Euphoria of the Ram Mandir will continue till the Lok Sabha elections

The mool muhurt for the consecration of the temple will all be of 84 seconds.

The Ram idol consecration is now by all accounts at the core of the poll template of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Lok Sabha elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the ball rolling for the grand celebrations of the consecration of the Ram idol from his December 30 Ayodhya visit. In the course of the next 23 days, the PM brought the Ram Temple to the centre of the discourse in the country.

The PM had laid the foundation stone of the Ram Temple in 2020 at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was raging globally. In about three and a half years, he has become central to the consecration ceremony, which is popularly also called the inauguration of the Ram Temple. The BJP has had several marathon meetings to lay the blueprint of the party’s efforts to ensure that the Ram Temple wind keeps blowing in all parts of the country until the Lok Sabha elections.

Ram Mandir And 2024 Polls

In one crucial day-long meeting a few months ago, which was attended by the party top brass, the sole agenda of the meeting was to strategise on ways to bring the Ram Temple to the centre of the electoral narrative. The BJP decided that the outreach to people linked to the Ram Temple will have to continue till March.

By extending the outreach till March, the BJP clearly visualised the temple plank being pushed to the doors of the Lok Sabha elections. This necessitated chalking out a host of programmes to broaden the outreach.

These included the likes of the Kalash Yatra, Ayodhya Darshan, Mandir Deep Jyoti, distributing booklets among the people on the history of the Ram temple movement, and reaching out to the people to sport the Ram flag at their houses and vehicles. Sangh Parivar volunteers also conducted household visits to deliver the poojit akshat (sacred rice).

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Besides, the BJP unveiled a 'Gaon Chalo' campaign as part of the party's bid to go to the rural parts of the country. The BJP functionaries spearheaded temple cleaning drives also on the direction of the PM. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad separately carried out a host of programmes such as 'Shaheed Naman' to pay homage to the Kar Sewaks who had died during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

In the last year of his tenure as the president of the BJP, Amit Shah had set out a goal that the party should aim for 50 percent and more votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at the top of the agenda of the party organisation. Facing the combined might of the Opposition in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the possibility of the opposition uniting before 2024 heightened the importance of the 50 percent goal. The party had largely came out unscathed in 2019 but the tally of the Lok Sabha seat tally came down from 71 to 62.

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The Opposition bloc, the Indian National Developmental and Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), is seeking to replicate the 2019 UP template at the national level. In this backdrop, it was pertinent for the BJP to sharpen the personality-centric election agenda for the Lok Sabha elections. Thus, the BJP further pushed the party's efforts to strengthen “Brand Modi” in its activities by spotlighting the PM in the Assembly elections recently.

New Media’s Role

A few months ago, the BJP through an outreach had called several of the ‘new media’ content developers for an extensive conclave in Goa. The content developers with a massive following got together with a senior BJP functionary steering the show. This was followed by several meetings with them at the respective state levels. This set in motion online programmes to charge up the ‘new media’ content developers to sharpen the Ram Temple political template of the party.

Within a short span of time, the ‘new media’ content developers have produced an avalanche of viral videos on Ayodhya. They have particularly been focused to let the common people speak for Modi and the Ram Temple. The BJP believes that the viral impact of the videos will only gain more strength in the coming months.

Talking Up Cultural Nationalism

The Ram Mandir construction also feeds into BJP’s cultural nationalism discourse. This becomes significant with the BJP leaders pushing the narrative of the “500 years long” struggle for the Ram Temple.

Positioning Modi at the core of the people coming victorious out of the “500 years long” struggle for the Ram Temple is designed to help the party stand at the vanguard of a renaissance, which also includes other elements like India’s rising stature in geopolitics. Thus the Ram Mandir becomes central to the BJP’s claim that the religious fervour is in sync with India’s onward march in political, economic and strategic realms. The party's plank of cultural nationalism in the Lok Sabha elections is thus not just showcased as empty rhetoric but a host of concrete achievements.

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By banking on ‘Brand Modi’ and a broadening of BJP’s appeal among the new electoral constituencies, the BJP is clearly hoping that the party will strike gold even in territories unexplored so far to hold on to its current strength of the 300-plus Lok Sabha seats.

The BJP, thus, is embedding Modi’s welfarism in the party’s Ram Temple outreach by pressing all its wings in consonance with the affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to go full steam in their mass outreach.

Manish Anand is a senior Delhi-based journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.