NEW DELHI, 20 June 2003 — Moves by the Bharatiya Janata Party for a settlement with Muslims over the Ayodhya issue have brought opposition from both its own allies and from groups in the Sangh Parivar camp.
Some crucial allies of BJP have started questioning its attempts to “politicize” the Ayodhya issue in the name of initiating negotiations with Muslim leaders.
“Ayodhya was not included in the coalition agenda,” one coalition partner said. “The government has no authority to initiate negotiations for the sake of politicizing it for electoral gains.”
Right-wing Hindu party Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has threatened to boycott leaders who oppose the construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site. “It is a warning to leaders that either they favor construction of the Ram temple or the VHP will ensure they do not win parliamentary elections in future,” VHP international president Ashok Singhal said in Lucknow.
The BJP had recently said that talks were under way between Hindu and Muslim religious leaders to resolve the Ayodhya dispute. Some analysts have said the only reason the BJP is seeking a compromise deal is that the Ayodhya excavations have so far failed to reveal the existence of a temple at the disputed site.
Accusing the BJP of pursuing a policy of “Muslim appeasement in the name of secularism,” Singhal said: “It (the BJP) is even contemplating giving nine percent reservation (government jobs) to Muslims, which the VHP will oppose tooth and nail.”
The VHP is angry about reported proposals made by the Hindu seer (Shankaracharya) of Kanchi, Jayendra Saraswati, to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Saraswati wants Muslims to give up their claim to the controversial site in Ayodhya and in return has said that “Hindus” will give up their claim to Muslim places in Kashi and Mathura.
The stand taken by the VHP has exposed divisions within the Hindutwa camp. A VHP leader has questioned the Kanchi seer’s authority over the proposed Ram temple in Ayodhya as the latter is a Shaivite (worshiper of Hindu deities Shiva and Shakti). The VHP leader claimed that only worshipers of Hindu deity Vishnu could lay claim to controlling the proposed Ram temple.
The VHP has also refused to be convinced by media reports according to which the latest excavations carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India suggest that the Babari Masjid was built atop a mosque. This report demolishes the claim made by Hindu extremists that Babari Masjid was constructed after demolition of a temple.
Singhal said that from the way a section of media reported the on-going excavation it seemed they were on the “pay-roll of Pakistan.”
The BJP, which has close ideological links with the VHP, had risen to prominence in national level politics over the last decade on a wave of Hindu support for the temple construction campaign. But it has sought to play down its association with the campaign after coming to power in 1999 in order to avoid upsetting powerful regional allies, political observers say.
The Ayodhya imbroglio, which has defied a solution for more than five decades, revolves around a claim by Hindus that the Babri mosque was built in the northern city of Ayodyha in the 16th century by Mughul Emperor Babur after destroying a temple to mark the birthplace of their mythological warrior god Ram.
In 1992 a group of Hindu zealots pulled down the 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya which they said was built over a pre-historic temple marking the birthplace of Ram. The dispute over the ownership of the land is now in the courts, which recently ordered the excavation of the site to determine whether a Hindu shrine previously existed there.
