With the fervour of the grand inauguration of the Ram Temple on January 22 gripping the nation, it is inevitable that the national mood dominates the political discourse.
Visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the swish Maharishi Valmiki International Airport that is embellished with panels from Ramayana; social media posts about a pilot greeting passengers on the inaugural flight from Delhi to Ayodhya with an evocative "Jai Shri Ram"; or the passengers chorusing the Hanuman Chalisa have built strong sentiment for the Ram temple in the past week. So strong that a mainstream political party like the Congress realises it has little option but to go with popular sentiment. Regardless of where it stands in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, the Congress has decided to either get in sync with the national mood or face extinction.
If Modi and the BJP are catering to the Hindus, the Congress realises that the Hindus in India too have a vote and it may lose the support of the majority community in the North if it is not seen as endorsing the Ram temple. As such, the party is viewed negatively for obstructing the construction of the Ram temple for several decades. Staying away from the inauguration after being invited could be bad optics, or even bring "misfortune", warned Congress insider Acharya Pramod Krishnam. That is perhaps why the Congress finally shed its ambivalence and some of its leaders and even Chief Ministers came forward to publicly declare their devotion to Bhagwan Ram. What also spurred them was the suggestion that Rae Bareli MP and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi may attend the Ram temple event. Congress leaders asserted that for the Ram temple opening, someone from the Nehru-Gandhi family had to be present. As an MP from Rae Bareli, Sonia Gandhi would be best advised to accept the invite - never mind what her partners in the I.N.D.I.A bloc, like the Trinamool Congress, the DMK or the Left Parties may say.
"Only we have a political stake in North India. None of the INDIA allies have any stake in the Hindu votes in north India," pointed out a Congress leader. After all, it was the party's Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister, who opened the locks of Babri Masjid in 1985. Party sources also admitted that Sam Pitroda's views on the Ram Temple were out of sync with today's India and had boomeranged on him, forcing the party to officially distance itself from his views. Now that the Ram Mandir Teerth Kshetra Trust has made it clear that Sonia Gandhi has been invited as the Congress parliamentary party chairperson and siblings Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra ostensibly do not qualify based on its criteria, it is likely that she will attend the event.
As the word went out, leaders from the north, like former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Himachal Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu announced their devotion to Lord Ram. Mr Sukhu declared that he would attend the "Pran Pratistha programme" or the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya even though he hasn't received any invite. Hooda declared that the building of the Ram Temple is "great news for the country". He didn't stop at that; he went on to assert that the doors of "the sacred place" were first opened by Rajiv Gandhi.
It is not just in the north that the Ram temple is viewed as an emotive issue, Congress leaders in the South too discern its spiritual value for Hindus. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, describing the Ram temple construction as "good news", said: "We are not against the issue of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir... we are not against building a temple either. We are in favour of the Ram Mandir."
With Siddaramaiah taking care of Karnataka, the challenge for the Congress mainly comes from states like West Bengal, Bihar and Kerala which have a sizeable Muslim population. In Kerala, the party has a serious problem in tackling its ally IUML. The non-committal stance of the Congress towards the Ram temple invite has already been criticised by a prominent Muslim outfit of clerics SAMASTHA, closely aligned with the IUML. Now the IUML has openly warned the Congress against falling for the BJP's trap. It has also praised the CPI (M) for spurning the invitation. Kerala has a Muslim population of 27 per cent (2011 census) and the community is a decisive vote bank in many constituencies, including Wayanad, which is represented by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. It is this vote bank that forces the mainstream political parties in the state - the Congress and CPM - to often adopt a stance of Muslim appeasement. Interestingly, in spite of this push for appeasement, Congress leader Deepa Dasmunshi, at a meeting of the party's Kerala leaders recently, brushed aside their advice on how the party leadership should not participate in the temple inauguration. In a clear snub to Kerala leaders, Dasmunshi made it clear that any decision on attending the inauguration would be taken by the All India Congress Committee. Some restive leaders like party MP K Muraleedharan have kept up the pressure by airing their own views about how the party should keep off the event. Anxious about his own Lok Sabha seat, the MP went on to oppose PM Modi inaugurating the temple on the ground that we are a "secular nation".
With PM Modi reaching out to Christians in Kerala -- proof of it was the success of his Thrissur roadshow - the Congress realises it cannot afford to annoy Muslims.
It is already the first week of January. It's odd that Congress managers should still play with the Ram sentiment and not confirm whether Sonia Gandhi will attend the January 22 event. It is not clear if the party is still looking over its shoulder for some validation of its mandir move from the RJD in Bihar or the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh - the two parties that could be crucial to its electoral fortunes in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the Hindi heartland.
(Lakshmi Iyer is a journalist who has been covering politics for four decades in Delhi & Mumbai.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.