New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now refrains itself from the Mathura-Kashi issues, after the Supreme Court verdict on Ayodhya land dispute.
The slogan which was became a war cry during the Ayodhya movement ‘Ayodhya toh Jhanki hai, abhi Mathura-Kashi baaki hai’ (Ayodhya is just a trailer, we will finish it with Mathura-Kashi), now seems to be put aside as nobody from the party’s national level leadership ready to comment on it.
So what’s next for BJP who with Ayodhya verdict, has almost done with its decade-long promise to its core voters, the hardliner Hindus? The clues of the answer came from the high level meeting of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) top brass held in New Delhi recently.
‘Sangh doesn’t want the things to be repeated in Mathura-Kashi matter as it was in Ayodhya case. We do not say that Mathura-Kashi now not in our agenda, but not like Ayodhya, explained an RSS leader.
On the other hand BJP now has adopted a new tone, matching with that of PM Modi and putting economy at forefront. “Now it’s time to colour the picture Prime Minister Narendra Modi draw to make India economically strong among the world and make Indian economy a five trillion dollar economy,” said party’s national spokesperson Bizoy Sonkar Shashtri. “Our focus is on development.
We took initiatives which none could have imagined before such as toilets in villages and slums, LPG facilities to poor women; and now party will take this forward,” Shashtri echoed his leader’s thoughts. But when asked about the religious agenda for next election, Shashti doesn’t miss a minute to blame their Opposition.
“It’s our political opponents who have been blaming us for playing religious card to win elections, but, since last few years, we focused only on development,” explained the national spokesperson.
During the evaluation of general election 2019 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, it had been found that many of the schemes of previous government played a major role in its victory.
“Schemes like Ujjwala Yojana which directly benefitted 8 crore families, toilets scheme, electricity to 18,000 villages played a major role in our victory’, revealed Ram Madhav, an RSS ideologue and now party national general secretary. This actually forced BJP to think beyond its traditional religious agenda like Ram Temple, Mathura-Kashi and others.
‘It’s all data game. BJP already analyzed that to tap young voters, aged 18-35 years, party has to come-up with new-age issues as strong economy, more jobs in corporate sector, better infrastructure, digital growth, entrepreneurship support, no red-tape hurdles in commerce and others.
So what we see is a new-age BJP, gradually shifting away from Vaijpayee-Advani era,” explained Santosh kumar, who just finished his book on BJP’s mammoth victory in May, 2019 general election.
