IS A NEW AYODHYA-LIKE PLAN BREWING IN RSS BACKROOM?

The RSS is unleashing its cadre while retaining the option of deniability

- SHASHI SHEKHAR

One winter evening in 1989, the Mathura correspondent called me up at the Agra office and said the police had roughed up some kar sevaks at the police station and stopped them from proceeding to Ayodhya. According to his report filed later, a bus from Maharashtra packed with kar sevaks was on its way to Ayodhya when the police stopped it for a check. The kar sevaks started sloganeering that Ayodhya was just a beginning, and that Mathura and Kashi remained. The police said it had to use force when an argument with the kar sevaks threatened to get out of hand. The kar sevaks denied this version.

That day, we couldn't foresee that one day Mathura and Kashi would become as important focal points as Ayodhya of the eighties and nineties. Even when the Ayodhya movement was nearing culmination, people believed that law enforcement agencies would maintain order.

But on 6 December 1992, that veneer of belief was tattered forever. No one had imagined then that within a short span of 32 years, a grand temple would be erected at the site. As the foundations of the Ram Temple were being laid, questions popped up if Mathura or Kashi were still on the RSS agenda. Leaders of the RSS and the BJP shied away from offering a clear answer.