A temple amid pandemic

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar hit the nail on the head when he said some people think the Coronavirus will go away after the temple is constructed, referring to the reports that the Ram Janmabhubhi Mandir Trust is planning to launch the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya from August 3 to 5 and that it was planning to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the event. According to Mr Pawar, eradication of the Coronavirus must be the priority of the government.

A seasoned politician, Mr Pawar knows how parties set their agenda. He has also seen how pandemic Covid-19 has left Indians in misery. The nation is facing some of the most serious challenges it has encountered since independence — the Coronavirus, the economic disruption it has caused and the Chinese aggression on the border, and all of them are visiting the nation simultaneously. These are no simple threats; each one is so lethal it can derail the nation’s progress. Together, their firepower multiplies manifold. It calls for building a national consensus if India were to survive the triple assault and come out victorious. A government worth the name would be concentrating on building it; for the lack of it could see us a fragmented, defeated people. It is not a surprise that a seasoned politician like Mr Pawar can see through the design of the ruling dispensation foisting the temple project as a façade to save its ineptness in rising up to the challenge.

Several crucial Assembly elections are scheduled in the coming months, to start with the one in Bihar in November, and followed by those in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. A government that has not yet shown the grit to address serious national issues would find a comfortable cover in the temple project. All that Mr Pawar has done is to call it out.