By P. Sreekumaran
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP have decided to up the ante on the Sabarimala issue.
As part of a well-planned strategy, the saffron brigade has decided to intensify the agitation by hitting the streets.
The Sangh Parivar has also signaled its intent to impart a greater political hue to the agitation. BJP State president P S Sreedharan Pillai gave the game away when he said that the focus will now shift on targeting the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, which, he alleged, has unleashed a ‘police raj’ in the holy hillock.
The change in strategy has come in the wake of the arrest of a few top Kerala BJP leaders, including BJP state general secretary, K. Surendran. The revised strategy is to foment trouble by dispatching comparatively less visible RSS leaders to lead the agitation.
This stratagem manifested itself at the Sannidhanam after the temple was closed for the day at night on Sunday. Despite repeated appeals by the police to leave the Sannidhanam, a large number of devotees refused to budge from their positions. The police told them to disperse in view of the prohibitory orders in force in the area. But the appeals fell on deaf ears.
The police then forcibly removed the leaders and as many as 150 followers who resorted to an aggressive chanting protest. They were removed from the Sannidhanam. The police action was based on clear on strict instructions to disallow convergence of protesters unlike on earlier occasions. Significantly, the ‘leaders’ who led the protest at Sannidhanam were the same ‘netas’ who had created trouble when the temple opened twice in the past.
Having been thwarted in their attempt to stir up unrest, the BJP-RSS leaders have hit upon a new strategy. The idea is to bring Union Ministers and MPs to Sabarimala to ratchet up tension. Minister of State for Tourism Alphons Kannamthanam is already at the shrine. And expectedly, he has blamed it all on the state government. His colleague Pon Radhakrishnan is also expected to visit the hill shrine shortly.
The Parivar is also using the social media to spread hatred and spew communal poison. Open appeals are made to burn police stations and make it difficult for the government.
Be that as it may, the saffron brigade has no moral right to make it appear as if the government alone is to blame for the ramped up tension on the Sabarimala issue. At the all-party meet called by the government, no constructive suggestion to defuse the tension came from their side. For instance, they could have offered to suspend the agitation if the government was ready to move the SC with an appeal to give more time for implementation of its order. That they did not do anything of that kind betrays their intent to keep the Sabarimala pot boiling.
Significantly, the government has gone on record that it will implement whatever the final verdict of the apex court. If it decided to deny entry of all women to the temple, then the government will abide by that order. But neither the Sangh Parivar nor the Congress has said that they will obey the final SC verdict for obvious reasons. For, ending the agitation does not suit their political agenda: of ousting the only ‘Communist government’ in the country – a ‘golden opportunity in the words of BJP state chief Sreedharan Pillai!
Meanwhile, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking more time to implement the Supreme Court order. But Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi has declared that the petition would be heard along with other pleas on January 22 next year.
There is no denying the fact the government bunged badly initially. If the TDB had filed a petition seeking more time and the government convened an all-party meeting – immediately after the SC gave its verdict, much of the damage could have been avoided.
The government could have turned the tables neatly on the Sangh Parivar by getting the all-party meet to pass a resolution reflecting what the parivar and the opposition Congress called the overwhelming ‘sense of the people’ on the sensitive issue and attaching it to the petition the TDB was planning to submit to the apex court. The government squandered that ‘golden opportunity’ to wrest the initiative from the opposition. (IPA Service)
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