On Friday and Saturday, headlines in newspapers and on TV channels quoted Bharatiya Janata Party veteran LK Advani saying that he was a mere charioteer in his Ram Rath Yatra in 1990. And it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was chosen by Lord Ram to build the temple in Ayodhya.
Advani, according to the reports, purportedly told Rashtra Dharma, a magazine affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that Modi had been with him “throughout” Ram Rath Yatra and Lord Ram had chosen Modi, “his devoted disciple…at that time only”.
Advani’s remarks appeared to be in the fitness of things, given that Modi will do pran pratishtha or consecration of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya temple on 22 January. The endorsement of Modi by the famous rath yatri, who brought the Ram temple onto the national political centre stage, seemed fitting.
Except that Advani didn’t say any of that. TV channels and newspapers had gone with an unsigned WhatsApp message shared by those associated with the ruling establishment. By the time Advani’s office shared his article, Shri Ram Mandir: Fulfilment of a Divine dream, on Saturday—which Rashtra Dharma is likely to publish on Monday—it was too late.
The former Deputy Prime Minister might have been dismayed to see those headlines, but would it be a wise move for a BJP politician to deny them?
Claiming credit
Advani’s article mentions ‘Modi’ at four places. First, Advani writes that he feels “blessed” to witness the historic occasion “in my lifetime” when Modi will install Lord Ram’s idol. Second, he mentions that Modi, “who was then a promising leader of the BJP,” accompanied Advani along with Pramod Mahajan, Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia, Sikander Bakht, and other Gujarat BJP functionaries when he started his yatra from Somnath on 25 September 1990.
The third time Advani mentions Modi is when he says that now, with the temple in its “final stages of completion,” he is filled with a deep sense of gratitude to the government headed by Modi, all organisations—particularly the Vishva Hindu Parishad, the RSS, the BJP—saints, kar sevaks, and a host of other people.
And the fourth reference to Modi in the article is when he writes that when the PM does the prana pratishtha of Ram Lalla’s idol, “he would be representing every citizen of our great Bharat”.
The former BJP president never said that Modi was with him throughout the Ram Rath Yatra. If at all, his article projects Modi as just one of many Gujarat leaders who were present at the launch of the yatra, along with many big Central BJP leaders.
Advani refers to Modi, who had joined the BJP in 1987, as a “promising leader” at the time. The Rashtra Dharma article suggests that while Advani is fine with the Prime Minister, as the representative of every citizen of India, consecrating Ram Lalla, he wouldn’t want his own contributions to be swept under the carpet.
Forward-looking party
In August 2020, Modi performed Bhoomi Poojan at the Ayodhya temple amid much fanfare. Advani wasn’t invited. The veteran leader, who has become a recluse after being sidelined in the party since 2014, kept quiet. It must have hurt him again to hear temple trust secretary Champat Rai cite his age and health to publicly ask him and Murli Manohar Joshi not to attend Ayodhya pran pratishtha ceremony.
Advani’s article in Rashtra Dharma reads like a fervent plea from a nonagenarian leader, left in distressful isolation by those he promoted in his hey days, to his party colleagues to at least remember his contributions, regardless of how much they love what Malayalam author MT Vasudevan Nair calls “ceremonial leadership worship”.
If Modi too hasn’t spoken about Advani’s contributions in building the Ram temple in Ayodhya, that’s probably because he has been very busy preparing for the pran pratishtha ceremony and is doing an 11-day anushthaan or special rituals.
The fact is that Advani may be nostalgic but the BJP has moved on. It’s a forward-looking party. Those who spearheaded the Ram temple movement in the 1980s and 1990s have been invited to the consecration ceremony. But that’s all. Advani, Uma Bharti, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Vinay Katiyar and many others who might be missing their glory days are expected to get over it and also move on.
Also read: Congress just blew a Ram-given opportunity. It chose chronic confusion over national mood
Who played the bigger role?
The widely reported WhatsApp message is a signal to Advani: Follow the headlines and reconcile your past with the present accordingly. And his article, probably unwittingly, raises a question none of his colleagues would want to answer today: Who played a bigger role in the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya—Advani or Modi?
After the Supreme Court paved the way for its construction, then BJP president JP Nadda sought to give the credit to Modi, saying that it was a “matter of great satisfaction” that the Ram temple issue was resolved “under the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.
“Whenever the history of this country is written, this tenure of the BJP government at the Centre will be written in golden letters,” he said.
Nadda was being rather modest as his party colleagues soon started seeing the Supreme Court as a mere means to achieve an end scripted by Modi and Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah. Last April, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel said, “We know how many agitations took place for Ram Temple in Ayodhya. It will be ready by 2024. We should give credit to the Prime Minister….”
Since 2014, we haven’t heard many BJP leaders openly praising Advani for his Ram Rath Yatra, which enabled the BJP to form a government at the Centre—led by VP Singh—a decade after the party’s formation and after having its first Prime Minister in 16 years.
Have you heard any BJP leader even mentioning Advani or Rath Yatra in the past few weeks? The fact is that the Ram temple in Ayodhya couldn’t have been possible without the rath yatra laying the ground for it and making the BJP a potent political force. Could the Supreme Court have cleared the temple’s construction if the Babri mosque was still in place?
Having said that, could the temple have been constructed if Modi didn’t get a clear majority for the BJP in the Lok Sabha? If he hadn’t pulverised the Opposition so much that they lost faith in their ideological moorings? Let’s reiterate the cliche that the judiciary is independent, and the Supreme Court’s Ram janmabhoomi verdict has nothing to do with a strong political executive, with Modi presiding over the most ideologically committed government ever. BJP leaders giving him credit for the judicial verdict can be another act of appropriation.
The fact, however, remains that Modi created the social and political milieu in which the Ram temple verdict triggered no backlash, as a section of the Muslims sought closure with it, and another saw no point in contesting it.
There is no easy answer to whether Advani or Modi contributed more to the construction of the Ram temple. Yeh bhakton ki shraddha hai (it’s up to the belief of devotees) whether they find it in Advani’s article or in the headlines the WhatsApp message created.
DK Singh is ThePrint’s Political Editor. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
Gogoi?