Temple versus terror

Identifying the villain is facile business. The prevailing intellectual wisdom over the past few years has been straightforward: Vajpayee, good; BJP, tolerable; VHP, terrible. The Ashok Singhal-Pravin Togadia group, by this reckoning, is a bunch of religious crazies, completely at the margins of Indian society. The Ram issue is politically dead.

From the cosy confines of drawing room Delhi, this logic appears perfectly tenable. It doesn8217;t square up, however, with two niggling bits of reality.

One, why is the VHP attracting substantially larger crowds than it ever has? Admittedly, these are not always huge, revolution-inducing throngs; but they are significantly larger than those in, say, the late 1990s.

To cite stray examples from 2003 itself, Togadia gathered over 100,000 people at a Mangalore rally, another 60,000 in Aurangabad and addressed 11 meetings in Madhya Pradesh, with crowds in even small centres rarely falling below 20,000-25,000. In short, the threshold of VHP mobilisation autonomous of the BJP has gone up.

Two, there is a creeping fear in the BJP that the VHP is rhetorically divorcing it from a certain aggressive positioning in the politics of Hindu nationalism. This will not sink the BJP but, in an election without an overriding emotive issue, could do some damage.

There is a disinclination, born partly of hostility and partly of sheer laziness, to recognise just how 8212; and how much 8212; the VHP has grown, in numbers and in terms of appropriation of ideas. For instance, while focused on the Ram mandir, the VHP has sought to exploit the hard mood against terrorism.

In the VHP8217;s dream scenario, the Ram mandir issue will become an adjunct to India8217;s war against jihad. Ram, a sort of Hindu St George, will become what he already is to the faithful, a symbol of national identity and security.

All this may appear far-fetched but the VHP8217;s thought process is not quite random. It is based, to some degree, on an April 2002 document available to only the Parishad8217;s upper echelons. A survey of public opinion, the document was, for lack of a better expression, a SWOT analysis for the VHP.

Respondents were asked to identify the number one issue of concern for India from a given universe. Poverty 8212; under which category were subsumed worries about income and subsistence 8212; was right on top with 45 per cent. Terrorism came second with 25 per cent.

What did this mean for the Ram movement?

Economic issues, unfortunately or otherwise, have never dominated Indian public life. Historically, opinion poll after opinion poll, pre-election survey after pre-election survey has shown a sharp differential between the questions 8216;8216;What is the biggest problem facing the country?8217;8217; and 8216;8216;Which issues will determine your vote?8217;8217; The answer to the first is usually defined by economic perennials, to the second by prevailing emotions.

As such, terrorism was more likely to work a mob, especially at a time when the Indian government8217;s policy on Pakistan tended to oscillate between tepid and ambivalent. In their public meetings, VHP leaders now speak of only two issues: temple and terrorism.

The 2002 document was educative in terms of the social base of VHP religio-nationalism. While support was relatively high among lower income groups and the rich, the big city middle class was seen as fickle. Its support was influenced by immediate provocations 8212; such as Godhra 8212; and not consistent. Among caste groups, the VHP found it had not made substantial inroads into the Dalit community.

The geographical spread of the VHP also presents a contrast from the mandir agitation of the early 1990s. Support, insiders admit, has peaked if not declined in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The boom areas are Gujarat and Maharashtra, parts of Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, north Karnataka and odd areas in Andhra Pradesh.

A whole generation of political analysts has come of age convincing itself of secret, election-eve deals between the VHP and the BJP. It is difficult to make them believe that the top leadership of the sangh twins is barely on talking terms.

In part, this is a personality clash. To the VHP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and, increasingly, L.K. Advani, are snarl words, crypto-secularists if you like, who sought to use the Kanchi Shankaracharya to split the Ram constituency.

To the BJP, Singhal is an irascible character, cussed and unwilling to see reason. The second generation senses it will have to do business with the VHP some day, maybe after the 2004 election, but is unwilling to oppose the party elders right now.

To the VHP, the October 17 gathering in Ayodhya is not a climactic point. It is only the beginning of a long haul, one in which it will have to pressure enough MPs to agree to parliamentary legislation on Ayodhya.

For the moment, that seems a forlorn hope. What is decidedly more real, is the fear that the VHP may just launch a new political party 8212; 8216;8216;the H Party8217;8217;, as some put it 8212; committed to the Hindu cause. An ultimatum to the BJP is expected after the assembly elections in December. The VHP has even identified two possible leaders from the BJP8217;s second generation, though it is far from obvious that they will jump ship.

What will this new party, if it arrives, achieve? VHP strategists say it could win 30-40 Lok Sabha seats and play a role in a future coalition. A more sober assessment suggests it may win nothing 8212; but still slice away, say, a fifth of the BJP vote in a number of constituences.

In the Ramayan, when Ram sent Sita to the forest, the vitality of his existence vanished too. Is the BJP set to repeat that tragedy?