bakery judgment is nauseating. It calls it "anti-Hindu".

Nothing could better reduce Hinduism to an immoral faith that justifies violence, mass rape and butchery.

The Congress has paid a price for its manipulative politics: loss of power. The BJP must be made to pay a price too. The people have a chance to make it do so, especially in the four Hindi heartland elections due soon.

Faced with uncertainty, the party is playing crooked, suggesting that all Assembly elections be held simultaneously with Lok Sabha elections. This demands that we sacrifice the vital principle of representative democracy for administrative expediency.

Should the BJP do badly in the Assembly elections, it will be tempted to play the "temple" card--even at the cost of destroying the NDA--to polarise politics communally. Ironically, it might find that its "trump" is a dud.

Ayodhya ceased to be a movement long ago. It no longer inspires large numbers or gives them a "cause" the way it used to. One only hopes ordinary citizens won't have to suffer more for the BJP's blunders.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.