'DNA' special: BJP to use Uma Bharati's 'yatra' for pursuing Hindutva

The Bharatiya Janata Party plans to use the “Samagra Ganga Yatra” headed by former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati to pursue an aggressive Hindutva line in the build-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

Party insiders say the saffron brigade has already set in motion its strategy to build up the Ganga yatra on the lines of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple movement to consolidate its Hindu following. “The major difference of this campaign as compared to the one for the Ayodhya temple is that it is not communal,” explains a senior party leader, adding that the party is reaching out to Muslims, too, for support in the “clean Ganga” movement.

Firebrand BJP leader Uma Bharati started the yatra on Friday from Ganga Sagar in West Bengal, one of the country’s most famous Hindu pilgrimages, where the holy river meets the sea. The 38-day yatra will end on October 28 at Gangotri in Uttarakhand, the river’s point of origin. The RSS is being involved in a big way in the yatra, and top RSS leader Dr Krishna Gopal is co-ordinating it at the national level.

Before the UP assembly elections, senior BJP leaders Kalraj Mishra and Rajnath Singh had taken out ‘rath yatras’ through the state, both of which culminated at Ayodhya. With Uma Bharati’s latest yatra, the saffron party has given out clear indications of its plans to pursue hardline Hindutva in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election. Bharati, now an MLA from UP’s Charkhari seat, is an accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

During her campaign, though, Uma has been insisting that the yatra is completely apolitical and is only meant to spread awareness about how the holy river continues to be in a mess despite hundreds of crores of government funds having been spent on making it clean and pollution-free. “Not only should Ganga be named a national river, it should also be declared a national heritage so that those who pollute it are punished under IPC,” asserts Uma.

She is soliciting support of all parties for her campaign. Before setting out, she gave ‘Ganga jal’ brought from Gangotri to President Pranab Mukherjee, Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar and all Mps, urging them to support the campaign.

The yatra will enter Uttar Pradesh on October 9 and will pass through various districts situated on the banks of the river till October 22. An international summit would be held in Delhi on November 30 and human chains would be formed at several places on the banks of Ganga on December 2. “The idea is to make the initiative a popular campaign by making people aware of the seriousness of the issue,” she explains.

The yatra promises to be the first and crucial test of strength for the recently appointed state BJP president Laxmikant Bajpayee, too.

BJP insiders say the party plans to extend the ‘Ganga yatra’ build-up to the Maha Kumbh to be organised in Allahabad in early 2013. The saffron brigade also plans to play up its Hindutva theme, dovetailed with propaganda of the yatra, through a new website as well as other media such as video films, audio CDs and  social networking sites.