Mandir Front And Centre

The Modi-Shah Duo Faces A Growing Clamour In The BJP For A Ram Mandir— One Way Or Another, Sooner Rather Than Later. Will It Serve Them In The Battle Of 2019 Is The Big Question.

- Uday Mahurkar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are in a bind. While the Big Two, it’s reliably learnt, want the party’s election strategy to pivot on the Modi government’s governance record, party workers seem to be animated more by the Ram Mandir issue. This seems to be the major takeaway from the BJP national council meeting at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi on January 12 and 13, in which 12,000-odd chosen party workers and leaders from across the country participated.

The party machinery believes Modi still has robust support among the masses, based on the popularity of the government schemes. But his image has taken a hit among his own followers in the party after the interview earlier this month when the prime minister declared that the BJP would consider an ordinance on the temple only after all judicial remedies had been exhausted.

The statement upset the party’s ideological fount, the RSS, no end, with the top Sangh leadership raising the Vaj payee era question all over again: if the BJP can’t build a Ram temple now, despite its hold over both Houses of Parliament, when will it? RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, considered to be close to the ModiShah duo, even issued a press note where he was initially conciliatory but later went on to subtly warn the BJP that a status quo on the temple issue before the 2019 poll would be a betrayal of the Hindus.