Development over Religion

Ayodhya election results show it’s possible to stop the Hindutva juggernaut. An extract

Ashutosh

Awadhesh Prasad Pasi is a very seasoned leader of Ayodhya. He belongs to a Dalit family and has been a member of the legislative assembly (MLA) for nine terms and a minister six times. It is also remarkable that this time, despite being a Dalit, he contested elections from a general seat, Faizabad, where Ayodhya is situated, not from a constituency reserved for Dalits, and yet he won by 54,000 votes. On the question of Hindutvavadis abusing residents of Ayodhya, he gracefully reacted, ‘I pray to Prabhu Shri Ram, Hanuman Ji and Saryu Mai (mother river Saryu) that they correct the mentality of such people and develop in them a feeling of harmony.

The chief priest of the Ram Mandir, Acharya Satyendra Das, said that those who were abusing people of Ayodhya and blaming them for the election result were displaying their ‘foolishness’.

He further said, ‘They obviously do not understand the bhakti of Bhagwan Ram. Such people who view Ram only as an election issue are petty and despicable’.

Many posts by such people used casteist slurs as well. Awadhesh Pasi was also the target of such posts.

but the matter is still pending in court for the other two. In both cases, the courts have given orders to give a report after verifying the nature of the religious structures in the two places.

Awadhesh Pasi was challenging the basic premise of the BJP/RSS campaign in the heart of the Hindutva cradle. Initially, this slogan did not catch my attention. I was pleasantly surprised when a very senior bureaucrat, who retired as a secretary in the Government of India, called me to talk about the election results. During our conversation, he said, ‘The slogan in Ayodhya, “Na Mathura, na Kashi, abki bar Awadhesh Pasi”, is revolu