Calls for Ayodhya temple law mean it’s Ram bharose again in 2019
November 4, 2018, 3:00 AM IST
Nalin Mehta in Academic Interest | India | TOI
The
growing clamour for a law to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya is
reminiscent of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s 1849 satirical aphorism:
“The more things change, the more they remain the same.” The carefully
constructed public symphony we have seen in recent days on the
possibility of an overriding law to build a Ram temple means that as we
head into election season in 2019, our politics is galloping back to the
future in a deja-vu rerun of the halcyon days of the Ayodhya movement
in the early 1990s.
The clarion call was first
sounded by RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat in his Vijay Dashami speech
on October 18 when he asked the Modi government to “expedite the
decision regarding the ownership of Ram Janmabhoomi” and to clear the
path for the construction of a temple “through appropriate and requisite
law”. Bhagwat was drawing a line in the sand, as if almost anticipating
the Supreme Court’s decision on October 29 to defer a call on hearing
dates on the matter to an “appropriate bench” in the first week of
January 2019.
The BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh
Sinha then raised the pitch, announcing a “private member’s bill” in
Parliament for a Ram temple, along with an emotive political dare to
Rahul Gandhi, Sitaram Yechury, Lalu Yadav and Mayawati to oppose the
idea. Then came the carefully calibrated statement by RSS sarkaryavah
Bhaiyyaji Joshi, asking the Supreme Court to “rethink the matter” of the
Ram temple as Hindus were feeling “insulted” that it was not on its
“priority list”. As he put it: “Society should respect the court and the
court should also respect society and its sentiments.” The RSS has put
the ball firmly in the Modi government’s court, making it clear that it
favours a Ram temple ordinance “if all other options run out”.
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