advertisement
Orange flags flutter across Ayodhya on the eve of the day that changed the course of history. The ‘temple town’ had embraced saffron much before Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) came to power.
Exactly 50 years ago, Ayodhya had elected B Kishore, a candidate of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, which has been the political arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the precursor to the BJP.
The Babri mosque was destroyed on 6 December 1992, leading to riots and claiming the lives of at least 2,000 people. Twenty-five years after its demolition, the Supreme Court heard the long due Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute on 5 December.
As per a report in The New Indian Express, the members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) are all set to mark 6 December as Shaurya Diwas, even decorating their office with saffron flags and banners.
But, did you know that Ayodhya had donned saffron long before the BJP’s lotus blossomed there?
Over the past half a century, the Jan Sangh and the BJP have won the Ayodhya seat nine times, the Congress has won it three times, while the Janata dal and the Samajwadi Party have won the seat only once each.
In the year 1967, Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s (BJS) candidate Kishore had defeated an independent candidate B Singh. In 1969, Congress marked its presence the town as their candidate defeated Ram Narain Tripathi, Bharatiya Kranti Dal’s (BKD) candidate.
It was in 1991 that BJP’s Lallu Singh won the seat of the temple town and he retained it in 1993,1996, 2002 and 2007. Singh then got elected to Lok Sabha from Faizad.
It is evident that the Ram movement helped the saffron party BJP to tighten its hold over Ayodhya. There was a time when people referred to Ayodhya as BJP’s ‘gadh’. According to an Outlook report, the then Uttar Pradesh’s BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi had referred to the Ram Rath Yatra as a political-religious march.
It was only in 2012 that the BJP lost its hold over the temple town as Samajwadi Party’s Tej Narayan Pandey defeated their candidate Lallu Singh. However, the saffron party reclaimed the crown again in 2017. Tej Narayan Pandey was defeated by Ved Prakash Gupta by a very small margin.
(With inputs from PTI, The New Indian Express and Outlook.)
(Breathe In, Breathe Out: Are you finding it tough to breathe polluted air? Join hands with FIT to find #PollutionKaSolution. Send in your suggestions to fit@thequint.com or WhatsApp @ +919999008335)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)