Look forward to the past

To perceive the UP local poll results as a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming assembly elections would be overstating the issue. The social alignments within the state?s political spectrum are still very fluid, writes Jyotirmaya Sharma.

The story in Uttar Pradesh is certainly not what everyone seems to think. It is not about the incumbency disadvantage staring Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party in the face. It is also not about the Congress having won the municipal corporation elections in Allahabad, Bareilly and Jhansi, while losing the all-important Amethi. And it is not even about the BSP’s absence in the elections to the local bodies. The large share of seats that has gone to the independents is not unusual as well. Even when the BSP contested these elections in 2000, the independents formed a significant number. The erroneous impression this time round is that most independents were supported by the BSP.

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Too much is being made of the recently-concluded elections to municipal corporations, nagar palika parishads and nagar parishads. It is true that the BJP did significantly well in the mayoral elections, winning eight of the 12 seats. But the SP did fairly well in the nagar palika parishads and nagar panchayats, a fact clouded by the sudden ‘resurgence’ of the BJP and the marginally better performance of the Congress.

To perceive these results as a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming assembly elections would be overstating the issue. The social alignments within the state’s political spectrum are still very fluid. More than anything else, the BSP’s strategy remains shrouded in mystery. The Congress is in the most unenviable position. Despite having supported the Mulayam government this long, the festering antagonism between the two parties forecloses the possibility of any future truck between them. Its only option then is to align with the BSP — but this will be guided by the calculations and caprice of the BSP supremo, Mayawati.

The foundation for the RSS’ strategy was laid at the VHP’s meeting in Delhi on September 16-17. Swami Vasudevanand Saraswati, the president of the Ram temple movement’s highest body, the Ram Mandir Nirman Uchchadhikar Samiti, announced the decision to hold meetings in every district headquarter of the country between December 1 and 6 in order to mobilise Hindus for the speedy construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The Ram temple movement committee also resolved that the temple will be built at the spot where the Ramlala idol is currently located, and no mosque “will be allowed within the cultural boundary of Ayodhya”. The resolution further reiterates the Sangh parivar’s resolve not to allow any mosque to be built in the country in the name of Babur. Finally, the resolution expresses the Sangh parivar’s determination to build the Ram temple with the stones that were collected from 300,000 villages in 1989-90.

Plans for the revival of the Ram temple movement were given an enthusiastic and unequivocal support by the RSS during its central committee meeting in Varanasi between October 13-15. Interestingly, the endorsement of the revival of the Ram temple movement figures as ‘resolution 3’ of the meeting. The first two resolutions deal with questions of terrorism, internal security, Islamisation, appeasement of minorities and of Pakistan by the UPA and by the Mulayam government in UP, conversions and the question of Mohammed Afzal’s hanging. The RSS and the Sangh parivar are hoping that these issues will do for them what the Shah Bano case did for the BJP in the Eighties and the Nineties.

The VHP also organised a meeting of saints who support the organisation in Ayodhya in November to devise further strategy. The VHP is also at loggerheads with the Shankaracharya of Dwarika, who it brands as a Congress sympathiser. The Dwarika seer has come up with a formula for the resolution of the Ram temple issue, an initiative that the VHP rejects. Central to the VHP’s opposition is the fact that the Dwarika Shankaracharya has suggested a dialogue with the Muslims.

If the bogey of national security, terrorism, Islamisation, appeasement of minorities and conversions works for the BJP in UP, coupled with a symbolic revival of the Ram mandir issue, then the saffron party would like to replicate it elsewhere. Mulayam Singh’s refusal to ban Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi) despite a ban by the UPA government, reports of his willingness to give Abu Salem a ticket and his cynical support to the candidature of Haji Yakub’s wife for the mayoral polls from Meerut (Yakub had offered a Rs 50 crore prize for the killing of the Danish cartoonist who had ridiculed the Prophet) is easy fodder for the BJP’s communal agenda.

Most commentators have seen the UP results as a personal triumph for Rajnath Singh, who was re-confirmed as BJP president this week. Rajnath Singh’s real victory, however, is to have won the support of the RSS and its ‘inspired’ organisations. The RSS, we are told, worked tirelessly during the local bodies elections to consolidate the so-called Hindu vote.

The days of the ‘India Shining’ rhetoric seem a thing of the past. The Sangh parivar seems to have once again found comfort in a divisive communal agenda, which had propelled the BJP to the mainstream of Indian politics not too long ago. A return to the path of jehadi Hindutva, then, seems inevitable. The assembly elections in UP next year will severely test this article of faith.