Will India That Is Bharat Become Ram Rajya Now?

Will BJP campaigners start using the term 'Ram Rajya' to refer to the nation under Modi's rule, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.

Social media claims, based on an official-looking post that the Lok Sabha polls can be expected on April 16 for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to obtain maximum advantage so soon after the temple consecration at Ayodhya, are patently wrong.

The Lok Sabha elections were also due around the time.

Going by what at least two Sankaracharyas had to say, it is the consecration that was fixed ahead of the polls even when the temple-work was (only) half done or not-done, which according to them was not the way to go about it.

If the given date is true -- it needs independent confirmation from the Election Commission -- the annual Ram Navami festivities, marking the birthday of the Lord under the Hindu almanac, falls a day later, on April 17.

It is another matter that parliamentary elections in the country are not a one-day match but are like a Test series, conducted in multiple phases for reasons of security and logistics.

It is the greatest of democratic celebrations the world over and as none other, anywhere.

Or, will the Election Commission, for instance, seek to experiment with the government's 'One nation, one vote' call by conducting the Lok Sabha poll on a single day across the nation?

If so, it will be a strong message, both within and outside, that there was nothing to fear from poll-related security threats anywhere in the country under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, not in the Kashmir Valley, not across the North East, starting with Manipur which faced the worst of ethnic/violence, not in the 'Naxal states and districts' in central India.

If it happens, it will be yet another feather in the cap of the government at the Centre, yes, and more so, the Election Commission.

Of course, polls in Kashmir and other snow-clad regions in the North and North West could still be held weeks later.

The nation has not attempted single-day polling since it all began in 1952.

Considering that the first two general elections in 1952 and 1957 were six-month affairs, the current pace of multi-phase polling is still creditable, given the size of the nation and population, and also the geography, topography and all the adversities that should go against a democratic exercise of the kind -- but was not allowed to take the upper hand.

That's just after the Indira Gandhi assassination in 1984 and in the very midst of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination 1991.

Every time there is this nation-wide elections in the country, paeans are sung from across the world on the greatness of the Indian democracy, and how the single largest mass of the world's poor and illiterates comprehended modern elections like fish took to water, and also underscored the people's self-importance at the centre of such a massive exercise, before long.

In all this, credit should go to the Founding Fathers, who chose multi-party democracy over a single-leader, single-system autocracy that would have fitted the post-Independence Indian street psyche well, with a king-emperor ruling all of India from Delhi, instead of distant London as used to be the case, or in the forgotten eras of the Mauryas (322-185 BCE) and Guptas (319-467 CE), respectively before and after Christ, and also the Mughals (1526-1720), but the British era beginning somewhere in between, with the latter two coming up a millennium after the exit of the Guptas.

It is another matter that 'Islamic rule' as commonly understood and accepted had commenced a couple of centuries earlier. All of them ultimately had Delhi as their capital.

The Ayodhya consecration run-up was a repeat of what all were staged all across the country ahead of the G-20 summit last year, yet once again Team Modi displayed the kind of total control they have had over the average Indian psyche and the tools thereof.

In his time, Gandhiji achieved it with his direct approach, direct reach programmes that had the finger on the pulse of the people, which none of his contemporaries of the very same freedom mould had.

Gandhi was the first Indian leader who instinctively understood as to what 'sold', if you need a corporate marketing term of our times -- and what did not sell with the masses that had been enslaved for a millennium and more.

Gandhiji chose Ahimsa, or non-violent struggle, as the nation's tool, and the British colonists did not know what hit them and how to confront them.

If he had asked the people to take to weapons and rise in revolt, the British rulers had better weapons and knew the game better -- and were also in the game of setting the rules and settling the score.

Thus for Modi-appointed government leaders like Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi -- there are others, too -- say that Netaji's ways and not Gandhiji's methods won us freedom, it just does not sell, though Netaji and others of similar goals but different weapons, too, played their roles.

The ruling Sangh Partivar's revival of the Netaji legacy now is a repeat of a half-hearted attempt of the kind targeting his native West Bengal in particular, in the run-up to elections 2019.

The greater grandeur at the time was reserved for the Sardar Patel statue in his native Gujarat -- which is also the native state of PM Modi -- but the electoral return on the political investment was not quantifiable, to say the least.

That cannot be said of the Ayodhya consecration, coming as did after the Ayodhya demolition over three decades earlier, in end-1992.

If someone thought that completely masking to the point of negating the contributions of BJP veteran L K Advani to the Ayodhya cause and also the party's electoral staying-power through his famous/infamous rath yatra ahead of the 1991 elections, now, would affect the 'Modi magic' and the party's electoral chances, that is not to be.

The older generation that either grew up during the period or was otherwise witness to the demolition has come to take the replacement of Advani with Modi as an inevitable development in their own fatalistic vision.

To the younger generation, they do not know Advani for them to be able to make the connection first, and comparison, next.

Neither missed Advani at Ayodhya, even though there was a short but heated debate on initial reports of his not being invited to the ceremony, and later declarations that the VHP had invited him and would ensure his presence without upsetting his health.

As was to be expected, in his address at Delhi's Red Fort to mark Parakram Diwas, or 'Valour Day', on January 23 -- it used to be observed as 'Netaji Jayanthi' earlier -- Modi said that the annual Republic Day celebrations have now been expanded to start from the Ayodhya consecration that he had presided over the previous day, and go all the way up to the Martyrs' Day, or Gandhiji's death anniversary, on January 30.

The earlier practice restricted the Republic Day celebrations from January 26-29, when it ended with Beating Retreat, when the armed forces would return to the barracks after obtaining the ritualistic permission from the President, who is also the Supreme Commander.

In the changed circumstances, Modi's declaration raises the question, if after deciding to use the 'Bharat' part of the nation's nomenclature in the Constitution more than the traditional 'India' part, will the BJP campaigners start using the term 'Ram Rajya' to refer to the nation under Modi's rule -- or, will they be embarrassed because it is still associated with Gandhiji's frequent usage to refer to a 'dharmic nation', where the laws would not distinguish people in the name of religion, caste, language or gender?

If so, will someone, now or post-poll, want 'India That Is Bharat' rechristened as 'Ram Rajya', the same way the 'Basic Structure' of the Constitution' , as enunciated by the Supreme Court, has been amended or side-stepped or both?

After all, 'Ram Rajya' only means the 'kingdom of god', where everything is positive and everyone is prosperous -- and, peaceful

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com