Bhopal: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not have ownership over the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and it should not be made into a political issue, said former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, as he dismissed the idea of the Congress playing “soft Hindutva” politics in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.
“Is politics about religion? Does religion have politics in it as an ingredient? And [as far as] the Ram temple [is concerned], they are the government… they built it, they don’t have ownership of it. The Ram temple is owned by every citizen of this country. But if they want to say we built it, of course you’re in the government, you better have built it. And now you say you’re trying to take singular pride as if you’ve built a personal house,” Nath, also the Madhya Pradesh Congress chief, who is being seen as the party’s CM candidate in the state, said in an interview with ThePrint weeks ahead of the assembly elections. The 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly is set to go to polls on 17 November.
The BJP has made the construction of Ram Mandir a poll issue in Madhya Pradesh with posters carrying the tagline ‘Bhavya Ram Mandir ban kar ho raha taiyaar, phir iss baar bhajapa sarkar [The impressive Ram Mandir is getting ready, vote again for BJP government]’ dotting the state.
Speaking in Chhindwara, Nath’s stronghold on 29 October, Union Home Minister and BJP heavyweight Amit Shah, who has been strategising for the assembly polls, had said the state would celebrate Diwali thrice in the coming months — on the day of Diwali, on the day of the state poll results, and when the temple is inaugurated in Ayodhya in January 2024.
He had also accused the Congress government of halting and delaying the construction of the Ram Mandir which, he said, will finally be inaugurated owing to the efforts of the Modi government at the Centre.
Nath, the leader who was credited for the return of the Congress to power in Madhya Pradesh 2018, also spoke on a host of other issues, including the promises made by the Congress in MP, the “freebies culture” of political parties offering sops, and the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government at the state.
In 2020, the defection of former Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia to the BJP with 22 MLAs loyal to him had resulted in the fall of the Nath-led Congress government in the state, paving the way for the BJP to form government under Chouhan.
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On temples and Hindutva politics
Rubbishing the BJP’s accusation that he was playing the ‘Hindutva’ card or practising ‘soft Hindutva’, by hosting controversial religious leader Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, better known as Baba Bageshwar in Chhindwara, the former chief minister said, “I don’t see what this soft Hindutva is. I have never understood this word. Religion is a matter of sentiment. I built the largest Hanuman temple 14 years ago (in Chhindwara). What was Hindutva in it? What was the politics in it? Now, if Bagheshwar Maharaj announces he’s coming to Chhindwara…Being from Chhindwara, I’d go and attend this programme. But does it make it Hindutva?” he said.
“He said nothing about Hindu Rashtra… We had sarva dharma aartis… If you say you’re coming to Chhindwara, I’ll meet you there.”
Nath also denied any rift with former CM Digvijaya Singh. Speculations over a growing rift between the two Congress heavyweights from the state have been rife in the wake of a video where Nath could be heard telling disgruntled party leaders to go after Singh.
“There is no clash between me and Digvijaya Singh at all! We say a lot of things to each other jokingly. That doesn’t mean there’s a clash. He’s playing a substantive, a very active role. He was with me late last night too, and will be with me late tonight too. We review things, we make strategies, and everybody’s working together,” he said.
Despite both parties being part of the INDIA alliance, the opposition bloc set to take on the BJP in the 2024 election, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has fielded their own candidates in MP after alliance talks with the Congress failed. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav accused the Congress of breaking his trust, adding he would not have “trusted” them had he known that the SP would not be given a single seat.
When asked what went wrong during the discussions and whether this fallout would impact the alliance unity, coming as it does months before the Lok Sabha polls, Nath said: “The problem was not of number of seats, the problem was ‘which seats’… if they demand a particular caste, that upsets our caste balance or a particular candidate.”
“The issue was of particular candidates (as the) BJP will then win. We couldn’t have agreed to that because our common objective was to defeat the BJP. But if by having a particular candidate, the BJP would win, it would defeat the objective.”
‘This election about future’
Meanwhile, the BJP has been focusing on its “collective leadership” and has been seeking votes in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So far, BJP leaders have repeatedly skirted queries on whether Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the longest-serving BJP chief minister in terms of total time spent in office, will be the MP CM if the party retains power.
So where does Nath see four-term Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan? To this query, the former chief minister said: “He’s been in the government for 18 years and I don’t have to see him… [not have an opinion on Shivraj Singh Chouhan]. The BJP itself is now feeling shy to announce him as chief minister [candidate]. If they don’t see him [as] good [enough]… where will I see him?”
Asked whether the Congress is confident of coming to power and if so, will he be the chief minister, Nath said: “I don’t know. The people of Madhya Pradesh will decide the future chief minister. I don’t proclaim myself to be the future chief minister, let the people proclaim it.
He added: “I’m very confident of the voters in Madhya Pradesh that they will keep their future secure. This election is just not about a candidate or a party. This election is about the future of Madhya Pradesh, the youth, our agricultural sector, and our trade.”
In 2018, the BJP won 109 seats while the Congress emerged as the single largest party with 114, falling short of the majority mark by two. When asked how the Congress was looking to bridge the narrow gap this time, the former chief minister said the situation this time is different and there “won’t be a narrow gap”.
“I don’t see any narrow gap. People will vote, I think, very forcefully. In 2018, I was the chief minister for 15 months… effectively for 11 months, as two-and-a-half months went by in the code of conduct for Parliament elections. In those 11-odd months, humne apni neeti aur niyat ka parichay diya [we showed both our policies and our intent],” Nath said.
On poll tickets and freebies
Both the Congress and the BJP have faced rebellion and protests over ticket distribution in the state, something Nath chose to term as a “normal phenomenon”.
“See, all this will happen. We had 4,000 applicants and each one said, ‘I’m winning’. So I’m talking to everybody (disgruntled leaders). Some are convinced, some are getting convinced, and some won’t get convinced. But then that’s a normal phenomenon in every election,” he said.
The Congress has made several announcements ahead of the elections including subsidy on electricity, gas cylinders at a subsidised rate of Rs 500, which have been criticised by the BJP as financially unviable.
Training his gun at the state government, Nath said it is, in fact, CM Chouhan who has been making such announcements for the past five months without any budgetary provision.
“What has Shivraj Singh done in the past five months? There is no budgetary provision for the announcements he’s made December onwards. (But) we have very carefully calculated everything. People who ask how I give the loans, I did a loan waiver for 27 lakh people [during his short stint beginning 2018],” he claimed.
Calling the BJP’s ‘Laadli Behna’ scheme for women a “state-handout”, he added, “people understand that they (the BJP) have remembered them after 18 years”.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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