Ground is fast slipping under the feet of Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav who is now chanting the raga of BJP and RSS and supporting the construction of Ram Temple at Ramjanambhoomi in Ayodhya.
“BJP’s manifesto on Ayodhya is also on Samajwadi Party’s wish list. Ram Mandir can be constructed at the Ramjanambhoomi site under the constitutional and legal frame work,” said Akhilesh which political analysts are construing as an admission that Muslim and Dalit card might not work against the Modi wave currently sweeping across the length and breadth of the country.
While addressing election rally at Ayodhya on Friday, Akhilesh Yadav has tried to invent a new narrative for his party which many Muslims in the state of Uttar Pradesh view as a party sympathetic to them. It’s also symptomatic of the nervousness in the ranks of Samajwadi Party. Unsure of its castiest policies and minority appeasement, Akhilesh does not want to leave anything to chance.
Not quite long age, on the eve of the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh in December 2015, when a minister of state in Akhilesh’s government, Omprakash Nehra, had appealed to Muslims to perform kar-sewa at Ayodhya in the construction of Ram Temple, he was summarily sacked in no time by Akhilesh Yadav, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. But it seems, within a short political span of three years, Akhilesh has changed tracks and singing rhymes in praise of Lord Rama.
The present stance adopted is quite a departure from the actual DNA of the party which was formed by his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who earned the sobriquet of Maulana for his Muslim appeasement and caste-based politics. Maulana Mulayam Singh Yadav, as he was popularly known in the political circles, was then the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, when the order was issued to fire upon the Hindu religious volunteers who were staging a procession for the construction of Ram Janmbhoomi in Ayodhya, on October 30 and November 2 in 1990. The firings killed as many as 16 unarmed ‘kar sewaks’, which included Kothari brothers from Kolkata, who were, if witnesses are to be believed, dragged out of a house, where they had sought refuge, and shot dead.
Bahajun Samaj Party Supremo Mayawati has not reacted to the utterances of Akhilesh’s latest off-shoot, but given the doctrine of ‘political opportunism’ she follows, her serene silence is expected. Completely drenched in caste and its divisive politics, it will be bemusing to watch Mayawati agreeing to Akhilesh’s latest rhetoric on Ram Mandir, wooing upper castes and trying to breach into BJP’s votebank.
The silence of the Lutyens Media on Akhilesh Yadav’s changed tracks and his opportunistic shift of stance comes as no surprise. The Leftist media, otherwise quite vocal on most minor issues, are maintaining a deathly silence.
