Not many will recall that the political “movement” to “liberate Rama’s birthplace” at Ayodhya predated Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. The Khalistan-inspired militancy had scaled a peak in and around Punjab. The RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), its militant arm, sensed a feeling of fear, insecurity and frustration among North India’s Hindus. The Sangh and VHP were bereft of a vehicle to disseminate their messages and harness popular support because the BJP, that was founded in 1980, was a toddler. They lacked a medium to draw people’s attention until the VHP set up the Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Yagya Samiti to spearhead an “agitation” to “restore” a temple at Rama’s “birthplace” where stood the Babri mosque in 1983.
The launchpad was the “Ram Janaki rath yatra” that was to journey from Bihar’s Sitamarhi – believed to be the birth site of Sita and her adoptive father Janaka’s kingdom – to the banks of the Saryu river in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya. The ‘yatra’, that traversed the heartland on a motorised vehicle embellished with Hindu motifs and religious totem, was the perfect platform for the VHP to spew its provocative speeches laced with mythological tales. The “yatra’s” last lap was cut short by Indira’s killing. The ensuing general elections delivered to the Congress its best ever verdict. The BJP read the mandate as the country’s “first pro-Hindutva election” because it purportedly funnelled the majority community’s “anger” against “Sikh terrorism” into mass votes.
Signposts along the way
Undaunted, the VHP pursued its “movement” that will reach its fruition on August 5 when the foundation for raising a Ram temple is laid on the spot that once housed an ancient mosque. Among the signposts that legitimised the VHP’s agenda was the unlocking of the structure’s gates on February 1, 1986, after judicial sanction, for worship by Hindus, and the “shilanyas” (the first foundation laying) on November 9, 1989. Both the milestones were etched under a Congress regime led by Rajiv Gandhi who could not reap the electoral dividends he hoped for because the RSS ensured that by then the BJP adopted the issue as its own.
at the hastily constructed Temple in Ram Janmanhoomi-Babri Masjid complex in Ayodhya.
A priest is seen standing at the entrance. Credit: DH Archive
Despite the VHP’s private misgivings, the BJP appropriated the Ram temple banner in 1990. L K Advani, the party president, led the “Ram rath yatra” from Somnath. The spur for the long peregrination was the BJP’s first significant showing in the 1989 general elections where it won 85 seats of which Uttar Pradesh contributed eight. The BJP had a loose understanding with the Janata Dal, helmed by VP Singh, and contested 31 of the 85 seats in undivided Uttar Pradesh. It’s an unsettled debate on what catalysed the BJP’s performance: A ride on the back of the JD that fought the polls against Rajiv Gandhi’s omissions and commissions, symbolised by the Bofors deal, or Hindutva, reflected in the Congress’s flip-flop on faith. The Rajiv Gandhi government was seen to facilitate the Ayodhya temple construction but simultaneously it tried to appease Muslims by overturning a Supreme Court verdict on divorce maintenance that was read by the Islamic clergy as a direct intervention in Muslim personal law.
The BJP didn’t look back from then on. In the general elections that followed, it netted 120 seats in 1991 (of which UP’s share was 51), 161 in 1996 (52 from UP), 182 in 1998 (57 from UP) and 182 again in 1999 (but UP’s tally dived to 29). Uttar Pradesh’s significance is underscored by the fact that not only is the state the epicentre of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid conflict but the site of two other potential temple-mosque confrontations in Mathura and Varanasi. In the 2004 and 2009 elections, not only was the BJP voted out at the Centre but it lost its sheen in Uttar Pradesh, that returned only 10 seats both times.
The tide swiftly turned in 2014 when the BJP swept the Lok Sabha polls, winning 71 (plus two of the Apna Dal, its ally) of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh. It lost a few seats in 2019 from Uttar Pradesh (62) but its vote percentage was up by 7.35 percent in the five years.
Electoral benefits from the “movement”
What does the data say about the role of the Ram temple in the elections? Was it pivotal, supplementary or peripheral? Ayodhya certainly gave the BJP the leg-up it needed to grow from the single-digit output in Uttar Pradesh in 1989. The demonstrably exponential rise in 1991, when it picked up 51 of the 84 seats it fought on, was credited to the temple. Despite the Mandal Commission being an overriding factor in east and parts of central Uttar Pradesh, the BJP got the near-total backing of the upper castes as well as slices of the backward caste and Dalit votes.
The year 1991 was the best showing Ayodhya turned in, in Uttar Pradesh. In 1996, the dynamics altered somewhat because Atal Bihari Vajpayee was projected as the BJP’s PM candidate and he represented Lucknow in the Lok Sabha. Despite him not being associated closely with the temple issue, the BJP’s playbook ensured Hindutva stayed in the backdrop as rhetoric and conviction. The 1998 election was presidential in nature because it was themed around Vajpayee. Expectedly, the BJP improved on its performance. While the promise of a “bhavya” (magnificent) temple was kept alive in its discourse, the 1999 election betrayed a sense of weariness among the BJP’s supporters. Neither Ram nor “nationalism”, that was disseminated through the Kargil “victory”, helped the BJP in Uttar Pradesh where the economy and agriculture took over. The BJP was down from 57 to 29 seats. 2004 was a low water mark because the Vajpayee charisma had faded, his effort to reconcile the pressure from the VHP and the Hindu clerics with the demands of the Muslim Personal Law Board and the Babri Masjid Action Committee failed and the cadre was demoralised.
Credit: DH Archive
Finding a place for Mandir in BJP 2.0
The BJP fumbled with the temple except when the issue played itself out on its own with drama and spectacle from the Sangh “Parivar”. The 1993 assembly election—held a year after the mosque was felled—was the turning point. Popular wisdom granted the BJP an outright win for delivering on its “promise” to clear the land for a temple; ground realities were different. When the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party cemented an alliance, the dynamics changed, caste predominated the elections and the coalition of the OBCs and Dalits beat the BJP.
In 2014, Modi was the protagonist, the deus ex machina who lifted the BJP from the morass it had sunk into in Uttar Pradesh and saw to it its performance never flagged in the 2017 assembly and the 2019 general elections. The temple found an anodyne mention in the BJP’s election manifesto and the stump speeches. The promise of corruption-free and efficient governance, based on the successfully trumpeted “Gujarat model”, with an appeal to “nationalism” that in essence meant pulverising Pakistan and dealing with powerful nations on India’s terms, was an admixture that clicked in the north and west.
Will the resurrection of the temple add another dimension to the BJP’s politics, that revolves around Modi and “nationalism”? Yogi Adityanath, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, is expected to be the purveyor of Ayodhya in BJP 2.0. Modi has other issues to deal with. Adityanath is the spiritual heir of Mahant Avaidyanath, a forebear of the temple “movement” who likes many leading lights of the ‘80s and ‘90s is no more. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati, the other dramatis personae in the events of yesteryears, are politically inactive.
The UP elections of 2022 will be the first test of the relevance and potency of Ayodhya, led by a different cast of characters from what the pilgrim town had known.
(Radhika Ramaseshan is a Delhi-based political analyst and columnist)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.