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The ghost of Ayodhya haunts Varanasi

Twenty-two years after the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and 12 years after the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, their ghost is haunting Varanasi, thanks to Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha seat from this religious city of Hindus.

Varanasi, also known as Kashi and Benares, is a sacred city of the Hindus. A pilgrimage to this oldest living city is considered mandatory for devout Hindus. To be cremated here is believed to lead to salvation of the soul. The famous Kashi Vishwanath temple of Hindu deity Shiva is situated here adjoining the contentious Gyan Vapi mosque.

No wonder, Kashi has been on top of the agenda of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) next only to Ayodhya, where in the 16th century Muslim ruler Babar had constructed a mosque after demolishing a temple at the birth place of Hindu deity Rama.

After the Babari mosque in Ayodhya was pulled down on December 6, 1992 by a frenzied mob of the BJP and its ally Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists, they announced to take up a similar campaign for freeing the temples of Hindu deities Shiva in Kashi and Krishna in Mathura.

The ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ (birth place of Hindu deity Ram) campaign launched in 1990 by BJP leader L K Advani, who undertook a journey from Somnath to Ayodhya, paid rich electoral dividends for the BJP which came to power in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and its candidate S C Dixit, former chief of the state police, winning the election from Varanasi.

Since then, the BJP has won in all the subsequent Lok Sabha elections, except in 2004 when the Congress party candidate got elected. “The BJP, however, was not successful in retaining the dominant position it had acquired in UP in the 1996 and 1998-99 elections. In the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls the BJP could win only 10 out of the 80 seats in UP,” points out Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat. “Till the Ayodhya movement of the early 1990s, Varanasi had been outside the influence of communal forces. Secular political forces were dominant in the city and the neighbouring rural areas,” he said.

He said the turning point came in 1991 when just two days before polling for the Lok Sabha elections, communal violence broke out in the city resulting in the death of ten persons and injuries to over 100. Muslim weavers had suffered the most. Karat said this violence dealt a serious blow to the age-old relations between Muslims and Hindus living in the city.

With Narendra Modi throwing his hat into the electoral ring from Varanasi, his supporters have begun fanning anti-Muslim feelings with a view to rallying the Hindu votes. This is being done through door-to-door campaign in the narrow bylanes of the crescent-shaped city along the left bank of the river Ganga.

Simultaneously, a concerted campaign is on to deify Modi by coining catchy phrase like Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi, a take off on the common way of greeting in Varanasi: Har Har Mahadev.

Modi supporters were stopped by the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat from spreading this slogan after the Shankaracharya of Dwarka, Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati took strong objection to this attempt to compare Modi with Hindu deity Shiva.

The extend of impact of such a propaganda on the psyche of a section of voters in Varanasi can be gauged from the statement by Vinodanand Tiwari, a professor of Russian at the Banaras Hindu University who says, “Only Modi can save this country from the anti-national, terrorist activities of Muslims.” He cites the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat saying, “The Muslims were taught a lesson and since then there have been no riots.”

With Aam Aadmi Party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal deciding to challenge Modi, the BJP has begun targeting him.

BJP supporters threw black ink and eggs on Kejriwal and his team members during his road-show in the city on March 25. This gave Kejriwal’s image as a fighter a big boost in the eyes of secular forces in general and among Muslims in particular.

Local workers of all left parties, including the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Forward Bloc have decided to campaign for Kejriwal, ignoring their own party leadership’s diktat.

Muslims, who have suffered in the violence that erupted during and after the Hindu deity Ram Janmabhoomi campaign by the BJP, too have decided to vote for Kejriwal. “We won’t repeat the mistake of voting for Mukhtar Ansari, a prominent leader of our community, in the last election because it helped the BJP candidate Murli Manohar Joshi win,” said Ateeq Qureshi, the leader of weavers’ community.

Mukhtar Ansari had come second in the last elections, polling over 1,60,000 votes. He is in jail, facing a murder charge.