New Delhi: After the Bharatiya Janata Party’s humiliating loss in Faizabad-Ayodhya, the land of Lord Ram and his newly-opened temple, the party’s supporters and the right-wing ecosystem seem to have turned against the people of Ayodhya for voting for a Hindu Dalit candidate of the Opposition. The BJP led by Narendra Modi unabashedly sought votes in the name of Ram this election, disregarding election guidelines and political decency. However, after its disastrous performance in Uttar Pradesh, exemplified by the defeat in Faizabad constituency, the party seems to have deserted the Hindu deity. There is a stunned silence in the BJP camp following the June 4 results when it comes to the mention of Ram or Ayodhya.
The hate campaign launched online against the people of Ayodhya purportedly by BJP-leaning social media users, coupled with the saffron party’s omission of Ram’s name following the defeat, have portrayed it as ungrateful and opportunistic. The BJP, which has over the decades left no stones unturned – sometimes, almost literally – to appropriate the deity, and ran a high-pitched campaign in 2024 in his name, has barely mentioned him following the results.
“Jo Ram ko laye hain, hum unko layenge (We will bring to power those who brought Ram)” was the BJP’s obsessive call for votes this summer as a reward for the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya at the exact site where the Babri Masjid stood till December 6, 1992. But with the Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit leader, defeating the sitting MP of the BJP, Lallu Singh, in Faizabad, the right-wing ecosystem has changed the way it views the people of Ayodhya. In fact, since June 4, the cyber cell of Ayodhya police has been flooded with complaints against people, many of them identifiably right-wing, who have launched a campaign to vilify Ayodhya voters, abusing them, and in particular Prasad, with casteist and misogynist slurs and calling for their economic boycott. How ironic, that just over four months ago, on January 22, crores of Indian Hindus were celebrating the pran pratishtha ceremony of the temple in the town and going overboard on how temple tourism would re-shape the economy of the place. Modi projected the mandir as an edifice of a new India where Hindutva would dominate.
It is well-established that the Ram Mandir movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s catapulted the BJP to power at the Centre and in many states. The party also fought many elections with the promise that it would construct a grand temple for Ram.
In the 2024 election, this hit a crescendo, as the BJP unveiled an incomplete temple to the masses as a display of the greatest achievement for the Hindu civilisation. In that script, Ayodhya was hallowed and romanticised as a symbol of ascendant Hinduness. But all that has been wilfully abandoned by BJP supporters, attesting that the party’s relationship with the deity was more transactional than devotional.
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In his victory speech, Modi made no mention of Ram or Uttar Pradesh, the state which sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha and has been the biggest factor for his two large victories in 2014 and 2019. Modi is himself an MP from Varanasi and much of his campaign was built on the achievement that his government freed Ram from the shackles of a tent and put his idol inside a grand temple. In his address to allies in the NDA meeting too, Modi hailed Jagannath as the “gareebon ka devta (god of the poor)”. There was, however, no mention of Ram Rajya or chants of Jai Shri Ram.
Ram featured in the BJP’s election campaign in many aspects. Not only did the party solicit Hindu votes as a reward for getting the temple constructed, which, lest we forget, was built following a Supreme Court judgement in 2019, but also demonised Opposition leaders for not attending the politically-loaded pran pratishtha ceremony. The election was a contest between Ram Bhakts (devotees) and Ram drohis (traitors), claimed chief minister Adityanath, in rally after rally.
But following the political defeat in UP, Adityanath, who campaigned hard in the name of Ram, has been silent on the results as well as Ram. Why the BJP lost Ayodhya and nearby seats Ambedkar Nagar, Basti and Barabanki, the party is yet to explain to the public. The party also conceded Etah, the seat held by Rajveer Singh, the son of BJP’s OBC mascot of the Ram Mandir movement of the 1980s and 1990s Kalyan Singh. The defeat in Faizabad may have come about due to multiple factors such as the game changing decision to field a Pasi Dalit on a general seat and discontent against the government and the sitting MP, but it symbolises a bigger defeat, that of the politicisation of religion.
On June 4, in an address after the results confirmed that the NDA was in the driving seat to claim power, even if the BJP has been largely stunted in the country, Modi started his speech by chanting “Jai Jagannath”, in a clear reference to the BJP’s electoral performance in Odisha. The party won 20 out of 21 MP seats in the state and also achieved a majority in the assembly. A significant achievement, no doubt. But by disregarding UP and Ram – nothing stopped Modi from chanting Jai Shri Ram along with Jai Jagannath – he demonstrated that his relationship with Ram and Hindu faith was based on a profit-loss equation. Jagannath delivered results, but Ram rejected the BJP in his own turf. While political wisdom suggests that the BJP is not going to erase Ram from its political lexicon anytime soon, by not unequivocally condemning its supporters who are vilifying voters of Ayodhya, the party’s leadership stands guilty of facilitating such a campaign. The patronising and cynical attitude of some BJP leaders towards the voters has also come to display.
People attending Ram Temple consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22, 2023. Photo: X (Twitter)/BJP4India.
Sakshi Maharaj, BJP’s saffron-clad MP from Unnao, while talking to media expressed his unhappiness over the Faizabad result by painting the voters of Ayodhya as ungrateful.
“I have seen Ayodhya’s land become red with the blood of ram bhakts. With these hands I have carried [the bodies of] Ram bhakts. But what misfortune, the same Ayodhya today elected an SP MP!” said Maharaj.
Since the Faizabad loss, social media has been rife with casteist slurs against Prasad, a nine-time MLA, former minister and much-respected politician. Much of the hate was targeted at the Hindus of Ayodhya. Here are some of the controversial posts that the UP police have taken note of.
One social media user Amit Pandit abused Hindus of Ayodhya for not voting for the BJP. He used misogynist expletives and called for the boycott of the Ram Mandir. Another user, identified by the name Deepa Dwivedi, accused the people of being “two-faced” since the times of Ram. She even used a casteist reference against the Dhobi community to talk about Sita’s shame.
While police are probing a number of such posts, in Ghaziabad, police arrested two persons after they publicly abused voters of Faizabad in a video for not voting for the mandir. The two men, Daksh Chaudhary and Annu Chaudhary, belong to the Hindu Rakshak Dal, an extremist self-styled outfit. Daksh Chaudhary was the same person who slapped Congress candidate in Delhi Kanhaiya Kumar while he was campaigning in the election recently. In Agra, a Hindu man Dhirendra Raghav was arrested after he posted a video on Instagram abusing Hindus, while appearing in an identifiably Muslim attire and skullcap. Police said Raghav’s widely-shared video could impact communal harmony.
Senior SP leader and MLA Om Prakash Singh warnedthat the onslaught of such posts on social media against the people of Ayodhya was causing “an atmosphere of social tension in the district”. Laxmi Singh, a BJP leader from Ayodhya, also came to the rescue of Ayodhya and in a complaint to the police, said that while it was okay for people to not vote for the BJP candidate due to their “ideological differences”, it was not fair to abuse the people.
Sanjay Singh, Aam Aadmi Party MP, also took note of the abuse against Ayodhya and said that the BJP was unable to tolerate the win of a Dalit from a general seat. “I have repeatedly said this, the BJP hates Dalits,” he said on X.
Manoj Paswan, national general secretary of the SP’s student wing, wrote to the UP government demanding Z-plus security to Prasad, claiming that he was under threat as “casteist, communal and feudal forces” could not tolerate his win.
Chief priest of the Ram Mandir Acharya Satyendra Das said those who were abusing people of Ayodhya and blaming them for the election result were displaying their “foolishness”.
“They obviously do not understand the bhakti of Bhagwan Ram. Such people who view Ram only as an election issue are petty and despicable,” Das told The Wire.
The priest, who managed puja at the erstwhile makeshift temple since 1992, said it was wrong to reduce Ram to an election issue. Ram was a matter of faith, he said, underlining that in politics, winning and losing were part of the game and should not be linked to matters of enduring faith. “Ram belongs to all,” he said.
Anil Singh, a professor at the PS Saket College in Ayodhya, said he was not surprised by the way in which the right-wing ecosystem led by BJP supporters and leaders had deserted Ram soon after the results. “Ayodhya and Ram have never been an agenda of faith for the RSS-BJP. They have only been a tool for gathering and mobilising votes. They have always worked contrary to the principles and ideals of Ram,” he said.
Singh, who has followed politics over Ram in the temple-town closely, said the defeat of the BJP was in fact a defeat of Modi and not the Ram factor. “The BJP fought the election in the name of Modi, not in the name of Ram,” Singh told The Wire.
