If confirmation was needed that Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal is caught in a time warp and possesses a medieval mindset unchanged by some 400-odd years of change and progress, it came during his press conference at Lucknow on Sunday. Said Singhal, justifying the Parishad's plans to go about unilaterally building a temple,``Did Babur come with a court verdict to raze the temple at Ayodhya?'' In other words, since Babur did not presumably seek the clearance of the Supreme Court of India before mounting his campaigns of conquest, Singhal sees no reason to do so either before going ahead and building a magnificent temple at Ayodhya. It is degenerative logic of this kind that creates disastrous situations for the country. All Singhal is waiting for, he maintains, is permission from the sants - assembled at Allahabad for the Mahakumbh mela - when they convene their Dharam Sansad from January 19.While, Singhal and his ilk are perfectly free to indulge in their visions of grandeur, no right-thinking citizen of this country can view their project as anything other than misguided, illegal and reprobate, and one worthy of the strongest condemnation. This is because there is the general recognition that we, the people, live in a democratic system under which no group or conglomeration of groups can unilaterally take law into their own hands and that nobody is above the law. There is also the widely held belief that the country has more profitable things to do than expend its energies espousing divisive issues. Singhal could profitably spend his time musing on the prime ministerial musings. In unambiguous terms, Vajpayee had stated in his recent article that the law will take its course as far as the Ayodhya dispute is concerned, that his government will not remain a silent spectator should any organisation attempt to disturb the status quo. Interestingly, Vajpayee chose to underline the point in iteratingthat he will not behave like Narasimha Rao did eight years ago, by standing aside and doing little to prevent the demolition. There is the tacit recognition here that unilaterally building a temple without court sanction would be the obverse side of demolishing the Babri mosque and will not be countenanced. With the VHP rhetoric getting more shrill and acerbic responses from bodies like the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC), old uncertainties that had characterised the national scene in the early nineties, have once again surfaced. While Singhal says that temple construction would need the large-scale mobilisation of the masses and it would be done even if it means sacrificing the BJP-led governments at the Centre and the states, the BMAC warns of ``serious consequences'' should the temple be built. If this is dialogue, then all that can be said is that it is the dialogue of the deaf. It's time to step back from the brink, rein in the likes of Singhal and ensure that Vajpayee's musings at Kumarakom are more than just meaningless words written by a prime minister on holiday.
