Hashim Ansari, 92, the oldest party in the Ayodhya title suits since 1950, gets angry as soon as one mentions the temple-mosque dispute. “For God sake, don’t talk about this anymore,” he says as reporters gathered at his ramshackle Panjitola house ask him a question on the sensitive issue. “This dispute has taken away the glory of Ayodhya, and has also harmed its development. If the crores of rupees spent on security in Ayodhya were spent on its development, this holy town would have looked different,” he laments.
The reaction is similar at the Laxman Kila Peeth where its mahant Pandit Mahesh Mishra says: “The emotions associated with the Ram temple have for long pushed the more important issues related to daily life into oblivion. This has been happening for 20 years. Now, people have woken up to life’s realities. No one gets worked up in the name of temple or mosque anymore, neither is anyone going to vote on these issues.”
Journalists in Faizabad point out that earlier at the beginning of an election campaign every candidate used to either go to seek the blessings of Hashim Ansari or bow his head at the Hanumangarhi Temple in Ayodhya. But in this election, this ritual has been given a go-by, indicating that this holy town is tired of the mandir-masjid issue.
Even a casual conversation with locals reveals that Ayodhya has moved on. This might spell trouble for sitting BJP MLA Lalloo Singh, who won all the five elections since 1991 riding the Ram temple wave. Ayodhya will vote in the first phase of the UP election on Wednesday.
“The people of Ayodhya and Faizabad finally seem to have opened their eyes to reality,” says Dr SN Pandey, a close friend of late Paramhans Ramchandra Das, one of the spearheads of the temple movement based in Ayodhya. “After all, what has the mandir-masjid dispute given us besides fear, suspicion and the sound of police boots,” he says.
The people of Ayodhya are apparently making a deliberate effort to push the dispute into oblivion. Even leading lights of the saffron brigade hesitate to highlight the “mandir wahin banayenge” strain in their speeches. When Uma Bharti addressed some public meetings here on January 28, political observers and journalists were surprised by her rather subdued mention of the temple issue. LK Advani was here a couple of days ago. Though he did rake up the issue, the Ram temple did not get more than two minutes in his speech. The frenzy and fireworks that went with their speeches during the late 80s and early 90s seem to have finally fizzled out, and that is only for the better, feel the people of Ayodhya.
On the Bikapur road, a tea stall owner Ramesh reminisces the days when Ayodhya was an area of violence. “One moment everything was normal, and the next you would see undeclared curfew clamped in the town,” he says. “The securitymen would forcibly get our shops closed before sunset. Life was so unpredictable, one didn’t know what would happen,” says Ramesh. Thankfully, that is in the past, and Ayodhya is slowly but surely getting back on its feet.
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