Prime Minister should follow in Lord Rama’s footsteps to ensure justice for all

“Ram Mandir has succeeded in restoring Hindus’ pride in their religion. That is a positive development. What’s left is for Modi to follow the principles of good governance associated with Lord Rama for dispensing justice to all. There were no Muslims and Christians in Bharat in those ancient times. But they are there now. Their only prayer to Modiji is that they be counted as equal citizens of Bharat, as Lord Rama, the epitome of justice and good governance, would have done.”

It was awe-inspiring to watch the consecration of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya. PM Narendra Modi stole the show with his march to the spot where the idol of Ram Lalla was installed and his unforgettable address to the 7,000-odd guests.

I was moved to instruct my domestic help to light a diya, as our Prime Minister had requested. Even I, normally a critic of the government, was carried away by the moment!

The sheer magic of the occasion, the unmistakable devotion on the faces of the invitees and the pride in being a Hindu that was reflected on the countenance of the diaspora worldwide lent a new dimension to the dharma of our people and our ancestors. I was moved to instruct my domestic help to light a diya, as our Prime Minister had requested. Even I, normally a critic of the government, was carried away by the moment!

The temple will be completed in a year or so, but it has been consecrated ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. It is expected to play the role that the Balakot airstrikes did for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. PM Modi is expected to win a third term.

If the INDIA bloc does not get its act together soon, the ‘mother of democracy’ (our PM’s words) will metamorphose into an autocracy. Even after Rahul Gandhi hinted that Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge would lead the coalition, Mamata Banerjee announced that the Trinamool Congress would fight the Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal on its own.

Nitish Kumar had expected himself to be anointed as ‘primus inter pares’ (first among equals). He is frustrated because he has to share the honor with Kharge. Arvind Kejriwal wants an all-India footprint for AAP. He demands seats in Gujarat, Haryana and Goa, where his party has a small presence.

Even Akhilesh Yadav, who has been eclipsed by CM Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, thought that his Samajwadi Party was entitled to representation in Madhya Pradesh. All in all, the INDIA bloc is hopelessly placed against the BJP’s juggernaut. And with the Ram Temple being projected as Modi’s baby instead of Lal Krishna Advani’s, to whom it legitimately belongs, the battle can be written off as far as INDIA is concerned.

Yogi has captured the imagination of the residents of Uttar Pradesh (which has 80 Lok Sabha seats) with one major achievement — he has brought the state’s criminals to heel. In the beginning of his reign, he encouraged the use of unconventional, even illegal, methods to instill fear in the minds of the law-breakers. Wiser counsel later advised him to change tack. To all appearances, it seems that conventional methods (except the bulldozer) are currently at play.

A newspaper article by a young IPS officer, Vrinda Shukla, currently SP of Bahraich (UP), quotes figures from the National Crime Records Bureau to show that because of “scaled-up monitoring at all levels”, conviction was obtained by the UP police in 71 per cent of the cases of crimes against women in which the trial was completed. The corresponding figures for Rajasthan and Maharashtra are 37.2 per cent and 11.2 per cent, respectively. Public prosecutors, who had stopped taking ownership of the cases and become unaccountable, have begun feeling the heat generated by Yogi, says Vrinda.

Those who dream of forming a government in any state will need to adopt the UP CM’s attitude to corruption and the legal steps he has put in motion to control crime and criminals. More than ‘development’ that our Prime Minister harps on, citizens want security of life and property. He or she who can provide this will win.

In the meantime, Modi will milk the devout Hindu’s devotion to Lord Rama for electoral gains. A politician can hardly be blamed for exploiting public sentiment to influence voters. The only regret a sensitive BJP follower can possibly have is that the originator of the Rath Yatra, Advani, was left out in the cold. But these are games ambitious politicians play. They dump their rivals in their own party when the opportunity beckons. Politics, after all, is a cut-throat enterprise. Only one who is adept at the game comes out on top.

The media shows Modi feeding cows at his home and visiting temples in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, both southern states where he is keen to open his party’s account. Public memory is notoriously short. The voter may forget our PM’s piety and opt for the communists or the Congress in Kerala and for CM Jagan Mohan Reddy or his sister YS Sharmila, who has taken on the responsibility of resuscitating the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.

A group of 200-odd retired diplomats, civil servants and police officers, called the Constitutional Conduct Group (of which I am a part), had drafted an open letter to the PM, lamenting that he involved his high constitutional office and government agencies in the run-up to the idol’s installation in the Ayodhya temple. A secular country, constitutionally mandated to strictly separate religion from the State, had been subjected to the spectacle of its PM performing puja in South Indian temples and finally in Ram Mandir.

There is no objection to the PM visiting and praying to his god as an individual. But to do so as the country’s pre-eminent elected leader and committing government resources to such an event is neither constitutionally acceptable nor ethical or moral. The Election Commission should decide whether this is permissible under the election laws on the use of religion for garnering votes.

The founders of Pakistan used religion to secure for the Muslims a separate country. The military regime of Gen Zia-ul-Haq Islamized it to the hilt. The results of such religiosity are for all of us to see. Pakistan today needs the US and China to keep itself functioning. There are not many nations today that incorporate religion into governance. Those that follow this path have not prospered.

Ram Mandir has succeeded in restoring Hindus’ pride in their religion. That is a positive development. What’s left is for Modi to follow the principles of good governance associated with Lord Rama for dispensing justice to all. There were no Muslims and Christians in Bharat in those ancient times. But they are there now. Their only prayer to Modiji is that they be counted as equal citizens of Bharat, as Lord Rama, the epitome of justice and good governance, would have done.

(The author is a former governor and a highly decorated retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer )