Ayodhya is being swept by a fresh wave of euphoria
Ram bhakts. Mulayam Singh Yadav was in power in UP, and he was determined to uphold his constitutional pledge. At the same time, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), argued that an issue of faith transcended time, the constitution and government policies.
Those were turbulent times. Karsevaks battled with police and paramilitary troops multiple times between 1988 and 1991. More than 30 persons were killed and over a 100 injured.
While VHP and RSS were preparing the movement’s outline and building the organization, the ambitions of the Sangh’s political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, were obvious. It desired to rule the country. This is not unusual for a political party, but the road they took was novel for India, which was steeped in socialist dreams.
The leaders’ commitment to secularism was so strong in the early days of Independence that then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru declined to attend the inaugural ceremony of the Somnath temple. Times have changed. Now Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders do not hide their strong religious beliefs.
Modi sent a message to the nation last Thursday, announcing an 11-day ritual. He began his speech with “Ram-Ram". The groundwork for the current trend was laid in the late 1980s.
Not only Sangh officials, but even top leaders such as Lal Krishna Advani, used to meet with the media and make forceful arguments for it. I remember Advani visited Agra in 1990. There were three established newspapers then.
He had a lengthy chat with the three editors over breakfast. We asked him some tough questions, but he was unfazed. At that time, a big section of karsevaks began alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party only
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