As we bid farewell to 2023, time to understand politics !! Ram Temple is more than a 'temple' .... because it also symbolises BJP's way of keeping their promise, and it matters to Indian voters.

(There is a strong opinion in the country that the Indian opposition parties particularly the Congress never ever thought that 'this moment' -- the consecration ceremony of Ram temple on January 22, 2024 -- is going to come true. The Congress party perhaps believed it loud and clear that the Ram Mandir will never happen in Ayodhya.

And they were almost proved right as they never thought the BJP will ever come to power with more than 300 MPs elected in the Lok Sabha.  Thus, they opposed the Temple, played it to gallery vis-a-vis Muslim vote bank and anti-Hindu politics and are today stumped.) 

Ayodhya's grand Ram Temple has a nationwide link....it links to people's emotions, it links to Godhra's train burning, it also links to entertainment world and Hindi cinema 'Bombay' starring Manisha Koirla - who plays a Muslim protagonist falling in love with a Hindu played by Arvind Swamy....

Many may not remember, Ram Temple movement also links to exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin as she had lampooned at Muslim fundamentalism in a crude manner, penned her book 'Lajja (Shame)' around the same time and she was 'ousted' out of her motherland !! 

Above all -- the Ram temple movement links to double standards of 'secular'  polity and intellectual elites of India and also the politics and the changing social dynamics. 

Ram temple proves -- BJP delivers what it promises "unlike other parties" .... and and it matters to Indian voters.

Today, Ram Temple is at the top of the list of 'Modi's Guarantee' -- which has been delivered. It does not merely appeal to Hindus only.

The BJP leaders talk about supply of free foodgrains to 81 crore people, ensuring Covid vaccination, electricity, better roads, toilets for poor, houses and even making the Article 370 a thing of the past !!

This is where Narendra Modi is far ahead of any of his competitors and even Rahul Gandhi - who inherited the leadership and continues to hold it notwithstanding his past failures.  

The NDA government also says out of the 2.31 crore houses built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, 31 per cent were allocated in 25 minority-dominated areas, 33 per cent beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi were minorities and out of the nine crore beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, 37 per cent were from the minority communities. 

Taslima 

Take a closer look at how certain things unfolded in India in the name of Sickularism and the need to protect the so-called Muslim/minorities.  

** There were violence reported in Kolkata in 2007. Reacting to the situation, CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose said -- Taslima Nasrin should leave West Bengal. 

"I don't want to speak elaborately on the role played by the Centre on Taslima Nasreen's stay in West Bengal. But if her stay creates a problem for peace, she should leave the state," CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose had told reporters. Notably, UPA government was in power in the centre and the communists were extending outside support. 

2007 ::: 

At least 50 people were injured in Kolkata after the protests against Nasreen, as well as the killings of villagers blamed on supporters of the communist-led state government in a battle over using farming land for industry. "She told us that she was leaving for Jaipur by a late afternoon flight and we had no objections," Gautam Mohan Chakraborty, police chief in Kolkata, said.

Some radical Muslims hate Nasreen for saying Islam and other religions oppress women. Muslim clerics issued a "death warrant" against her in August 2007. 

Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had "deliberately and maliciously" hurt Muslims' religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel "Lajja", or "Shame", which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus.

'Bombay' was the 1995 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by Mani Ratnam, starring Arvind Swamy and Manisha Koirala. 

It was also released in Hindi.

The film tells the story of an inter-religious family in Bombay before and during the Bombay riots, which took place between December 1992 and January 1993 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid led to religious tensions between Hindu and Muslim communities.  

Uddhav Thackeray could be sitting in alliance with communists, Congress and other 'sickular' parties as part of I.N.D.I alliance. Paradoxically, there is scene with Tinnu Anand (depicted as the then Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray) is seen instigating the riots, and in another, he regrets the entire incident. 

The media reports of the time said --- Bal Thackeray's reaction (real world off the screen) to the second scene that surprised many including filmmaker Mani Ratnam.

Bal Thackeray had objected that he was 'portrayed to be repenting' his actions, and he insisted he "regrets absolutely nothing" about his involvement. Do not forget Sena supremo had said famously, :"If my Sainiks had demolished Babri Masjid, I am  proud of them".

In contrast, BJP stalwart L K Advani had offered to resign as the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha. 

Now, take another turn....  

Veteran BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani, at the peak of his career in the 1990s, led the controversial ‘Rath Yatra’ from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. His Rath Yatra never reached Ayodhya as it was stopped in Bihar and he was arrested. However, Advani’s name was inseparably tied to the Ram temple issue and this also kicked off BJP's growth as a political party to reckon with. 

The Rath Yatra began on September 25, 1990. Advani travelled in a modified chariot, or "rath," throughout the journey, addressing massive crowds along the way and advocating for the construction of the Ram temple.

In 2004 after the ouster of the Vajpayee government, Advani had said, “For the BJP, participation in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was not prompted by religiosity. 

We were angered by the duplicity and double-standards of then Congress government and used the occasion to initiate a much-needed debate on secularism in India."

“I believe our relentless assault on what we called pseudo-secularism proved a much-needed corrective. It set the ground rules for an even-handed approach to issues affecting religious communities.”

He said the Ayodhya movement proved a very effective antidote to attempts to fragment Hindu society along antagonistic caste lines.

“I believe the phenomenal growth of the BJP between 1989 and 1996 owed a great deal to our support for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. For us, Ayodhya will always remain a potent symbol of a national awakening,” the former Deputy Prime Minister had said.

“The urge for a Ram Janmabhoomi temple united Hindus. The fruition of that dream will bring all Indians together. The Ram temple in Ayodhya will be a vibrant symbol of a strong, prosperous and harmonious India,” Advani said.

In August 2020, Advani called the foundation-laying ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya a “historic and emotional day” for him.

Of course this is also linked ::: 2010 publication