History bears
testimony to the fact that BJP has always played sectarian and divisive
politics to gain the most out of the state of UP. Whether it was 1998 when it
won a whopping 57 Lok Sabha seats, it was on the lines of polarizing voters on
the Ram mandir issue and ensuring political gains by exciting riots. Now with
the general elections just eight months away, it seems to play the same old
rhetoric of building the Ram mandir and through its other saffron fractions
incite communal tensions. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP) is set to resurrect the Ayodhya Ram temple campaign. It’s proposed ‘chaurasi kosi parikrama’ between 25 August and 13 September would have
seers and saints traversing six districts of Uttar Pradesh to garner support
for the temple. The great
Sangh Parivar is at work and all its elements are playing a well-defined role
to shore up the prospects of the BJP in the coming general elections.
The Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to deny permission to the
VHP to organise a march between 25 August and 13 September to press for the
building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya has re-opened the issue. The yatra planned
by the VHP would have started from Ayodhya and passed through the districts of
Faizabad, Barabanki, Gonda, Ambedkarnagar, Basti and Bahraich before returning
to Ayodhya. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad chief even met with Mulayam Singh Yadav on
17 September to seek a go ahead for the 84 mile rally and asked him to act as
mediator with the Muslim community over the issue of building the temple. Officials
of the home department said that under no circumstance would the yatra be
allowed. “Other than deputing extra security forces in the region, barricading
the routes is also an option we are exploring,” a senior official told IANS. The government has also decided
to deploy ten companies of Rapid Action Force (RAF) and 12 companies of the
Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) in the area.
In order to
claim stake in Centre, the BJP needs a significant chunk of the 80 Lok Sabha
seats in the state to get respectable numbers in the 2014 elections. However,
its electoral fortune in UP has been on the decline since 1998. In 2009, the
party managed only 10 seats. Over a decade, the party’s vote share has come
down from a robust 36 percent to an anaemic 17.5 percent. Without at least 40
seats in its kitty from the state, the party will find it extremely difficult
to win around 190 seats across the country – this is approximately the number
that would allow it to find allies to stake claim to form the government at the
Centre. Currently, the party, pushed
to the margins along with the Congress by the intense caste politics of the
state, has nothing spectacular to offer to the electorate to gain a massive
jump of 30 seats. The growth and good governance talk has appeal only in a
limited section of the electorate.
At the ground level, the priorities
of the people are different and even the presence of Narendra Modi is not
likely to make huge difference to the party’s prospects. The only way it can
have a massive jump in seats is polarising votes along communal lines. This is
where the Sangh Parivar comes into the picture. Since the party cannot take an
openly communal position – officially, its emphasis would be on governance,
state of the economy and corrupt activities of both the central and state
governments – the responsibility of polarising votes rests with the other
Parivar outfits such as the VHP. The ‘chaurasi kosi parikrama’ is a
well-planned move in that direction. If it manages to generate sufficient heat,
with a riot or two fitting in somewhere, the party stands to gain. In Uttar
Pradesh, as conventional wisdom goes, two parties benefit when there’s a
communal polarisation: the BJP and the Samajwadi Party. The former will be
happy so long as the Congress loses some of its 21 seats it had won in 2009.
Such a turn of strategy became very clear when the party deputed
Amit Shah, a close confidante of Modi, to lead the party’s election campaign in
the state. One of his first utterances after taking charge was about the
construction of the Ram temple. Since the SP government in UP is perceived to
be pro-Muslim, the BJP sees merit in its two-pronged strategy. While on paper
it looks perfect, the problem is whether the electorate would be as passionate
as earlier to the Ram temple issue. Even in Faizabad, home to the disputed
Ayodhya site, the party has been losing elections.
However keeping the politics aside, this Ayodhya rally of the VHP
is a very worrying trend given the fact that law and order had already worsen
in UP after the Samajwadi Party has taken over. Such kind of religious
polarizations will further enhance conflict between the two communities and
lead to disharmony in the society, the repercussions of which could be felt
well outside UP too. All the eyes now would be focussed on how Akhilesh Yadav’s
party handles the situation and tries to keep the communal forces out. For
which if they succeed in their plans, the future news of India is not very promising.
For all sorts of bouquets and brickbats feel free to leave a
comment below or mail me at author.vish94@gmail.com
Photography
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