About twice every year, an old codger from New Delhi’s teeming club of Cold War nostalgics wakes up and demands a China-Russia-India alliance to take on the United States. One seminar, two editorials and a few polite noises later, the idea is dismissed, recognised as vaguely desirable but totally impracticable. The very sections of the government that may have promoted the notion, now denounce it in gentle asides. The public is left mystified as to why it arose in the first place. It is worth wondering whether the perennial quest for a ‘‘negotiated solution’’ to Ayodhya is falling into a similar trap. At the end of a process that saw the redoubtable Shankaracharya reduced to a sort of BPO (business process outsourcing) utility by the political class, it is difficult to escape that conclusion. A negotiated settlement to the mandir-masjid dispute would, of course, be wonderful. For semiotic niceties it would be matched only by George Bush and Osama bin Laden sipping coffee together in downtown Peshawar. Nevertheless, the fact is, a negotiated settlement has to be transparent, have mass credibility and be broadly acceptable to the people of India. It cannot be a cloak and swagger operation. Did the attempts at deal-making in the past month meet these benchmarks? Till the final letters were released on July 6, nobody had a clue as to what the Shankaracharya and the All-India Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) were writing to each other. Indeed, the hare-brained schemes thought up on the government’s behalf were never confirmed, never denied, only rumoured. There was a certain tedium to the whole business. Take, for instance, the talk of building a mosque and a temple with a wall in between. The very suggestion had been rejected during P.V. Narasimha Rao’s prime ministry. Stories did the rounds of a conciliatory message being ‘‘organised’’ from a Moroccan cleric. Cynicism has a long memory. A decade ago, a Saudi Arabian mullah was supposed to have ruled that no mosque must stand on a disputed site. Why, when the Iranian president came visiting in January, some circles were pinning hopes on a ‘‘fatwa’’ from the Shia homeland. The logic? Mir Baqi, Babar’s general who is said to have demolished the Ramjanambhoomi in 1528, was a Shia. Why were these extra-national interventions even considered? What relevance do they hold for the Indian Muslim? Don’t ask and nobody will tell. Admittedly, the Shankaracharya’s exertions were more substantive, even if the PMO now insists it had no role in them. There were reports of two, maybe three ‘‘formulae’’, each a diluted version of the previous. There were whispers of a ‘‘package’’ for the Muslim community. All very well but did India know what was up for bargaining? If Ayodhya is a national problem, if every Indian has an opinion on it, did the Shankaracharya and the AIMPLB have to exchange letters through the secrecy of courier agencies? The root of the problem is the government’s — successive governments’ —pretence that Ayodhya is a religious issue or even a legal one, not political. This is intellectual sophistry. Even a judicial verdict, if and when it arrives, will require political will to implement it. It will leave one clear winner and one clear loser. In the offchance that the verdict is ambiguous, that the courts merely state the archaeological or other evidence without arriving at a conclusion on the historical nature of the shrine, the verdict will require political will to interpret it. Either way, the political class cannot absent itself. At the end of it all, India is no closer to putting Ayodhya to rest. Rather Ram’s mandir has become more of a political issue than it was even a few weeks ago. The AIMPLB is clear in its letter of July 6, ‘‘The site of the Babri Masjid is the property of Allah and cannot be alienated by sale, gift or otherwise.’’ If earlier the VHP alone was demanding not just Ayodhya but Kashi and Mathura as well, now the Kanchi Shankaracharya too has joined the band. Obviously, he weighed competing pressures and cajolements and decided he couldn’t ignore the VHP’s constituency — whether social or religious or, for all its matters, socio-religious. Far from being ‘‘depoliticised’’, the Ayodhya issue has only seen a restatement of hard positions. So is India headed for another round of mandir-masjid elections? The answer is probably half yes and half no. The 1991 election was, to some minds, a mandir-masjid referendum. That narrow issue has been dealt with, its passions exhausted. It lies buried beneath the rubble of December 6, 1992. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani would happily perform yogic austerities to keep it where it is. As long as the BJP is part of the NDA, its priority is sustaining its government. It is unlikely to resort to any adventurism on Ayodhya. Yet the tussle between the sangh and the prime minister for the soul of the BJP can have only one result. The mother institution will outlast the individual. Key practitioners of Hindutva now see merit in the argument that the cocktail of mandir and religion, of ‘‘national security’’ and Pakistan demonisation, can be stirred once more. If this wasn’t so, it would have been easy for the RSS and the Shankaracharya to brush aside the VHP. Another election, perhaps in 2004 but more likely later, in which the temple will figure as sideshow to a broader saffron programme now appears inevitable. What the result will be could in some measure be defined by how the BJP negotiates its post-Vajpayee equations with the sangh. He Ram! That N word again.
