As the date for the opening of the Ram temple in Ayodhya draws close, the politics over it is intensifying. The BJP, as expected, is making every effort to draw political mileage out of it. It is political naivete to expect a political party, especially one as astute as the BJP, not to celebrate and lay claim over the Ram Mandir movement. There’s been some angst expressed by opposition parties over the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) politicising the Ram temple. Such criticism ignores the fact that the temple in Ayodhya would not have existed if the BJP, then under LK Advani, had not made it a political issue. Controversial since the late 1800s – the first major legal challenge to the Babri mosque came in 1885 – it was the BJP’s adoption of the Ram Janmabhoomi issue that propelled the idea of a temple in Ayodhya into the national mainstream.
In turn, it helped revive the fortunes of a party whose performance in the Lok Sabha elections of 1984 suggested imminent extinction. The BJP has literally grown into a major political party, riding over the Ram Mandir issue. Therefore it is quite obvious that it will try to take maximum credit for it. The opposition should stop bickering over this issue and concentrate on cornering the ruling BJP on other issues. Religious politics is the domain of the BJP and they are good at using it for electoral gain. The opposition parties should try to avoid religious issues and take up those issues that matter to the public in the true sense.