Will Ram Mandir issue be raked up again?

With the passing of an amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act restlessness prevails among upper-class Hindus. A new slogan has emerged ‘ab ki baar, NOTA ka button. Which means Swarn Sena will neither vote BJP nor Congress. Apart from that Swarn Sena had called for Bharat bandh as well, which had a huge impact in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, UP and Maharashtra.

The Dalit community can also take to streets against the efforts of upper-class Hindus to mount pressure on government against the amendment of SC-ST Act. Both the communities can have a clash. Hence there is no way left for the Modi government to resolve this issue. If it tries to appease one community it can face heat from the other.

In this situation, there is only one solution left. Instead of disintegrating Hindu society, RSS and its like-minded organisations can use the age-old strategy which it had been trying since 80s. That is to rake up the Ram Mandir issue. Earlier also Ram mandir movement had begun after the 1981 Meenakshipuram conversion, in which a mass religious conversion took place in the Indian village of Meenakshipuram, in which hundreds of Dalits converted to Islam protesting against social and caste-based discrimination continued for thousands of years.

Then Vishwa Hindu Parishad began Ram Mandir movement. It succeeded in connecting the Dalits with Ram mandir movement by creating Hindu-Muslim tension.

It is not unlikely that to reduce the tension between Dalits and Swarn Sena the same strategy can be adopted once again. But it remains to be seen whether BJP will succeed in its plan with the extremist leader like Parveen Togadia wanting BJP to bite the dust and upper-class Hindus disgruntled with BJP due to SC judgement on SC-ST Act.