Faces playing decisive role in Babri Masjid demolition

Senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani is once again in discussion. The Babri demolition judge of the special CBI court is going to hear the verdict in the mosque demolition case in which the fate of other Hindutva politicians like Murali Manohar Joshi and Vinay Katiyar besides Advani is to be decided. The Babri Masjid was demolished on 6 December 1992.

Advani means the face of hardline Hindutva politics

Today’s young generation, born around 2000 and after, cannot possibly imagine the stature of Lal Krishna Advani, which would be perceived by the people of his parents’ generation.

Advani worked to put the entire country on a new path, which included campaigns which were usually leaving behind traces of blood and communal violence, but these campaigns inspired right wing and brought BJP to the pinnacle of power.

There is no scope for debate among those who know and know the old days, who are the biggest face of Hindutva politics. Narendra Modi can be everyone’s natural choice. But Lal Krishna Advani, once the mentor of Narendra Modi, will not be far behind.

He told, “I was filled with joy when the Supreme Court gave its verdict on the construction of Ram temple in November. I heartily thanked Advani ji. I was one of the millions of fearless kar sevaks who used to admire him. Advani We have got the Ram temple because of Ji, Modi ji has delivered it. “

Senior journalist and columnist Pankaj Vohra has known LK Advani before shining in national politics.

He gives an example of the construction of Qutub Minar, saying, “The foundation of the Qutub Minar was laid by Altamus but named after Qutubuddin Aibak who completed it. The Ram temple is being constructed due to the Supreme Court’s decision. However Advani has now welcomed the court’s decision but he did not want to take the matter to court. He wanted the issue to boil over. Advani benefited from Advani’s evasive methods. He always supported the construction of the temple. , Also in court. Now that they are in power, they will also take credit for its construction. “

However, in 1992, senior journalist Sanjay Co himself joined the squad of Karsevaks and saw the impact of Advani all over India at that time. They insist that Advani should be given credit for the construction of the Ram temple.

He told, “There is no doubt that the mania of Ayodhya was instigated by Advani and he should get the credit of Ram temple. It was under his leadership that the BJP emerged at a rapid pace in the 90s, all credit goes to him.” “

However, Sanjay Ko also says that personally he never liked Advani’s politics.

Since its formation in 1980, the Bharatiya Janata Party under the chairmanship of Atal Bihari Vajpayee could not reach anywhere near power. Born and raised in Karachi, Advani has been one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Advani emerged widely on the national scene due to his anti-Muslim and staunch Hindutva politics and its polarization. During the 10,000-kilometer-long Ram Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Samastipur in Bihar during September-October 1990, Advani kept on roaring, “The temples will be built there.”

After the arrest of Advani, the Rath Yatra stopped and the crowd dispersed. But by then it had taken the form of the movement of the common people and such frenzy was never seen before in independent India.

In his speeches he kept stressing that the temple would be built exactly where the Babri Masjid stood. He called it a matter of faith, questioning the role of the court in it, “Where Rama was born, no power can stop us from building a Ram temple and we will build the temple right there.”

He also challenged the government’s jurisdiction for the faith of those who believe in Hinduism associated with the birth of Ram at the site of Babri Masjid. He said, “Who can stop us? Which government?”

The Rath Yatra was also seen to be associated with caste politics at that time, as the then Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh had implemented the Mandal Commission’s recommendations with a desire to remain in power.

Pankaj Vohra explains, “Advani’s Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya was not allowed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh but he went on to face caste politics that emerged due to the implementation of VP Singh’s Mandal Commission.”

The aggressive Hindutva politics led by Advani was greatly benefited by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1996 general election when the party won 161 seats. This was a big jump for the party which won just two seats in 1984.

But despite Advani’s popularity, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the first BJP government that ran for just 13 days. However, this government fell due to not being able to prove majority.

Some analysts believe that political slopes slowly came in Advani’s career. For this reason, two incidents of 2005 were important – Advani visited Karachi in June where he declared Jinnah a secular leader and after that he left the post of party president in Mumbai in November the same year.

The political storm caused by Advani’s statement on Jinnah. Advani, who was the face of aggressive Hindutva, was seen as a soft Hindu in a country considered neighbor and enemy. But Advani did not regret his statement.

Six months after his visit to Pakistan, he had told the senior editor of a magazine, “I have no regrets about what I said and did in Pakistan. I feel that the objectives that I publicize also include that point. Contribute. I am proud to be a Hindu. I am not against Muslims, I am not against Islam, I am not against Pakistan. I feel that I served both my ideology and purpose. “

As a journalist, I got a chance to cover the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2005. The ceremony was organized by BJP’s prominent leader Pramod Mahajan. I saw Advani handing over the command of the party to Rajnath Singh, the young Turk of the party. Rajnath Singh is the Defense Minister in the Modi government these days.

As the newly elected president of the party, Rajnath Singh told me, “This is a new beginning. We have lost the general elections of 2004, we got only 138 seats. It is my job to push the young leadership back to power.” “

However, there is also a truth that even during his best times, Advani should be insecure. A few months after the glorious days of the Ram Rath Yatra, he went to contest elections from the New Delhi Lok Sabha seat in 1991. In front of him, Bollywood star Rajesh Khanna was from the Congress party.

Rajesh Khanna did not know anything about politics but he had scared Advani in a way. Advani managed to win this election with a small margin. Advani may have won the election, but while covering the election campaign of both the candidates, I saw that more crowds were raging in Rajesh Khanna’s rallies.

Advani was the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament during the Congress-led UPA government from 2004 to 2009. He failed to challenge the Congress and under his leadership the party also lost the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

By 2012, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had emerged as a rising star, beginning to stake his claim for the post of Prime Minister. In June 2013, he was elected the head of the Election Campaign Committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Advani had an idea of ​​the time to come and he resigned. In his resignation, he wrote, “The current leaders of the party are now worried about their personal agenda.”

His move was seen as a criticism of Modi. Although senior leader Advani was prepared to withdraw his resignation, he had accepted the defeat at the hands of Modi. Modi led the party to a landslide victory in the 2014 elections under his leadership, which pushed Advani towards political exile.

It is ironic that Advani, who was a symbol of the Ram temple movement, was absent in the Ram temple Bhumi Pujan held in Ayodhya on August 5. At the age of 93, Advani would be convinced that he completely changed the Indian politics of the 1990s. For better or for worse? Its decision is still pending.

The Ram Mandir movement was started by Vishwa Hindu Parishad six years before LK Advani’s Rath Yatra for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. At the center of that movement was Ashok Singhal, the executive chairman of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Many Ayodhya journalists believe that the Ram temple movement was a brainchild of Singhal.

Although Advani made it a political issue and united the Hindus, Singhal had an important role in it. Singhal, an engineer by profession, organized the Dharma Sansad in Ayodhya in 1984 and thereafter began to unite the priests and sadhus for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Soon after this he was made executive president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and then he gave the direction of the temple movement as a mass movement.

Senior journalist Mahendra Sharma has seen the leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in their status. According to him, Ashok Singhal was working as a bridge between BJP and Hindu priest-monk.

Mahendra Sharma said, “He was definitely one of those who prepared the BJP to include the Ram temple issue in his manifesto and election promises. When Advani’s leadership started a political movement for the temple, The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, under the leadership of Singhal, started preparations for the construction of the temple. “

Last November, Vishwa Hindu Parishad spokesperson Sharad Sharma told me in Ayodhya that it was Singhal’s foresight that has kept people ready for the construction of the temple for the past 30 years.

While inspecting the neatly carved stone pieces and slabs in the huge courtyard of Karsevakapuram in Ayodhya, he said, ‘When we started the construction of the Ram temple in September 1990, we knew that one day we would have to You will definitely get the fruit of We are indebted to Singhalji for this.

Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, a trust run by Vishwa Hindu Parishad, has prepared these stone pieces, slabs and pillars in the last 29 years. The trust attributes this to Ashok Singhal.

Ram Vilas Vedanti, a former MP associated with the temple movement, told me in Nambwar that Singhal was the architect of the Ram temple. He said, “His hard work was finally successful.”

At the age of 89, Ashok Singhal died in 2015, but before that he had ensured that his name would be recorded in the history of Ram temple in the coming time.

Like LK Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Murli Manohar Joshi was one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. After 34 years, the new posters of Hindutva politics, after winning a landslide victory in the 2014 general elections under the leadership of Boy Narendra Modi, all three were placed in the newly-created Marg Darshan Mandal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh are also included in this division. But the founders of the party saw this as an insult and after that these people did not appear as active in public life as they usually looked. Joshi has also done silently like Advani. However, if people close to him believe it, they have done this to save self-respect.

Professor of Physics Murali Manohar Joshi got his doctorate degree in Hindi. He has seen very good days in the party, especially when he was the president of the party. Later he was also the Minister of Human Resource Development in the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was also the Home Minister of India in the Vajpayee government which lasted for 13 days.

Murali Manohar Joshi stays away from modern gadgets. They do not even carry a mobile phone, if someone wants to talk to them, the most convenient way is still their landline phone number. But he is present on Twitter and often tweets on the festival day. On seeing his tweets, it is known that some BJP leaders of today’s era have been similar to him. JP Nadda has also been among those who met him a few days ago. After becoming the party president, Nadda visited him.

I have had a telephone conversation with him on several occasions as a journalist, but every conversation has been off the record. He never agreed to give formal interviews. But various issues were discussed in the conversation with him. They may be away from active politics, but they keep an eye on what is happening in national and international politics.

They use their sharp intelligence and do not readily agree on the point that ‘the current government is running only with headlines’. His comments on political issues must be brief but to have an impact, and in this case he seems completely different from the lewdness of some leaders who take his place.

Controversial Vinay Katiyar

Vinay Katiyar, who has been in the limelight for his controversial and anti-Muslim statements, has also ensured a permanent place in the construction of the Ram temple. BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Katiyar has been the founder of Bajrang Dal (Youth Unit of Vishwa Hindu Parishad). He believes that in addition to Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi in the new system of BJP, he has been sidelined, like many other leaders of the politics of 90s Hindutva.

Vinay Katiyar started his political career with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Commerce graduate Katiyar was also active in Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement. In 1980, he became a pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and within four years he founded the Bajrang Dal for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Katiyar, who was accused along with Lal Krishna Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi in the Babri Masjid demolition case, was a three-time MP from Faizabad Lok Sabha seat in 1991, 1996 and 1999. Currently, he is a member of the Rajya Sabha.