After Ayodhya, the Sangh Parivar is focusing on Mathura

The RSS-controlled BJP regime has been repeatedly proved as a failed government. In every walk of life, it has betrayed its own promises. Every segment of society is forced to come to the battlefield to resist the reactionary policies of the government. The peasants, the workers, the students, the women, and Dalits, all have learned from their experience that the only way of survival is to unite and fight against the atrocious measures taken by the government.

Gauging the people’s anger, the master minds of the RSS-BJP have designed their strategy to swim over the simmering wrath. It has been the theory and practice of the ultra-reactionary forces committed to the fascist ideology to divide the people using faith and myth. Globally, they learned it from Mussolini and Hitler. In India they are indebted to none other than British imperialism, who were the champions of ‘divide and rule’.

Sangh Parivar most effectively fanned up the Ram Janmabhumi issue for decades to meet their political ends. That led to the demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. In their armory, they have stockpiled same kind of weapons to meet every such situation.

In the present conditions, where the crisis is deepening and the people are drawn to the battle fields, they are in search of new and newer issues through which the people’s attention can be diverted. Thus, came in the controversy around ‘Krishna Janmabhoomi’ in Mathura, UP. In September, 2020, a civil suit was filed in a Mathura court seeking the ownership of 13.37 acres of land where Shahi Idgah Masjid stands today. Exactly following the footsteps of the civil suit filed by ‘Ram LallaVirajman’ for getting the ownership of disputed land in Ayodhya in 1989, the designs are planned in Mathura.

It is ‘Bhagwan Sri Krishna Virajman’ at Katra Kesavdev Khewat, Maura, Mathura Bazar City on whose behalf the civil suit has been filed. There are six other petitioners. Prima facie, one can ignore it as yet another civil suit claiming the ownership of certain property at a certain place. But for India’s secular conscience, it cannot be ignored simply like that. The Ayodhya land verdict in 2019 has definitely inspired those forces who are behind the present civil litigation.

This may be the beginning of many such moves that may arise in various places. The secular forces in the country should be vigilant about the dubious nature of this sort of legal actions where religion and faith are deployed by interested forces for political purposes.

As far as the Sangh Parivar is concerned, it is not a hidden agenda. They had proclaimed their intention for claiming the ownership of various places of worship as they did in Ayodhya. On that fateful day of the demolition of Babri Masjid, they raised it in the form of a slogan, which was the war cry for a theocratic state. When the Babri Masjid was crumbling down, the slogan that echoed was, “hum aise banayenge hindu rashtra”. Together with that they shouted “yeh to pehli jhanki hai, Kashi, Mathura baki hai”.

During the whole period of Ayodhya campaign, the RSS and its camp followers were trying to make viral the list of mosques which according to them were built upon the demolished temples, centuries back. It was a well calculated strategy hatched by the RSS brains to sow the seeds of religious discord, unending and inflammatory.

Their aim is clear and definite: Not to allow the masses to look into the reasons that caused the hardships. Religious extremism is their tested strategy through which they reaped political power. Beyond that, the 2019 Ayodhya verdict gave them a new impetus to advance the same tactics of litigation and simultaneous pressurizations.

In Mathura they have raised the demand to remove the Shahi Idgah Mosque which stands near the Krishna temple. The civil suit marks the demand at a heightened note and follows the RSS way of doing divisive politics.

Now their extremist elements would start saying that law has nothing to do in matters of faith. They will close their eyes to the 1968 agreement and continue giving their own reasons. They are already going to the extent of questioning the veracity of Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991. The Act was categorical in stating that the religious character of any place of worship must be maintained as it existed on August 15, 1947. The conversion of any place of worship to something else is prohibited. The only exception from the Act was Ayodhya since the dispute was in Allahabad High Court at that time. These basic conclusions and the undisputed reasons behind that are now being questioned by the religious extremists.

This is a Pandora’s box. The judiciary at all levels should conceive the dangers in opening that box. The governments in UP and at the centre must behave as responsible governments knowing that their first and foremost duty is to uphold constitutional obligations. Defending secularism is their primary task.