SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Building temples in the air

"I can fight you," P V Narasimha Rao proclaimed in his last major speech in Parliament, "but I cannot fight Lord Rama." Rajesh Pilot, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, and Mulayam Singh Yadav are perfectly willing and capable of taking on both.

Pilot, speaking on behalf of the Congress, solemnly accused the A B Vajpayee government of standing by even as work on 1,000 pillars was almost complete. This is completely bogus as any student of Indian culture would know without even needing to visit Ayodhya.

Temples are built according to rules prescribed in ancient shastras. A 1,000-pillared temple simply doesn't exist in the north Indian textbook. (Of course, in the south there have been cases of thousand-pillar mandapams.) And the proposed temple, as various pictures and three-dimensional models demonstrate, is well and truly in the time-honoured nagari style of north India.

For Pilot's benefit, there will be only 212 pillars as and when the temple is built. And only 36 of these are ready right now, with 32 more in various stages of completion. So much for Pilot's shrill charges.

But why was Pilot raising such wild charges just now? Even granted that he knows nothing of Indian tradition, shouldn't he at least know the history of the temple? Congressmen may forget it rather conveniently, but December 6, 1992 was merely a milepost along the way, not the beginning of the road.

The shilanyas ceremony was performed in 1989. For the benefit of a Congress suffering from amnesia, the prime minister at the time was Rajiv Gandhi and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh too was a Congressman.

Work on the prefabricated pillars began in Rajasthan in 1990. As the Left Front, the Janata Dal, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the rest of the rag-tag bunch may recall, the prime minister of the time was V P Singh. The Union home minister was Mufti Mohammed Sayeed -- the man who set free terrorists to save his daughter's skin.

Given all this, aren't the Opposition parties waking up very late in the day? Or does Ayodhya become an issue simply because they have nothing else to complain about?

Frankly, it seems clear that raising the issue was malice, pure and simple. Do you seek proof of that assertion? Well, consider this: when the same questions were asked of the United Front, no Congressman or Communist saw fit to exercise his or her lungs quite as much!

Mere months ago, Indrajit Gupta, speaking as the Union home minister, told Parliament that whatever little work was going on could not be stopped as it didn't violate any laws. He added that the government of India wouldn't permit construction on the actual site as long as the matter was before the courts.

That is precisely what his successor in the home ministry, L K Advani told the Lok Sabha. But the Opposition found a new ground to attack the BJP. "Your assurances are meaningless," they said. "You also gave similar assurances before December 6, 1992."

Is it just my imagination or is the level of public debate really falling? Sonia Gandhi called Atal Bihari Vajpayee a "liar" at a public meeting, but she was foreign both to Indian culture and to parliamentary practice. But there is no excuse for the heavyweights on the Opposition benches. Do they really know what kind of a precedent they are setting when they try to shout down ministers, loudly accusing them of bad faith?

Actually, the mess seemed to have more to do with the desperation of the Opposition than anything else. Some, such as Arjun Singh are dying to get back into Parliament. Others, such as Surjeet and his beloved Mulayam Singh Yadav, miss the perks of office. Yadav can't fly around at taxpayers' expense any longer!

The Congress Working Committee seriously debated whether the party should try to pull down the government on the issue. Almost everybody but Arjun Singh opposed the idea. At this point, Arjun Singh suggested writing a letter. The rest is history...

But the prime minister's comprehensive reply settled the issue, and Sonia Gandhi prudently decided to draw back. But it isn't just the Samajwadi Party and the Left Front that are unhappy with the Congress president.

The Americans too are upset that an assertive government hasn't been overthrown. Communists hand-in-hand with Americans -- now there's a pretty picture for you! And we can get to see it in all its ugly details when Parliament is reconvened in July.

T V R Shenoy