A snub to Advani, Joshi

The Ram Mandir whose bhoomi pujan on Wednesday will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among others, can trace its roots directly back to the September 1990 Toyota yatra of then BJP chief Lal Krishna Advani, which set off a chain of events that led to one of the most infamous episodes of recent Indian history — the Babri Masjid’s demolition in December 1992, in blatant disregard of the Supreme Court’s orders, for which Mr Advani and several others are still facing trial as accused in the Babri demolition case, and on which he recorded his final deposition only last week. Given that, it’s remarkable, to say the least, that the Supreme Court-formed trust to oversee the temple’s construction did not see it fit to include Mr Advani’s name as one of the 50 VIPs invited to attend the groundbreaking ceremony on August 5 (which is, incidentally, the first anniversary of the government’s abrogation of Article 370 and Kashmir’s carving up into two Union territories). Also left out was BJP stalwart Murli Manohar Joshi, a fellow Babri accused, though two other leaders — former UP CM Kalyan Singh (under whose watch the mosque was demolished) and former Union minister Uma Bharti — did receive invitations. While, after this snub was widely reported, it is learnt Mr Advani and Mr Joshi were telephonically invited by the trust to join the ceremony via video conferencing, it’s not quite the same thing.

One must not forget the political payback the BJP got after Mr Advani’s rathyatra — from 85 Lok Sabha seats in 1989 it got 120 seats in 1991, and over three years after the mosque was razed, this rose to 161 in the 1996 election. The party got 181-182 seats in the 1998/1999 elections, putting the BJP-led NDA in power for the next six years, with Mr Advani as Atal Behari Vajpayee’s trusted deputy. But in 2013, with UPA-2 on its last legs, the veteran leader opposed Narendra Modi’s rise to the top. Seven years later, the margdarshak is still being put in his place.