Make The Communists Blink First: Why The BJP Shouldn’t Bring An Ordinance For Sabarimala

In one of the funniest episodes of the hit CBS show, “The Big Bang Theory”, neuro-scientist Dr Amy Farrah Fowler tries to treat the need for compulsive closure in her boyfriend Dr Sheldon Cooper through a series of experiments that deny him closure in simple, everyday activities like board games and singing of the Star Spangled Banner. The ensuing results are of course hilarious.

As exaggerated as the many quirks and neuroses of Dr Sheldon Cooper in the show are, the compulsive need for closure is present in almost all of us. Many times the need for a final solution is so great that the path of least resistance looks like the only way out. The bipartisan demand that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at Centre enact a legislation or ordinance to overturn the Supreme Court verdict on the entry of women between 10 and 50 years of age into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala is a good case in point.

As the devotees dug their heels in and prepared to withstand the brutal ‘police’ state of Kerala, Congress as well as the left have found themselves between the proverbial rock and the hard place. Congress MP from Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, wrote an article trying to do a tight-rope walk and got slammed by the left liberal orthodoxy as well as the devotees from the state. In a tweet, Tharoor sought a constitutional solution (read-ordinance) from the government at Centre on this issue. Perhaps, not surprisingly, most of the devotees fighting the #SaveSabarimala battle online as well as on ground, think it is a good idea. BJP president Amit Shah, however, has ruled out the possibility of an ordinance and it is not hard to understand why. As a long term strategy as well as the goal in mind, ordinance might not be such a good solution.

To start with, BJP through its state as well as central leadership, has left no ambiguity as to their support to the Ayyappa devotees. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has termed the SC interference in matters of religious practice as selective. MP Swapan Dasgupta has called the SC verdict an act of social engineering that might set the stage for hardening of attitudes.  While Shah had said that BJP is standing like a rock behind the devotees, in the first round of protests on ground, BJP leaders were seen with the protestors at the temple, even sleeping on the floor at night during the vigil. This morning, as venture activist Trupti Desai tried to grab her 15 minutes of fame by attempting to enter Kerala to go to the temple, BJP leader M N Gopi told the media that they won’t allow her to go to the temple using government vehicles.

At the same time, BJP is a political party, and expecting them not to use the respective positions of all parties on this issue is not only unrealistic, but actually tantamount to expecting them to abdicate their raj-dharma.

For years, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers have suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the communist cadre with the state governments often complicit in their silence. With Sabarimala protests, the communist government can no longer project their brutalities directed at RSS alone. The pictures of state cops damaging vehicles sparked by protestors on the roadside, as well as the near emergency scale arrests made by them, are long-lasting indictments of the state’s failure to contain this issue as well as their hostile attitude towards the Hindu religion. With no SC hearing for nearly two months, and the devotees refusing to cave in, the communist government in Kerala is sitting on a dynamite, all it would take is one trigger-happy police personnel, one over-eager government official for this to turn into an all-out confrontation between the state and its subjects.

Similarly, the Congress party finds itself on a no-man’s land on this issue. Someone like Rahul Gandhi issuing a statement similar to Shah’s i.e. supporting the devotees, will be hard to reconcile for the party’s Lutyen intellectual support base. Most of the mainstream media has already termed Sabarimala as a victory for gender justice and dismissed the protests as acts of hooliganism. For this lot who owes covert allegiance to the Congress, ignoring or justifying any support to devotees would be very difficult. At the same time, with its aforementioned legacy of coining the term saffron terror and killing a calf in public in the state, the party risks burnishing its anti- Hindu credentials irreversibly if it continues its support of the activists who wish to enter the temple or stays silent about the state inflicting atrocities upon the devotees. Unfortunately for Congress, the two major poles in this debate are already occupied by two other parties and no matter which way the Congress decides to lean, saving face looks like the best outcome it can aspire to.

Unless, the BJP gives both them and the state government a life-line in the form of an ordinance, that is!

To understand how the state government and Congress needs this life-line, one must marvel at the immense on-ground opposition mobilised and organised by literally millions of devotees who have faced police brutalities, scorn of mainstream media and idiot news anchors and indifference from the judiciary to keep the flame of dharma burning. If the protest had faded after the SC verdict or even after the initial days, the state government and Congress would have virtue-signalled on behalf of activists, called BJP misogynistic, and all of us would have moved on with our lives. But the devotees have refused to go away, if anything the attempt to suppress has only intensified the stir to a point where everyone is seeking a successful retreat.

In such an environment, it is not difficult to see how a central government enacted ordinance would allow both the state government as well as the Congress party to not risk further wrath of the devotees and still keep their left liberal orthodoxy base happy. Now that SC has scheduled the next hearing for January, every additional day without a solution is only going to drive a bigger wedge between the state government and the masses. This is the classic “and the other guy blinked” scenario where the communist government as well as the Congress party are hoping that the NDA government, under pressure from the devotees, will blink first. With someone like Amit Shah with nerves of steel as the president of BJP, the odds of that happening don’t look good.

Politics aside, there are other practical reasons why an ordinance may not be a good way out of this. At least for now, as the state government is trying to enforce the SC ruling, the activists who originally petitioned SC for entry to the temple, have been forced to become spectators. As soon as an ordinance is enacted, the activists can return to knock on the SC doors against the ordinance. This is the perfect scenario for a party like the Congress. The activists don’t face electorate so they don’t need to worry about the consequences of their actions. With a hyper active judiciary, whose interference in the executive is possibly at a historic high in place, the odds of such an ordinance getting struck down are actually pretty good. Moreover, if the government passes an ordinance, the on-ground devotees, many of whom have put their daily lives on hold for their faith, may disperse and the protest organisation might be weakened. In case the SC strikes down the ruling and the activists return, marshalling the resources on ground again might prove to be challenging.

Any discussion about strategies about this issue can’t be complete without taking the human side into consideration. The biggest sufferers of this saga are those millions of unnamed men and women who for the sake of their faith have put their lives on line in a truly soul-stirring manner. Every additional day without a solution, increases the risk of these brave men and women coming to harm at the hands of a brutal state regime. For all the strength of position BJP enjoys at the moment on this issue, let’s not for one moment forget that it has been facilitated by blood and tears of the devotees.

Politically, Congress and the state government might be twisting in the wind, but the human costs are being borne by the believers. To weigh the long term objectives against human lives is the burden of elected leaders and I sincerely hope BJP leadership will allow both their wisdom and their humanity to guide them in their decision-making.