|
RIGHT
ANGLE
Weariness
of Ayodhya
Vajpayee
showed you can't fight the same battle all over again
By
Swapan Dasgupta
Few
public debates have been as tired, repetitive and contrived as the one
on the Ayodhya dispute that preoccupied Parliament and the media for the
past three weeks. The Opposition scored a few brownie points by recording
the Rajya Sabha's feeble disagreement with the prime minister's numerous
utterances on the issue. The faithful in the BJP relived the heady Nineties
through Atal Bihari Vajpayee's invocation of rashtriya bhavna (national
sentiment). And Mamata Banerjee got her 15 minutes of secularist fame
on TV. All the players said their set pieces and came away convinced of
their own righteousness.
 Perhaps
that is exactly what the national mood demanded. It is not that the unresolved
Ayodhya dispute has been completely forgotten and brushed aside from the
national consciousness. That would be a gross overstatement. It is just
that the context that gave rise to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement between
1989 and 1993 has changed and made the issue momentarily less emotive.
For a start, the symbol of the movement-the disputed Babri structure-no
longer exists. On December 6, 1992, frenzied kar sevaks unwittingly took
the emotive sting out of the movement by their shameful defiance of the
rule of law. A grand Ram temple to replace the existing makeshift shrine
may be a dream of many devout Hindus but the cause is insufficiently engaging
to become a national obsession. Even if next month's Dharma Sansad sets
a date for temple construction, it will not have the same impact of, say,
L.K. Advani's rath yatra of 1990.
That's because
Ayodhya was never an entirely religious movement. It was primarily the
political expression of mainstream Hindu disquiet at the perceived distortions
of Nehruvian secularism on the one hand and caste manipulation on the
other. It created a community of "political Hindus" who sought
political power to put the stamp of assertive modernity on the nation.
This is a project to which both Vajpayee and Advani-despite their known
differences on techniques of mobilisation-subscribed. And it was this
dimension, plus expedient local alliances, that enabled the BJP to painlessly
replace the Congress as an alternative Establishment. For this counter-Establishment,
unlike the sadhus and sants in the VHP, Ram Janmabhoomi was never an end
in itself. It was just a handy symbol of a much larger mission. The issue
was identity and statecraft, not religion.
Of course,
there are counter pressures from a fanatical section that was also politically
empowered by Ayodhya. Fortunately, this belligerence does not correspond
with the mood of Hindu middle India that sustained the movement. Having
tasted economic freedom and a degree of material prosperity, it doesn't
find another bout of agitational politics appealing. There is no provocation
for a renewed and aggressive flaunting of identity. From its perspective,
the parameters of resurgent nationalism were hesitantly drawn on December
6, 1992 but defined in more acceptable terms after the Pokhran blasts
of May 1998 and the information technology dazzle.
The prime
minister gauged this shrewdly. He painted the temple as a fait accompli
which awaited juridical legitimacy; he defiantly recited his Hindu tan-man,
Hindu jivan in Parliament; he defended Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi
resolutely; and he kept his coalition firmly intact. He deftly demonstrated
just how much the political class has reshaped its mental assumptions
in eight years. And he wisely left it at that.
Top
|
METRO TODAY
Forget
endology, writes INDIA TODAY Senior Editor S. Prasannarajan. Celebrate
2001, celebrate the future in 