Cover Story

MEN OF THE MOMENT Praveen Togadia Ramchandra Das Paramhans Sorabjee: Fall Guy GUEST COLUMNS G.M.Banatwalla Tarun Vijay Prakash Karat

When the Shankaracharya's Muslim interlocutors rejected his proposal, the man himself went back to Kanchi and quietude. Paramhans ended up looking silly. He had committed himself fruitlessly to a court judgement and had been further outdone by the Supreme Court's "keep the status quo" ruling. For his predicament, Paramhans blamed Singhal. Singhal blamed the prime minister.

Sections of the Sangh continue to feel the Government was simply too laidback in its response to the Shankaracharya's plan. The VHP and its affiliates had, for the first time, categorically affirmed that they would abide by even an adverse court ruling in the principal property dispute. In effect, they said they would allow the Babri Masjid to be rebuilt if they lost the legal battle. They felt Vajpayee should have "sold this sacrifice politically". If the Government had put its propaganda might behind the Shankaracharya, the critics contend, the Hindu case would have been rendered morally stronger. In constantly accommodating its allies, its natural Hindu impulses had been blunted.

RESTIVE LOT: kar sevaks demanding a Ram temple before the March 13 ruling

The point is debatable but having been pushed to the backfoot, the VHP needs to point fingers. At a press conference in Delhi on the evening of the Supreme Court ruling, Praveen Togadia, international general secretary of the VHP, made at least four references to how his organisation was not allied to any political party and was not for or against any party. The implication was obvious: the BJP has let us down and we will play hardball. The agitation would now be not for nominal ceremonies but for a full-fledged Ram temple on the former location of the Babri Masjid.

Till late on March 14, the Vajpayee team was trying to douse the flames. Vajpayee and Home Minister L.K. Advani met senior RSS leaders Madan Das Devi and H.V. Seshadri, asking them to prevail upon the VHP to lie low for 10 weeks, till the Supreme Court heard the "symbolic puja" petition again.

In Ayodhya, Navneet Sehgal, an IAS officer posted in Lucknow, was rushed in to sweet talk Paramhans. He met him three times, on the final occasion talking with the old man in the company of Faizabad MP Vinay Katiyar. Sehgal had apparently got to know Paramhans quite well in his earlier stint as Faizabad district magistrate. His brief: cajole Paramhans not to precipitate matters. On March 15, Shatrughan Singh, an official in the PMO's Ayodhya cell, was sent as Delhi's emissary. At the eleventh hour Paramhans settled for a shila daan to the official receiver outside the acquired area.

The BJP itself was in two minds. The Cabinet was anything but a collective voice on the Ayodhya affair. The BJP ministers wanted a softer approach. Vajpayee wasn't as VHP-friendly. Other than non-BJP ministers, he drew support from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan, ironically Advani's understudy during the 1990 rath yatra. As a cabinet member confessed, the fabled Vajpayee-Advani telepathy had vanished, at least on the topic of Ayodhya. The strains had reappeared, with talk of Advani opting out acquiring renewed currency.

PRIDE OF PLACE: "Defending Ayodhya is like defending Bharat.Like unfurling the tricolour over the regained Tiger Hills"

Backbencher MPs like Yogi Adityanath, arrested in his Gorakhpur constituency for trying to travel to Ayodhya, were defiant. After the court ruling, about 25 of them (mostly BJP members but some from the Shiv Sena) left for Lucknow en route to Ram country. "I am what I am today because of the Ayodhya issue," said Jaibhan Singh Pawaiya, Gwalior MP and former Bajrang Dal president, "On any given day, I would prefer to take a tortuous route to Ayodhya than a smoother way to Parliament." Added Swami Chinmayanand, MP from Jaunpur: "We will be participating in the VHP programme in Ayodhya. If stopped on the way, we will court arrest."

With various saffron bodies-Sangh Parivar is a useful shorthand but there is rarely one unified operational dynamic-gritting their teeth, the question is: is Vajpayee's regime in danger? A 20-25 member ginger group within the BJP is too small to destabilise the Government and, as one MP emphasises, "all protest has so far been within the limits of discipline". There are whispers that even the RSS, which has periodically lent a helping hand like when it brought in the Shankaracharya, is reaching the end of its patience with Vajpayee's "indifference" to key considerations. Proto-dissident MPs were waiting to assess the semiotics of an RSS conclave in Bangalore on March 15.

Obviously the VHP is more anxious for a knock-out blow. One of its leaders talks of the tension within the BJP coming to a head "in a matter of days". That timing may be overoptimistic but the fact is the BJP, the biggest component of the NDA, is cantankerous, confused and at war with itself. Its ability to control its smaller coalition partners has been severely compromised. In such circumstances it may take only a minor accident to spell finis, for Mr Vajpayee to say "Ram Ram" to 7 Race Course Road.

-with Lakshmi Iyer