AYODHYA ABANDONED BY MR BANGARU LAXMAN
Excerpts of an interview of Mr Bangaru Laxman (BL), President of the BJP, with Mr Bhaskar Rao (BR), in the Times of India, Oct 30, 2000:
BR:"On your front veranda there is a collage of all the religious symbols-Om, Cross, sword and star. A few years ago the only thing on display...would be a picture of the proposed Ram temple at Ayodhya. How do you explain this change?
BL: Those days Ayodhya was the issue. In a dynamic political situation issues do not remain the same forever, they keep changing.
BR: Do you think that Ayodhya is no longer an issue?
BL: Well, it is still an issue, but not as relevant as it was those days."
Mr Laxman can be credited for calling a spade a spade. He has, clearly and unashamedly one might say, spelt out the agenda behind the Rath Yatra to Ayodhya: to gain power by whatever means, fair or foul. Now that the power has been gained, it is, for the BJP, inconvenient to fulfil the promises. The plank on which the BJP has gained so many votes has now been discarded; there is no longer any need for the Party to concern itself with Shree Ram's birth-place. Why, I am sure now Mr Laxman might even say, we don't even know for sure if this is indeed the very place that Shree Ram was born, and so why bother with dead people and their birth-places? Let us, Mr Laxman seems to be saying, now forget the past, appease the minorities and backward communities, worry about the present and move the nation forward.
If only life were so simple.
Mr Laxman and company cannot call the shots. The Ayodhya issue was raised by the BJP to raise the national consciousness about the injustice being done to Hindus. Now that the consciousness has been raised and it has worked in favour of the BJP allowing the BJP to gain power thanks to our votes, it is not possible for people to go back to business as usual and forget the past. Are we puppets or dumbos? Is the BJP trying to insult our intelligence by doing this? If we, the electorate, do that, we are in effect saying that we are nothing but robots, automatons to be made to perform according to the political leadership of the country. Mr Laxman is now singing, "Ayondhya is just an illusion, only an illusion... for political ambition."
The true leader is one who guides the nation towards his vision of tomorrow and once it moves with him, he ensures that the benefits go to him as well as to the nation; if the nation trusts the leader, the nation must not be betrayed. It is the duty of the leader to pull the nation up along with him. A manipulator, on the other hand, is one who leads the people to a destination, and once he has done that, abandons them having got what he wanted. For the manipulator the electorate becomes inconsequential to his life thenceforth.
The utter contempt that Mr Laxman has shown for the Indian electorate, needs to be examined seriously. What are the constraints that could have made him abandon Ayodhya?
That A.B.Vajpayee and L.K.Advani no loner speak on the Ram temple is understandable. They are part of the NDA government and they have to abide by the common minimum programme, and since Ayodhya is not one of the items on which the NDA has agreed, they are forced to stay silent on the subject. Understandable. At the time when the NDA was formed the nation was unstable and moving towards a bleak future; the NDA offered the nation a stable government that would focus on other issues that needed political attention. Fine. No complaints on that.
But what are Mr Laxman's constraints? Is he part of the NDA or is he President of the BJP? If he has no such difficulties, why does he feel called upon to call Ayodhya just one issue among many? Has Shree Ram's birth-place stopped mattering to him? Has Babur's terrible acts of razing temples and building mosques in those very places stopped interesting him? Is he bored with all this now that his political ambitions have been realised? Yawn, yawn, how boring the same old subject of Ayodhya, mr Laxman seems to be saying to us. Has he become a megalomaniac by any chance, having delusions of grandeur?
Mr Laxman must understand that religion is a tinder-box with which the BJP should not have played in the first place; but having done that, it is not going to be easy for the BJP to distance itself from the issue and turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to all those who recognise the unfairness of having a mosque in the place where Shree Ram was born.
Contempt for the electorate will not keep Mr Laxman for long in the saddle. The current utterly opportunistic, cold-blooded handling of the Ayodhya issue is unacceptable. If the BJP wants to garner the minority vote-bank, let it do so without discarding its agenda on which it was voted into power. I personally voted for the BJP because I felt that it was a political party that had basic integrity and would not compromise on certain issues that gave it its unique identity. How wrong I was!
Love the Muslim, the Christian, the Sikh, the Jew by all means. But Mr Laxman, don't do it by betraying the Hindu. That is short-sighted politics and speaks poorly for the new President of the BJP. The BJP with Mr Laxman looks more and more like the Congress with Mrs Gandhi.
Weathercocks and chamaleons, who in their right minds can trust them? I would rather sit at home and not wait in a long line on election day. There are some like Mr Laxman who when asked to bend choose to crawl. He is serving one master: power.
But the nation watches and decides, Mr Laxman. The nation will not go with people who betray and refuse to fulfil their election promises.
Thumbs down, Mr Laxman.
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Lata Jagtiani
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