As the grand consecration ceremony at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya concluded on Monday and the Bharatiya Janata Party seemed successful in creating an atmosphere of jubilation in many parts of the country including metro cities like Mumbai, the question many political observers are now asking is about how the Ram Mandir issue will affect voters outside the north Indian cow-belt states. The BJP did very well in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in the last Lok Sabha polls and it is obvious that the mandir issue will work towards consolidating that majority which is crucial for the party in the 2024 polls, but it is also very critical for the party to do well in large states like Maharashtra which send 48 seats to the Lok Sabha and perhaps is the deciding factor in whether the party gets a clear majority in the house. This is perhaps the reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen repeatedly visiting this politically key state in the past weeks .
Historically Maharashtra has been a state that swings one way or the other in its voting pattern. But it is not predictable like some other states. Traditionally the state has been firm in its voting pattern one way or the other. In the 2019 polls Maharashtra went almost completely in favour of the Narendra Modi-led BJP and gave it a clear majority enabling the party to win over 300 seats in the Lok Sabha but in the distant past the state has given favourable voting pattern for the Congress party. During the Rajiv Gandhi era and even during Dr Manmohan Singh's tenure Maharashtra showed a clear tilt in Congress' favour and when in 2019 NCP founder Sharad Pawar set up the Maha Vikas Aghadi ( MVA) political front, it seemed like the BJP would face a formidable challenge in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in the state. However after Eknath Shinde broke away from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar too split with uncle Sharad Pawar to join the BJP, now the Lok Sabha equation looks very unpredictable in the state.
This brings us to the question, how Maharashtra is likely to politically react to the Ram Mandir consecration. Ram Mandir was one of the points in the BJP's manifesto for decades and the party now feels it deserves the credit for putting it on a track towards completion of construction. Will Maharashtra's 48 seats get affected because of this and will the BJP get any benefit because of this week's event in Ayodhya?
It is very obvious that the BJP has been very successful in creating the hype and the atmosphere it wanted around the Ayodhya event and that has put the Opposition Congress party as well as Sharad Pawar's NCP in a bit of a fix. Many leaders of the Congress or NCP were seen this week visiting Ram temples in their own town and putting those images on social media in an attempt to portray that they are not "anti-Hindu"! It became clear that the BJP was successful in setting the agenda and making others follow it. However on two fronts the BJP may be unsure about how this will work in their benefit in the polls coming in three months from now. Firstly it is a challenge for the BJP to keep the tempo on about Ram Mandir in the minds of the voters while large agitations are on in Maharashtra and likely to peak in the coming weeks. The Maratha agitation over the demand of reservation in education and jobs is one example but there are also many other agitations such as the agitation by onion farmers in northern parts of the state and the one by sugarcane farmers in the southern part.
Unlike some states from the North or South Maharashtra is now economically and socially a highly fragmented state. It houses some of the nation's most wealthy people in Mumbai and is also inhabited by some of the nation's most poor in districts like Gadchiroli and Dhulia. This fragmentation also exhibits itself in politics. Maharashtra has had some of the most progressive social reform movements and it also houses the headquarters of tradition loving Hindu nationalists. This makes the state very politically diverse and it also makes the state very unpredictable in terms of how it will react to an event like the grand consecration ceremony held in Ayodhya on Monday. It is clear that in urban constituencies the BJP will garner great support on the basis of the Ayodhya issue but it is equally unclear about what happens in rural and underdeveloped constituencies like those in Vidarbha or Konkan's underdeveloped districts.
The BJP and RSS always have had three points on their political agenda since decades. Firstly removing article 370 in Kashmir, secondly bringing a uniform civil code in the country and thirdly building a grand Ram Mandir at Lord Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya. Two out of these three points in the agenda have been fulfilled. The BJP has always said openly that this is party of their long term political plan and the party will obviously use these achievements in upcoming elections to gain political mileage. It is more or less certain that in the cow-belt states of the north the BJP will gain ground over the Ayodhya achievement in in southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu this issue might not resonate much among voters. Whether this issue gives the BJP some traction in a large state like Maharashtra which is neither part of north nor south is an interesting matter to watch.
Rohit Chandavarkar is a senior journalist who has worked for 31 years with various leading newspaper brands and television channels in Mumbai and Pune
