The Saffron Tide by Kingshuk Nag

Author:Kingshuk Nag [Nag, Kingshuk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788129134295
Publisher: Rupa/Rainlight Publications
Published: 2014-06-30T18:30:00+00:00

chapter 8

Sputtering to Power

hatever might be its stance in public, within months of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the BJP realized that it had gone overboard on the Ayodhya issue. It was now being seen as a party with a single agenda—the construction of the Ram Mandir—which meant that the electorate did not see the BJP as a party of governance. Moreover, the riots and disturbances that followed the demolition had spiralled out of control; in Mumbai, for instance, simultaneous RDX blasts rocked the financial capital of the country in March 1993, leaving over 300 dead and making many wonder where India was headed post Ayodhya.

As if this was not enough, it dawned on the BJP that the party had been robbed of its prime preoccupation. Though the temple was yet to be built, the public presumed that the matter had been resolved. The liberation of Ram Janmabhoomi—on which votes had been garnered earlier—meant that it could not be used as an electoral issue anymore.

When fresh elections were held in Uttar Pradesh in 1993—after President’s rule—the BJP got only 177 seats in a house of 425. This was down from 221 seats that the party had won in 1991 before the Babri Masjid had fallen. The percentage of votes of the BJP had gone up marginally to 33 per cent in 1993 versus the 31 per cent in 1991. In fact, the biggest gainer was the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), whose tally went up to 67 in 1993 from 12 in 1991. The percentage of votes of the party had also gone up impressively from 10 per cent in 1991 to 28 per cent in 1993. Though called the Bahujan Samaj Party, the BSP’s thinly-veiled agenda was to empower Dalits in the state. Clearly, BSP’s massive Dalit mobilization had worked more effectively in the long term in UP than the repeated use of the issue of liberating Ram Janmabhoomi.

What was more unnerving to the BJP was the move by the central government to delink religion and politics in 1994 by passing an amendment to the Constitution. It did not take much to figure out that the union home minister, S.B. Chavan’s proposal for the 80th Amendment was targeted at the BJP. In addition to this, the law minister had also proposed a Bill to amend the Representation of the People Act 1951 to provide for deregistration of political parties if their activities did not confirm to the tenets of secularism or democracy. To make matters worse, the move was coming from the Narasimha Rao government—the same Narasimha Rao who was perceived to have right-wing sympathies due to his failure to act in time to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Madan Lal Khurana, BJP’s national general secretary, told the press: ‘Separating religion and politics is impossible in the Indian context. It’s like taking the soul out of India.’ Eventually, the two Bills, which were introduced in the Parliament on 29 July 1993, could not be passed due to

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