Using Ram for the election is over. Ayodya issue has also become a thing of the past. Now no one talks about the construction of the Ram Temple.No one is talking about the construction of Ram Temple in the UP elections. Ayodhya is not an issue in this election.
BJP leaders, with no connect to the Ram temple movement, have been campaigning here. The faces of the movement – LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi – have been relegated to the non-functional “Margdarshak Mandal” partially because the Ram temple issue lost traction among voters.
Yogi Adityanath, BJP’s saffron-robed controversy-stoking MP from Gorakhpur was in Ayodhya. He mentioned the Ram temple as an article of faith. Uma Bharti talked of development, in a much mellower version of herself on that tumultuous December 6 in 1992 at the disputed site in Ayodhya, smiling and hugging BJP leaders as Kar Sevaks or activists brought down the three age-blackened domes of the Babri mosque – ironically the last permanent shelter the small statue had at Lord Ram’s birthplace and since the Babri mosque razing, the temple operates in a makeshift tent.
The BJP has been infusing steady doses of communal colour into the ongoing campaign for UP, but the lead campaigner Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t campaigned here. Party president Amit Shah also addressed a rally in Rudauli, 51 km from Ayodhya..
The VHP’s firebrand head Ashok Singhal died in 2015. The outfit’s karyashala or workshop where stones were being carved for a proposed temple has been silent for years.
Not once was the slogan “saugandh Ram ki khaate hain, mandir yahin banayenge )” heard during this election.
Ahead of the polls, the Modi government promised to build a museum dedicated to the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, in Ayodhya. The Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh approved the building of a Ramlila (story of Ram) Theme Park in the holy city. The focus has shifted perhaps for now. From temple to tourism.
