The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is set to resurrect the Ayodhya temple campaign. Its proposed ‘chaurasi kosi parikrama’ between 25 August -13 September would have seers and saints traversing six districts of Uttar Pradesh to garner support for the temple. So what’s wrong with it? Nothing really but for the fact that it smells strongly of politics. The great Sangh Parivar is at work and all its elements are playing a well-defined role to shore up the prospects of the BJP in the coming general elections.
How? The BJP needs a significant chunk of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state to get respectable numbers in the 2014 elections. However, its electoral fortune in UP has been on the decline since 1998, when it won a whopping 57 seats. In 2009, the party managed only 10 seats. In over a decade, the party’s vote share has come down from a robust 36 percent to an anaemic 17.5 percent. Without at least 40 seats in its kitty from the state, the party will find it extremely difficult to win around 190 seats across the country – this is approximately the number that would allow it to find allies to stake claim to form the government at the Centre.
Now, the party, pushed to the margins along with the Congress by the intense caste politics of the state, has nothing spectacular to offer to the electorate to gain a massive jump of 30 seats. The growth and good governance talk has appeal only in a limited section of the electorate.
At the ground level, the priorities of the people are different and even the presence of Narendra Modi is not likely to make huge difference to the party’s prospects. The only way it can have a massive jump in seats is by polarising votes along communal lines.
This is where the Sangh Parivar comes into the picture. Since the party cannot take an openly communal position – officially, its emphasis would be on governance, state of the economy and corrupt activities of both the central and state governments – the responsibility of polarising votes rests with the other Parivar outfits such as the VHP. The ‘chaurasi kosi parikrama’ is a well-planned move in that direction.
If it manages to generate sufficient heat, with a riot or two fitting in somewhere, the party stands to gain. In Uttar Pradesh, as conventional wisdom goes, two parties benefit when there’s a communal polarisation: the BJP and the Samajwadi Party. The former will be happy so long as the Congress loses some of its 21 seats it had won in 2009.
The indication of the strategy became clear when the party deputed Amit Shah, a close confidante of Modi, to lead the party’s election campaign in the state. One of his first utterances after taking charge was about the construction of the Ram temple.
Since the SP government in UP is perceived to be pro-Muslim, the BJP sees merit in its two-pronged strategy. While on paper it looks perfect, the problem is whether the electorate would be as passionate as IT WAS earlier on the Ram temple issue. Even in Faizabad, home to the disputed Ayodhya site, the party has been losing elections.
The good news for the party is that the whole Sangh Parivar is at work unitedly. The organisational might of the RSS affiliates could deliver the goods for the party. They were less than involved in the elections of 2004 and 2009 and it meant disaster for the party.
The bad news is it’s not going to be a brand new BJP under Modi going to the polls. It will be the same old party dependent on the same set of non-party players. Behind all the talk of catering to the aspiration of the youth and bringing economic progress to the country would remain the looming presence not-so-comforting religious ideology. And yes, the minority situation might aggravate, with spillover effect across the country.
The ‘chaurasi koti parikrama’ will signal how things shape up in Uttar Pradesh.
