Ayodhya, July 22: The open session of the four-day meeting of the VHP’s Kendriya Prabandhan Samiti (central management committee) that ended in Karsevakpuram on July 16 was held in a closed room.
The show, for which invitation cards had been sent out, had been billed as the occasion when the VHP would announce a new mobilisation programme for the Ram temple, with an eye on the approaching verdict in the Ayodhya title suit. But despite the presence of the outfit’s once fiery top brass an ailing Ashok Singhal, wheelchair-bound Giriraj Kishore, and Praveen Togadia, the only one of the top three who has not lost his flair for the rapid and rabid sound bite it was an in-house affair.
Apart from the assembled VHP delegates, there was a motley group of grey-bearded sants from in and around Ayodhya. Students of Shri Ram Ved Vidyalaya, run from within the Karsevakpuram complex, had been brought in to fill up the empty space.
After the shouting was over, the message that emerged seemed to be an oddly circumscribed flailing for attention by an outfit caught in a time bubble.
Eighteen years after the ‘temple movement’ climaxed in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and six years after the BJP lost power on the slogan of “India Shining” and not the temple, the VHP’s new programme puts the sants in charge, to hasten a political consensus for a law to facilitate temple construction. But, it specifies, it will be a “jan jagran” or mass awareness campaign, not “aandolan”.
It wasn’t just Singhal who drew the distinction between awareness and agitation. Subhash Chouhan, newly appointed national convenor of the Bajrang Dal, underlined it. Of course, the Bajrang Dal, he said, “uses violence wherever necessary to protect the Hindu… if the snake bites, won’t we strike it down?”. However, he added, “Earlier (in 1990-92) the dhancha (disputed structure) had to be taken down. There was anger. Now we need a different, purely religious, movement to construct the temple.”
According to the VHP plan, from the morning of August 16 to December 17, the sants would lead recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa. The “Hanumat Shakti Jagran”, said Singhal, would prepare the atmosphere for the construction of the temple to begin, regardless of the court verdict later this year. It would draft “crores of Hindus” in “lakhs of temples”, exulted Togadia.
The VHP would also reach out to MPs across the political spectrum.
But for all that, the paltry gathering in the hall at Karsevakpuram only came sporadically alive when Togadia reverted to the more familiar language of threat: “No one has the power to make a masjid within the ‘shastriya’ (as opposed to simply administrative) boundaries of Ayodhya. Or a masjid in the name of Babar anywhere in the country.”
Not far from where Togadia alternately spoke and raged, it was the same underwhelming feeling at the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, as it hosted the comfortably settled rituals and routines of a genteel religious tourism.
Inside the workshop, groups of senior citizens from South India ambled through the stacks of pillars and stones for the proposed temple, some of which even bear graffiti in Telugu and Tamil. “Of course, the Ram temple must be built,” said Sundara Raman, a bank manager from Chennai, part of a group of 70. “But for that we need Hindu unity… Anyone can lead, we are ready to follow,” he said without urgency.
Outside its gates, in a small kiosk, sales of the once hot-selling twin CDs of ‘Kar Seva’ and ‘Ayodhya darshan’, the former showing graphic scenes of the destruction of Babri Masjid, complete with the staccato ring of gunshots, have slowed down. While the TV monitor in the kiosk still plays the ‘Kar Seva’ CD, owner Jitendra Chaurasia said that it must compete with the impishly titled Bhojpuri tracks — ‘Hi-fi lageli’ is much in demand.
At the barricaded Ram Janmabhoomi complex, there were more of the same unhurried motions of faith and commerce. The ubiquitous groups of pilgrims from South India lined up uncomplainingly for the multiple security checks, alongside small families from Jharkhand, UP and Chhattisgarh and young men.
“Who doesn’t want the temple to be built?” asked Kalinga, who retired from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and is here in Ayodhya in a group of 40. “But the BJP couldn’t do it in power.” And now, “Both the temple and the mosque should be built,” he smiled amiably.
Vinay Kumar Soni, in his 20s, who runs a cosmetics shop in Allahabad, and who is visiting Ayodhya with two friends, had not heard of the VHP’s programme but he was certain that “times have changed, time is short”.
In the heart of the Ram Janmabhoomi complex, however, as he handed out the prasad, the young pujari was more circumspect. “We’ve heard it before,” he said. “Nothing has come of it in the past. Let’s wait for the court verdict.”
-Agencies