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Lost magic of Ayodhya

There is a touch of tragicomedy in the Bharatiya Janata Party's attempts to capture the lost magic of the Ram temple. Ayodhya's heyday was in the early 1990s, and who should know this better than the Hindutva party. Mandir was once the BJP's fearsome war cry; it sent pulses racing and brought in chunks of Hindi heartland votes. Today's Ram temple on the grave of the Babri Masjid is an enfeebled vision, which excites no passion except in the hallowed quarters of Jhandewalan. It has been dragged out to placate a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh thirsting for Lal Krishna Advani's blood. The farce was all too visible in Rae Bareli where a team led by Mr. Advani tried half-heartedly to evoke temple nostalgia. This was on a day when a Special Court in Sonia Gandhi's political bastion framed charges against the beleaguered BJP chief and seven others in the Babri Masjid demolition case. But 13 years after that barbaric act of vandalism, which took a huge toll of human lives and welfare, the divisive temple issue kindled little emotion among the handful of men and women who had gathered to witness the tamasha.

A parody was being staged for all the assembled cared. Sushma Swaraj, going over the top, compared the cases against Mr. Advani, Uma Bharti, and Murli Manohar Joshi to those "foisted on freedom fighters" under British rule. For his part, the BJP chief proclaimed without credibility that the framing of charges by the Special Court had revived the temple movement. The poor turnout ought to have told him otherwise. The attempt to resurrect Ayodhya is fresh evidence that the BJP is in deep crisis. It is a party caught between its sense of independence and self-worth, on the one side, and its `extra-constitutional' loyalty to the RSS, on the other. The party has a new identity that came via co-habitation with allies and electoral success. Its umbilical, family association with the RSS, on the other hand, militates against growth and acceptability. There have always been tensions in the relationship but once the BJP came to power in New Delhi, the equations changed in its favour — because it was able to leverage its position in government to keep the RSS in its place. The Sangh threw tantrums but eventually went along, knowing well enough the benefits of being proximate to the party in power. RSS disclaimers notwithstanding, Hindutva is out and out a political construct, as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar made plain. The RSS has made compromises in the past keeping in mind the larger goal of `Hindu Rashtra.' Mr. Advani's Pakistan tour, and in particular his praise of Mohammad Ali Jinnah's August 1947 vision, upset this delicate balance. In the eyes of the Sangh, Mr. Advani's Jinnah appreciation was part of a cunning attempt to wean the BJP away from its ideological parent. These are trying times for Mr. Advani: he walks the tightrope between periodic resort to `Jai Shri Ram' and nudging his party towards a respectable place in democratic politics.

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