Why their khaki knickers are in a twist…

Thank you for the warning, Rahul Gandhi,’ wrote the Hindutva right-wing magazine Swarajya. Where was the warning? Swarajya took Rahul Gandhi’s claim, “We have defeated the Ram Mandir movement”, as a warning or a challenge, if you will.

The online magazine wrote, "On July 7, 2024, Rahul Gandhi, revealing his political agenda, made the most important statement of his political career: 'The movement started by Lal Krishna Advani, centred on Ayodhya, has been defeated by us in Ayodhya...’”

Swarajya saw a warning in this statement. They also recognised Rahul Gandhi’s ideological intent. They asked, with concern, whether Hindus were listening — and getting the message.

Swarajya is right. Rahul Gandhi’s statement is more an expression of intent than a description of reality. Gandhi said this to a gathering in Ahmedabad after BJP partymen had attacked the Congress office in Ahmedabad. What was he alluding to? What could defeating the ‘Ram Mandir movement’ mean? And how was it done?

Gandhi was referring to the recent Lok Sabha election where the BJP lost the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, with the INDIA bloc candidate Awadhesh Prasad defeating the BJP’s Lallu Singh, Ayodhya being part of Faizabad constituency. The BJP’s defeat at the hands of a Dalit candidate in Ayodhya — considered the epicentre of Hindutva politics — is highly symbolic, and has forced the party to go on the defensive.

After the election, the Opposition made full use of this in the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha. Awadhesh Prasad sat in the front row between Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, and both Gandhi and Yadav kept shaking hands with him, taking jabs at the BJP. Prasad’s subtle smile was like a dagger to the BJP MPs’ hearts, the name itself a pinprick of provocation — Awadhesh, after all, is a synonym of Ram.

When news broke of their defeat in Faizabad-Ayodhya, an embarrassed BJP said they had lost Faizabad, not Ayodhya. They probably regret the Uttar Pradesh state government’s 2018 decision to rename Faizabad district as Ayodhya, though they did want people to forget the name Faizabad and remember Ayodhya instead.

Ironically, those who opposed the renaming then, relish calling it Ayodhya now, while the BJP insists on Faizabad. As if to say: the loss in Faizabad was natural, but how could they possibly lose in Ayodhya!

Call it Faizabad or Ayodhya, the defeat stung the BJP alright. This is evident from the hate campaign the BJP-RSS machinery launched against Ayodhya’s Hindus in the aftermath of the loss. They called for an economic boycott, saying Hindus should ostracise the “traitors” who did not appreciate the grand Ram temple the BJP gave them — such ingratitude, they railed, was the highest form of betrayal.

After saying “we’ve defeated the Ram temple movement in Ayodhya”, Gandhi explained how so: people were angry that their lands had been taken away, their homes and shops demolished to make way for the new temple, so they punished the BJP by defeating them.

In light of his explanation, the BJP’s defeat was rooted in down-to-earth reasons of people’s life struggles, their misery. Can this be called a defeat of the Ram temple movement? Is it an ideological defeat for the BJP?

Barring a symbolic victory in Banaskantha, the Congress suffered a drubbing in Gujarat, after which BJP members had attacked the party office. To rally his supporters, Gandhi said they had defeated the BJP in the very place that sat at the heart of their politics, the name they used to seek votes across the country.

Remember, the BJP’s chief campaigner Narendra Modi kept saying everywhere that if the BJP wasn’t re-elected, the Congress would lock up the Ram Mandir again, and Ram would be back in a tent. But the people of Ayodhya rejected that argument. What could be a bigger defeat than this? And yet, is this a defeat of the Ram Mandir movement? Isn’t this hyperbole? But then, is hyperbole the preserve of poets only? We have defeated the Ram Mandir movement led by Lal Krishna Advani” is more an ideological assertion than a description of facts, an exhortation to see this as a battle against the ideology represented by the Ram Mandir movement.

By naming Lal Krishna Advani, Gandhi also indicated that today’s Ram temple should be associated more with Advani than Narendra Modi. The BJP’s rise and current position (in the national polity), he said, began with the Ram Mandir movement. Its leader was Advani; Narendra Modi played a supporting role. To ensure the point isn’t lost, he told his audience this detail was significant.

Those who have followed the journey of the BJP and its predecessor, the Jan Sangh, know that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was the most crucial experiment in their quest for dominance in Indian politics. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement transformed Hindu faith into Hindutva. It popularised the history of Hindu persecution and made the so-called Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya the centre of Hindu faith. Only those who believe this can be considered Hindus, in this reading.

This was accepted by various political parties and the courts. It was the BJP and RSS’s greatest political victory. Since its founding in 1925, the distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva was almost erased for the first time.

Narendra Modi’s rise would not have been possible without this movement. Terms like kar sevak and Ram sevak wouldn’t exist without this movement. It was because of this movement that a fire broke out in coach number 6 of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra. We still don’t know how the fire started, but it led to a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat starting 27 February 2002. And it made Narendra Modi the leader of Advani’s Hindutva movement.

The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was not a religious movement but a majoritarian, anti-Muslim movement, evident from the anti-Muslim laws, violence and propaganda perpetrated by the BJP after coming to power with a full majority.

Gandhi says the Ram Janmabhoomi movement uses Ram’s name but has nothing to do with Ram, just as the BJP and RSS have nothing to do with Hinduism. He is right that the real fight is against the ideology that gave birth to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The struggle is against the RSS’s idea of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

By saying this, Rahul Gandhi is also warning those in the Congress who are competing to visit the Ram temple, making donations, or asking why they weren’t invited on 22 January. Rahul Gandhi also said there is no relationship between the temple at Ayodhya and the people of Ayodhya. For the BJP, it is a means to extract political mileage and for land merchants, a means of profiteering from land. Swarajya rightly recognised that this is Gandhi’s most important statement.

In 2014, on the 50th anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, Rahul Gandhi said his struggle was more against the RSS than the BJP. Swarajya asks whether Hindus are listening. But they don’t realise that Rahul Gandhi also wants to tell Hindus that they should defeat the Ram Janmabhoomi movement to save themselves.

Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University and is a writer. This piece first appeared in the Hindi edition of The Wire