Once again the Congress has played a political gambit on Ayodhya, again a bit reluctantly and again forced to the wall. The party Wednesday declined the invitation The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust has extended to its leaders Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury to attend the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January
When it comes to the Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, the Congress is weighed down by its history – a past chequered by vacillations and contradictions. The locks of the Babri Masjid were opened in 1986 when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. His then aides argued later that he was not in the know. But three years later, seeking to contain the BJP’s temple push, it was he who permitted the VHP to perform shilanyas at the disputed site.
In 1991, again with the BJP on mind, the Congress manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls mentioned the temple, saying the party was for construction of one without demolishing the Babri Masjid. A year later, the mosque came down under the watch of a Congress government at the Centre.
A year later, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao publicly committed to building the masjid.
Then, in November 2019, came the Supreme Court ruling in favour of the Hindu side in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit case. With the Narendra Modi-led BJP back with an even larger majority at the Centre, the Congress, fighting for its political survival, welcomed the order and declared it was in favour of construction of a Ram temple.
This time, there was no mention of the Babri Masjid.
Wednesday’s announcement that it would stay away from the event that would mark the culmination of the long Ram Temple movement marks another milestone in the Congress’s complicated history with the dispute.
Five takeaways from the party’s decision:
The framing
The party is wary of associating with the consecration ceremony – both for historical and political reasons. The temple, after all, has always been a Sangh Parivar project, though the Congress has tried to wade in, wittingly and unwittingly, at different points in the last nearly four decades. Wanting to appropriate or diffuse the Sangh Parivar’s Hindu card, the party has also burnt its hands – with the fact that the Congress government at the Centre chose not to intervene when the Babri Masjid was being brought down on December 6, 1992, being a case in point.
On Wednesday, announcing that it won’t attend the consecration, the Congress was careful to frame that its decision was dictated by the fact that the inauguration of the Ram Temple was a “BJP-RSS political event”, clearly timed keeping in mind the Lok Sabha elections.
The fact that of the five people allowed in the sanctum sanctorum on January 22, four would be Prime Minister Narendra Modi, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Governor Anandiben Patel – apart from the priest – clearly indicates the State-sponsored nature of the event, the party believes.
The government-Sangh overlap in the events leading up to the consecration is also evident, with the invitations and celebrations being managed by the VHP and RSS.
At the same time, in its statement, the Congress was also careful to underline Ram as a figure worshipped by millions, while pointing out that religion is a “personal matter”.
Congress sources said the party had no doubts about the invitation itself being a ploy to force it to take a stand. And the likelihood of the BJP labelling its decision to stay away as “anti-Hindu”, which could prove costly ahead of the elections. A few years ago, Sonia Gandhi had admitted that the BJP had managed to “convince people, persuade people that the Congress party is a Muslim party”.
However, the belief that the Congress could not lend legitimacy to a “political event” of the Sangh Parivar finally weighed over other considerations.
‘Incomplete temple’ argument
The Congress statement declining the invitation mentioned that the temple was still “incomplete”, and that the inauguration appears to have been brought forward by the BJP and RSS “obviously… for electoral gain”.
Incidentally, just a day earlier, shankaracharyas of several peeths were reported as saying that they would not attend the event for the same reason, suggesting that installing the idol in an incomplete structure was against “shastra vidhi (rituals)”.
“Our shastras do not permit pran pratishtha in an incomplete temple. The Prime Minister is not a shankaracharya,” a Congress leader said.
Weighed down by history
The Congress’s flirtation with Hindutva to take on the BJP has not started now. If Rajiv Gandhi’s ham-handed measures during his stint in government were one aspect of it, the 1991 party Lok Sabha polls manifesto was another. But the failure of the Rao government to protect the Babri Masjid cast a big enough shadow for it to refrain from the same for a while.
The Rao government’s “complicity” was seen in various measures, dating back to soon after it came to power in 1991. It had proceeded to enact a law laying down that the religious character of a place of worship shall continue to be what it was on August 15, 1947; but kept the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid complex out of it. This was seen as a ploy to keep the Hindu side happy while conveying to the Muslims that Sangh Parivar’s Kashi and Mathura agenda would never come to pass.
In the aftermath of the Babri demolition, the Congress laid the entire blame on Rao, who in turn committed to rebuilding the Masjid.
By the late 1990s, through an era of coalition governments and with the BJP in a more moderate avatar under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Congress stayed away from the contentious dispute – except arguing that it would support either a negotiated settlement “between the parties to the dispute”, or await the judicial settlement.
In 2019, that option ended when the apex court gave its decision in favour of the Hindu side. Forced again to choose, the Congress said it respected the apex court verdict and asserted it was in favour of construction of a Ram temple.
However, whatever its own role in the whole saga starting from before Independence, the Congress is under no delusion that the gains from January 22 are set to accrue almost entirely to the BJP.
Explaining the decision
Sources said that the overwhelming view in the Congress was against attending the ceremony. However, many of its leaders from the Hindi heartland, facing the brunt of the BJP’s Hindutva might, were not so sure. Some of these state units proposed a symbolic representation to ensure that the BJP and Sangh Parivar did not get a talking point to project the Congress as anti-Ram or anti-Hindu.
“One part of the decision is correct. It is an RSS-BJP project. Who is the Prime Minister to preside over the consecration? It is a job better left to the dharmacharyas. India did not stop worshipping Ram for 500 years (just because the temple was not there in Ayodhya). We are a secular state. The Prime Minister cannot be the chief executive and the chief priest,” a Congress leader who was on the side of the argument to stay away said.
But, another leader, apprehensive of how the BJP would portray it, said: “The temple trust does not belong to any party and was set up by the national government. Staying away will amount to completely ceding the space… And we will be projected as anti-Hindu. After all, it was during Rajiv Gandhi’s time that the locks of the temple were opened and the shilanyas was permitted.”
As per another leader, it will all come down to how well the Congress sends across its message now. “The BJP is going to completely polarise the Hindi heartland. It is not about declining the invitation, it is about explaining the decision convincingly to the people. Everything is about perception and narrative. How are we going to explain the decision to the people?… To say that Modi is doing it… will only help him,” the leader worried.
Convincing the allies
The Congress’s hope will be that its allies in the INDIA bloc follow suit and stay away from the Ram Temple consecration; several indicated the same on Wednesday. It will do the party no good if it is seen as isolated on this issue.
But while signals coming from its partners Wednesday were positive, it is not clear whether the other invited parties will spell out their positions as clearly, thus becoming the topic of prime-time debates, or opt to quietly drop out.
Sources said that the Congress had gauged the sense of parties in the INDIA bloc before announcing its decision. And that top party leaders might visit the temple after the consecration, thus conveying that its move was always about opposing BJP politics and never about faith.
The Uttar Pradesh Congress, for instance, has already announced that about a hundred of its leaders will visit Ayodhya on the auspicious Makar Sankranti day on January 15. They will be offering prayers too – to the Ram Lalla “virajman”, that is the existing makeshift temple where the Babri Masjid once stood.
