Ayodhya Invite | Civic nationalism should be Opposition mantra

Some of the constituents of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.) are reportedly in a quandary over accepting invites for the Ram mandir inaugural. It is a sensitive issue, but if political parties keep their heads and reflect on that elusive thing called ideological integrity, they shouldn’t find it so hard to resolve their contretemps.

Before I come to the arguments about the temple, its inauguration by a head of government and its milking for the coming general elections campaign, a few words about the I.N.D.I.A. context and its media framing may be relevant. First, there are serious differences within and between parties about accepting the invite and, thus, positioning vis-a-vis the mandir project.

We have been kept excruciatingly abreast of every disagreement within the Congress about how to produce a coherent political semiology on Ayodhya in the context of the impending inaugural. Similarly, we are being told almost daily that while the Janata Dal (United) has accepted the invitation and embraced the temple project wholeheartedly with all its ramifications, its Bihar ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), is yet to accept because it has reservations about the politics of the Ram temple. We are further told, in a feat of population in multidimensional poverty, even given Bihar's political volatility, that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, having taken over the stewardship of his party, is readying for a reconciliation with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Obviously, every party will have to find its way of creating meanings of the Ayodhya situation that will propel its singular electoral message, while I.N.D.I.A. will collectively have to frame positions that will not take its constituents too far afield from each other. Equally obviously, it would be unrealistic to expect the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the RJD or the Left parties to sing from the same hymn sheet (pun intended).

Certainly, however, I.N.D.I.A. cannot end up endorsing the BJP’s weaponisation of religion and the continuous attacks on the Muslim minority via the unremitting claims on their places of worship. Some liberals had told us that Ayodhya should be amicably settled as a token of goodwill. The real advocates of pluriversity had said it wouldn’t stop with Ayodhya and it hasn’t. Duh.

I.N.D.I.A. must at all times be alive to constitutional rights and communitarian harmonies beyond the literalities of the law by promoting the discourse of civic nationalism. As citizens, we must also remain wary of the frames employed by sections of the compromised mainstream media, which are currently providing saturation coverage to the inaugural, as if issues like poverty, highlighted, for instance, by the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023, ‘Unstacking global poverty: Data for high-impact action’, in July is something of no general interest. India, incidentally, clocked in almost exactly midway in a list of 110 countries, with 16.4 per cent of the population in multidimensional poverty, 4.2 per cent in severe poverty, and 10 per cent living below a designated monetary poverty line, despite having got 415 million people out of multidimensional poverty between 2005-2006 and 2019-2021. Do we need to talk about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tacit admission of widespread poverty by announcing on the campaign trail last November free foodgrains for over 800 million people for five years?

We must call out media professionals, especially those in television, whose constant hectoring tries to create false equivalences between religious belief, not to mention the deification of Modi, and patriotism by conflating the Sangh parivar with the nation.

For I.N.D.I.A. these issues are not insurmountable. While on the one hand, it can't pretend Ayodhya isn’t important, on the other, it shouldn’t endorse its meta-narrative salience. Accepting the invitation to the inaugural without qualification would give the BJP a boost, apart from being the wrong thing to do, because anti-sectarian parties must not allow majoritarian fundamentalists to keep shaping the agenda.

The unobjectionable (and smart) thing to do would be to accept or decline the invitation in a personal capacity, since they have been randomly issued. The point that should be stressed is that religion is a personal issue. Also, to be hammered away at is that Modi’s role cannot be deemed ex officio.

The Congress should help set the tempo, instead of assuming that it has some special position in the Opposition ranks. Instead of wasting its energy on shambolic rejigs, it must gear up to hurt the BJP in the 150-odd constituencies in which the two go toe-to-toe.

(Suhit K Sen is author of ‘The Paradox of Populism: The Indira Gandhi Years, 1966-1977’.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.