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Uma Bharti is back, Hindutva is back in the BJP. Hours after she was made a party vice-president in the new BJP team that will steer the party in the Lok Sabha elections next year, the monk-politician talked Ram temple.
Ms Bharti said in an exclusive interview to NDTV that a Ram Mandir at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh was not about politics, but about faith. "No one can ignore it... it needs to be sorted and the only solution is that the temple should be constructed," she said.
The former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister said there were three ways that the Ram temple-Babri masjid dispute could be solved - through legislation, out-of-court settlement or through a judicial process.
Uma Bharti was at the heart of the BJP's campaign to build the temple at Ayodhya, which the party had successfully turned into an election issue in the 1990s. She was prominently present when the Babri mosque was brought down by kar sevaks or volunteers on December 6, 1992.
After it came to power at the Centre and under the leadership of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the most moderate face of the right-wing party, the BJP's electoral strategy shifted from Hindutva to development and good governance, and once back in the Opposition, to issues like corruption. The Ram temple, once at the core of the BJP's election promises, was relegated to the inside pages of its manifesto.
These years also saw the BJP increasingly estranged from other affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which accused the party of abandoning the Ram temple issue.
Early this year, the RSS ordered that the Hindutva agenda be cautiously rekindled, much to the chagrin of some top BJP leaders who believe the party has moved on to more relevant issues.
But at the massive Kumbh mela in February, BJP president Rajnath Singh was duly present as the VHP announced a new campaign to demand the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya. That Hindutva and the Ram temple will get prominence in the BJP's election campaign for 2014 has been made clear by the inclusion in key posts of leaders like Ms Bharti, the 32-year-old Varun Gandhi, and hardliner Vinay Katiyar.
In the years when the BJP was in power at the Centre, Uma Bharti was a minister, before she was handed the task of dislodging the well-entrenched Digvijaya Singh of the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. Ms Bharti did that successfully to become Chief Minister of the state. But a court case forced her out of the position and she was later expelled from the party for disciplinary issues.
She attempted to strike out on her own and even floated her own party, but failed to make a mark. She was vocally grateful when the BJP took back its prodigal in 2011.