Raising the ghosts of Ayodhya

The more things change for the BJP and its Parivar, the more they remain the same. When in doubt or facing the slightest rough weather, it reverts to the reassuring comfort of the tried and tested Hindutva agenda.

What else can you do when the economy is in doldrums and elections are due in a number of states this year and the next, not to mention the 2019 General Elections, which are less than a year and a half away?

A couple of weeks back I had suggested in these columns that the tide of public opinion is turning against Modi and the BJP. Popular anger over the deepening economic mess amidst disappearing jobs and rural distress has been so overwhelming that the ruling party has been finding it difficult to face the people even in Modi’s home state of Gujarat which goes to the polls by the end of this year.

The origins of the viral joke on social media ‘vikas pagla gaya hai’ (development has gone nuts!), which in turn has spawned millions of memes and jokes online, are also traced to ‘vibrant Gujarat’. It’s even funnier in Gujarati but unfortunately can’t be reproduced here for its ‘un-parliamentary’ nature!

Another sign of the changing popular mood is the unprecedented response Rahul Gandhi has been receiving in Gujarat. The Congress scion has clearly sensed it too and is getting more confident and aggressive in his attacks on Modi and the BJP, with his witty one-liners being lapped up by rapturous crowds.

No wonder the BJP, according to opposition, leaned on the Election Commission to delay the Gujarat polls. If this is the state of affairs in the prime minister’s home state, the Hindutva laboratory, you can imagine the mood of the nation. 

No wonder the BJP has gone back to Lord Ram and its core Hindutva agenda with the likes of Yogi Adityanath, the saffron-robed priest-chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and Sangeet Som, the BJP rabble-rouser known for his role in the 2012 Muzaffarnagar carnage, leading the charge.

Being the disciplined, ideology-driven party that it is, everyone plays and enacts their role effortlessly in perfect sync and harmony like a trained orchestra, even though they might appear as if playing their own tune.     

So there is a reason if the BJP is absurdly attacking the iconic Taj Mahal, which attracts millions of foreign tourists and foreign exchange every year, as something built by “traitors” and as a “blot” on the country’s image.

Again, if the BJP government has suddenly remembered Lord Ram after three years in office and decided to light up the temple town of Ayodhya with unprecedented celebrations led by Chief Minister Adityanath and the entire state machinery, amid talk of building the Ram temple, there is a perfect explanation. 

The saffron party knows it is in a bad shape and has numerous difficult electoral battles ahead, the toughest being the 2019 General election. As the pain inflicted by the economy deepens, hurting the poor and middle classes, things can only worsen in weeks and months ahead.    

As if the trauma of disastrous demonetisation wasn’t enough, this government rolled out the haphazardly executed GST (Goods and Services Tax) amid great fanfare, comparing the occasion to India’s ‘freedom at midnight’ celebrations. Clearly, even the BJP feels that only a miracle can save it now and who better to deliver it than Lord Ram himself! After all, he has repeatedly saved the saffron party, taking it from a two-member party in parliament to the status of the natural party of governance.

Only communal polarisation can revive the sagging morale of the party and rally the crowds behind it. While the past three years of this government have been nothing but an endless nightmare for Muslims, with the BJP politicians and their extended clan leading the frequent lynchings and mob attacks on the community, the BJP needs a major emotional issue to polarise the electorate in time for 2019.

The revival of the Ayodhya temple-mosque row, with the leading lights of the BJP openly threatening the Muslims to “accept” the Ram temple at the site where the 16th   century mosque stood once, coupled with this huge Diwali jamboree by Adityanath, is a step in that direction. The deliberate targeting of the Taj – and by extension the Mughals and Muslims – is part of the same agenda to demonise the beleaguered minority.    

Who will remind these people that Delhi’s iconic Red Fort from where the Indian PM, including the current one, addresses the nation on Independence Day was also built by the self-same ‘traitors’? Even the palatial Hyderabad House in Delhi that is used to entertain foreign dignitaries was also built by a ‘traitor’, the Nizam of Hyderabad, as Asaduddin Owaisi helpfully points out.

But the portrayal of Muslims as “foreign invaders and destroyers of Hindu temples” and the verbal attacks on celebrated national monuments like the Taj Mahal as illegitimate and oppressive is also part of a wider Hindutva project to denigrate Muslims and question their ‘Indianness’ and legitimacy, as Kuldeep Kumar suggests in ‘The Wire’. 

Denying a people’s identity is the first step to delegitimising and wiping them off the land. If you think that is a far-fetched idea, look no further than neighbouring Myanmar and its persecuted Rohingya Muslims to know what I mean.

If the world can stand and stare while the Burmese state turns its full wrath on a minuscule, oppressed minority, burning villages after villages along with their inhabitants and driving nearly a million people into Bangladesh, anything is possible.

After all, who would have believed that after seven centuries of Muslim rule over Spain, the Moors would disappear as if they had never existed? Who would have believed that 13 centuries after Muslims made India their home and enriched it in a myriad ways – from culture and arts to architecture and food – they would be told that they do not belong there? Not only is their imprint and influence found in every sphere of activity, India would be incomplete as a nation and civilisation without its Muslims.        

It has been the other way round as well. Islam’s association with India has also enriched Islamic culture and civilisation in incredible ways. And Taj Mahal, the ultimate epitome of love, is perhaps the finest example of this multicultural Ganga-Jamuni tahzeeb and Islamic-Indian encounter that has enriched the Subcontinent and what we all have inherited.

The Taj is not just the symbol of love of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his beloved Mumtaz, it is also a celebration of the romance between India and the Islamic civilisation. As historian Rana Safavi argues, celebrating the best of Islamic and Indian architectural heritage, a Taj Mahal could have only happened in India.         

Is India prepared to do away with that rich harmony of cultures and celebration of multiculturalism for the chaos and cacophony being promised by the saffron fascism?

There is still time and opportunity to correct the historic blunder that the electorate committed in falling for the fiction and fallacious sophistry of the BJP and its leaders. If India’s reasonable majority does not act to correct the course – and soon – the great democracy may end up paying an incalculable price.        

The writer is an award-winning journalist.

Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com