By Pradeep Kapoor
LUCKNOW: Now it seems to be Akhilesh Yadav’s turn to play the soft Hindutva card. With the Lok Sabha elections not far, the Samajwadi Party national president has surprised everyone with his move.
Akhilesh Yadav has announced that if his party was voted to power in the state he would construct a huge city to be named after Lord Vishnu. Giving details of his plan, he said that the city would be constructed on a 2,000-acre land in Chambal region near Itawah lion safari.
Unfolding his mega plan, Akhilesh said the city would also have a massive statue of Lord Vishnu and entire complex would be constructed on the pattern of Angkor Vat in Cambodia, the complex that is known throughout the world for promoting culture and religion.
Akhilesh was provoked into making this announcement after a recent observation by UP deputy chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya that Union Government might have to take the legislative route to construct the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya if the NDA government gets enough numbers in the Rajya Sabha.
Soft Hindutva is not completely alien to Akhilesh. When he was chief minister, he had taken steps to woo Hindus by launching the Shrawan Kumar scheme in which he gave money for aged people to visit religious places and made special arrangements for their transportation and stay.
During his regime, father Mulayam Singh Yadav too had commissioned party workers to organise havan and puja at Ayodhya. But when Mulayam was the chief minister, he had ordered firing on kar sewaks in 1990 in Ayodhya to protect Babri Masjid.
In recent elections Congress had also adopted a soft-Hindutva line, with Rahul Gandhi visiting a large number of temples in UP, although the party seems to be examining in detail whether the strategy really paid off. In fact, there have been signs that the party might go back to its traditional policy of minority appeasement to protect its vote bank.
Political circles are debating as to how Akhilesh’s soft Hindutva line would help his Samajwadi Party to wean away voters from BJP. It also remains to be seen how Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, with which Akhilesh is proposing a grand alliance in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections to keep Modi out of power, would respond to the SP change of strategy.
It may be mentioned here that BJP could not take the advantage of the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 as Samajwadi Party joined hands with BSP in 1993 and captured power in UP and ousted the Kalyan Singh, who was the main face of Hindutva, from power. (IPA Service)
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