Katiyar8217;s kar seva8217;

An unemployed Vinay Katiyar of the Bajrang Dal, no doubt embittered by the loss of his Faizabad seat to the Samajwadi Party in the recent el...

An unemployed Vinay Katiyar of the Bajrang Dal, no doubt embittered by the loss of his Faizabad seat to the Samajwadi Party in the recent elections, is now seeking to do a spot of kar seva for the nation. According to recent reports, he has plans to undertake a nationwide tour later this month to create the necessary climate of public opinion in favour of building a magnificent temple at Ayodhya. It8217;s ironical that even while Katiyar flexes his muscles in Lucknow, Prime Minister-designate A.B. Vajpayee should issue a statement in Delhi that 8220;tomorrow marks the beginning of a new era of cooperation, conciliation and consensus8221;. There will be very little cooperation, conciliation and consensus and perhaps not even a tomorrow if the likes of Katiyar are allowed to get away with their pet projects. If the BJP wants to begin its tomorrow on a new note of communal harmony, it should without delay chastise this errant child in its parivar for his obstreperous posturing. It is always better to nip such tendenciesin the bud, before they develop into a national crisis like the Babri Masjid demolition.

Katiyar and his ilk have a grouse and make no bones about wearing it on their sleeve. They feel that it is the dilution of the party8217;s stand on the Ayodhya temple that has resulted in the BJP8217;s poor performance in a pocket like Faizabad original Ayodhya country. They also attribute its dismal showing in Maharashtra to Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray8217;s conciliatory gesture on the Babri Masjid issue. But there are three important aspects of this conundrum that seem to have escaped them completely. First, it doesn8217;t seems to strike them that their electoral reverses may be precisely because people have rejected agendas of hate and wish their lives to be free of the threat of riots, demolitions, bomb blasts and the like. Second, they have also not absorbed sufficiently the truth that the BJP8217;s electoral successes this time came because the party projected in an unqualified fashion a 8220;consensus man8221; like Vajpayee.Finally, the results of these elections demonstrate that no major player, not even the party that has the largest number of seats in Parliament, can claim that it has the clear mandate of the people. The results should, in short, cause unrepentant fundamentalists like Katiyar to introspect on their divisive brand of politics rather than spread themselves around the countryside.

For a BJP on the threshold of power, Katiyar8217;s outburst couldn8217;t have come at a more inopportune moment. As is well known, many constituents of the unstable coalition the party heads have a markedly different view on contentious matters like Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura to that of the Sangh Parivar. Some, like the Samata Party and the Trinamool Congress, have even set down these differences in their manifestos. Thus far, temple votaries like the RSS and the VHP have been keeping a low-profile on the issue, with even the excitable Ashok Singhal of the VHP being hushed into silence. The BJP-led coalition is a delicately-constructed,17-part edifice. One loose cannon like Vinay Katiyar has the potential of reducing it to smithereens.