Did the media and the police play into a cynically polarising game in Ayodhya?
The timing said it all. A week after the alleged Bajrang Dal “self-defence camp” concluded on May 14, a video made its way to a TV channel. It showed Bajrang Dal activists being trained to shoot guns at mock-targets who were wearing skullcaps. While Governor Ram Naik stoked controversy by declaring there was nothing wrong in holding such camps, the state government stepped in and arrested a local Bajrang Dal “leader”, who had been largely unknown until then.
BJP leaders in the national capital brush the controversy aside. Denying that the camps were a deliberate provocation designed to polarise voters before the Uttar Pradesh election next year, a spokesman tells Outlook, “All they had was air guns and they meant no trouble. If this violates the law, the police will surely act.”
For the past 25 years or so, Karsewakpuram, in a corner of Ayodhya, has been hosting Sangh parivar volunteers, besides the artisans said to be building pillars and other parts of the Ram temple. Though most activities take place away from the media glare, the four-day camp for around 50 volunteers in a quiet corner of the sprawling five-acre complex seemed to have been designed to attract attention. In fact, the organisers got the event recorded on video, a part of which was later “leaked” to the TV channel. The video went viral on social media and the Bajrang Dal, despite its minuscule following in the state, immediately hit national and international headlines, to the delight of a section of BJP and RSS leaders.
At the other end, the Samajwadi Party government lost little time in responding to the news of the ‘arms’-training camp. The UP police swung into action and carried out raids to track down the Bajrang Dal “leaders”. Faizabad DIG V.K. Garg promptly declared, “We have arrested the local Bajrang Dal chief Mahesh Mishra under Section 153 of IPC (promoting enmity between groups and acting against communal harmony).” The FIR describes Mishra as a Bajrang Dal “leader” and mentions “50 unknown persons”. Not many in Faizabad and Ayodhya, however, seem to have known of Mishra as any sort of leader. At least not until his arrest.
Old-timers compare the sudden rise to prominence of Mishra to the 25-year-old story of the similarly sudden emergence of Vinay Katiyar as founder-president of the then little-known RSS affiliate. One of the torch-bearers of the Sangh parivar’s campaign to build a Ram temple at the site of the 16th-century Babri Majid, Katiyar went on to become an MP and became closely associated with the mosque’s demolition on December 6, 1992, triggering communal riots that took hundreds of lives.
“The arrest was uncalled for,” says RSS convenor and Karsewakpuram in-charge Sharad Sharma, calling the police action making a mountain out of a molehill. “The Karsewakpuram camp was a routine annual exercise at this time of the year to reaffirm the commitment of common people against acts of terrorism by anti-nationals and to impart basic training in dealing with such elements.”
Denying that volunteers role-playing “terrorists” were made to sport skull caps as an identifier, Sharma says, “They only tied handkerchiefs around their heads to distinguish themselves from the other side.” He agrees, though, that the controversy generated by the event has done much to raise the Bajrang Dal’s profile. “The way the whole thing was blown out of proportion has given the organisation a big fillip,” he says. “The simple exercise was not aimed at inciting communal feelings, but this action of the Samajwadi Party government will surely help the BJP immensely in building its campaign for March 2017.”
The entire drama looks like a replay of August 2013 , when the then VHP supremo Ashok Singhal and his deputy Praveen Togadia gave a call for an “84-kosi parikrama” around Ayodhya. Singhal met CM Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh at the CM’s residence for more than two hours. The duo claimed that permission was granted for the parikrama, but when it was about to start the next morning, thousands of policemen were deployed, allegedly to stall it. In effect, it was a face-saver for the duo as only a few dozen volunteers had turned up.
That drama had ended with Singhal’s arrest just as he set out for Ayodhya and Togadia’s after a prolonged hide-and-seek in the bylanes of Ayodhya. At the end of the day, both sides declared themselves the “winner”. No one would be surprised, then, if Mishra’s arrest turns out to be a repeat. Cynics point out that it helps both the BJP and the SP to feed each other’s politics of polarisation.
By Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow