BSP supremo Mayawati.
– Photo : amar ujala
Expansion
Mulayam snatched away most of the Muslim votes from the indecisive Congress. The rise of BSP made a dent in the Dalit votes of Congress. Most of the votes of forward and non-Yadav backward castes got mobilized with BJP because of Ram Mandir.
BSP leader Mayawati also became the Chief Minister of the state four times. Thrice with the help of BJP and once on our own strength. In the changed equation, Mulayam became Chief Minister thrice. Once his son Akhilesh also became CM.
In between, there was some decline in the popularity of BJP for some years, then people felt that the influence of Ram Mandir was decreasing. But, perhaps the reason for this was the BJP itself. Perhaps the reason behind this was that the then leadership of BJP sometimes included the temple issue in the manifesto and sometimes kept it out. This is being proved after Narendra Modi, who was the charioteer of Advani’s Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra, became the Prime Minister.
Friends and enemies changed: After becoming Prime Minister, Modi started focusing politics on Hindutva through visits to Varanasi, Kathmandu and Kedarnath. Especially after the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Ram Temple in 2019, the way he drenched the country’s politics and the country’s diplomacy towards foreign countries with the colors of Indianness and Hindutva with the concerns of Ram, its implications are very wide.
