By SHANKER ARNIMESH / The Print
Ayodhya: There is a strong sense of purpose about Champat Rai, vice-present of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and general secretary of the Ram Temple trust in Ayodhya. His days are filled with hectic meetings, supervisory activities, and organisational planning — not to meet the 2024 deadline for temple construction but to help ensure victory for Ved Prakash Gupta, BJP candidate and sitting MLA from Ayodhya assembly constituency.
The BJP, its ancillary organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal, and even hordes of local sadhus are sparing no effort campaigning in Ayodhya — the epicentre of Hindutva politics ever since the Ram temple agitation started in the 80s — ahead of the constituency going to polls on 27 February.
This is the first election here since the Supreme Court verdict allowing the construction of the Ram temple and no one wants to take any chances. “We have to win the Ayodhya seat. It’s a question of protecting the prestige of Hindutva, the land of Ram,” BJP leader Abhishek Mishra, president of the Ayodhya Mahanagar, told ThePrint.
The fight, though, is not so easy, with caste politics and anti-incumbency playing spoilers. The biggest challenger to the BJP candidate here is the Samajwadi Party’s Tej Narayan (alias Pawan) Pandey, who won from Ayodhya in the 2012 assembly polls. Pandey enjoys a significant following among Brahmins and traders and in this campaign has made sure to flaunt his own “Ram bhakt” credentials while taking on the BJP.
‘It’s time to vote for Ram’
The sadhus and sants (saints) of Ayodhya have been delegated with an important task.
Under the guidance of VHP leaders like Champat Rai and RSS prant pracharaks (zonal in-charges), bands of godmen in saffron vestments go from mohalla (neighbourhood) to mohalla, village to village, to distribute special Ram lalla prasad, pouches of soil from the Ram Janmabhoomi (birthplace) area, and to place tilaks on the foreheads of people. This week a group of 20-25 sadhus was even dispatched all the way to Sirathu to put in a good word for BJP candidate and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.
Among the hundreds of sadhus deputed for campaigning are prominent religious leaders like Mahant Ramdas, Naga sadhu Arjun Das, and Baba Brajesh Das.
Ramesh Das, mahant (head priest) of Hanuman Garhi Temple in Ayodhya, said that the primary message was that of maintaining “Hindu prestige”.
“We are telling voters that under Yogi Adityanath and the Modi government, the dream of Ram Temple is going to be true. This Hindutva government has made Hindu prestige important. Their nationalistic stand on Section 370 to cow slaughter has emboldened the Hindu community,” Das said.
“Don’t vote for adharmi (heretical) people, it’s time to vote for Ram. It’s a fight between those who protect Hindu dharma and those who raise a question mark on Hindutva. It’s not an ordinary constituency,” he added.
However, while politics around religion certainly have a long history in Ayodhya, caste faultlines and anti-incumbency sentiments are proving to be tricky to negotiate. The fact that the Samajwadi Party’s Pawan Pandey managed to win in 2012 shows that the Hindutva agenda is not necessarily an electoral slam-dunk in Ayodhya.
In last year’s zila panchayat elections, the BJP won only eight out 40 seats while the Samajwadi Party bagged 24.
Anti-incumbency, but ‘shouldn’t matter what MLA does’
Even within the BJP there are some misgivings about party candidate and sitting Ayodhya MLA Ved Prakash Gupta.
“We were expecting Yogi Adityanath to contest from the dharma sthali (holy place). Even after his candidature from Gorakhpur was announced, we were expecting some other big leader to contest. Gupta has not really been visible in the last five years. Pandey has worked more here,” a BJP district leader said.
According to him, traders are unhappy with the BJP MLA. “Gupta has not addressed the concerns of traders whose shops will be affected by the temple construction and so they are not very enthusiastic about him,” the BJP leader said.
About 1,000 shops in the Hanuman Garhi area need to be relocated for the pathway leading to the Ayodhya temple, which has caused consternation among shopkeepers. While the state government has promised to allocate new shops to them, the matter has become a poll issue.
ThePrint tried to reach Gupta via phone, but did not receive a response until the time of publishing this report. This article will be updated if he responds.
Other BJP leaders, however, say that Gupta’s performance should not matter when it comes to voting in Ayodhya. “It is not a question of the MLA working or not. This is the land of Ram— the MLA does not matter here,” BJP leader Abhishek Mishra said.
Former MP and prominent sant Ram Vilas Vedanti added that the people should think less about the MLA or caste equations and more about the “nationalistic party”.
“This time, the election is about the development of Ayodhya and the completion of people’s desire for the Ram Temple. Construction is happening with full swing, hotels and highways are being developed…. People will forget the MLA. They will vote for nationalistic party,” Vedanti said.
Anil Mishra, a trustee of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, which is in charge of building the temple, also said that resentful traders should think of all the benefits they would accrue from the temple being built.
“Who will benefit from development in Ayodhya? Who will benefit from tourism? The Modi government is building an international airport in Ayodhya, and even a new township to place Ayodhya as big destination,” Mishra said.
SP candidate Pawan Pandey, meanwhile, has taken a hard line against the BJP.
“People will not forgive the BJP. They have forced shopkeepers to hand over their shops without making proper arrangements and forced local people to sell their land,” Pandey alleged, alluding to controversies around land purchases for the temple. “I am also a Ram bhakt (devotee) but I can’t cheat people in the name of Ram,” he said.
BJP leader Abhishek Mishra, however, said that the land purchases by the temple trust were transparent and conducted with due diligence.
The all-important Brahmin vote
According to BJP sources, the candidature of SP’s Pawan Pandey, who is a Brahmin, was a factor in the party deciding to not field UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is a Rajput, from Ayodhya.
The party did not want the contest to polarise Rajputs and Brahmins in the region, a local BJP leader said.
The Brahmin vote holds the key in Ayodhya. The constituency has 3,16,722 registered voters. Brahmins comprise around 22 per cent of the electorate, followed by Yadavs at 12 per cent, and Muslims and Yadavs at approximately 8 per cent each. Dalits make up about 15 per cent of the overall electorate.
The BJP’s Lallu Singh, who is from the Rajput community, maintained an iron grip on Ayodhya, and won five times since 1991. His reign was broken in 2012 by the SP’s Pawan Pandey who got a large share of the Brahmin vote, which is one reason, other than his popularity with traders, why his candidature this time around too is making the party slightly nervous.
This story first appeared on theprint.in