LUCKNOW: After consciously staying away from the Ram temple in Ayodhya for nearly three years, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's decision to visit Ram Lalla with his family on December 12 appears to be part of the SP's strategy to take the fight directly to the BJP's backyard.
Notably, the SP chief, in keeping with his promise, is scheduled to inaugurate the Kedareshwar Temple, a replica of the Kedarnath shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva, constructed on 50 bighas of land in Etawah, around 20 kilometres from his native village of Saifai. The inauguration will be followed by his visit to the Ram temple and other religious destinations, including Vrindavan.
"Considering his stance of avoiding a visit to the Ram temple all this while and now suddenly adopting an approach of visiting religious sites just ahead of the Assembly polls, it is obvious that the move is driven by an intention to win over the Hindu majority on religious and sentimental grounds," says Anupam K Mishra, a political observer.
However, senior SP leaders feel that the move is merely an attempt to blunt the allegations of being anti-Hindu, often levelled against the SP chief by the BJP. At the same time, Akhilesh could now be labelled as someone following 'soft Hindutva' in pursuit of majority votes.
The decision to visit the Ram temple has drawn reactions not only from UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who sought an apology from Akhilesh for the 1990 firing on kar sevaks in Ayodhya, but also from over 400 saints and seers in Ayodhya. They have opposed his visit and demanded that he atone for the firing by apologising to the families of those who lost their lives in the incident on October 31 and November 2, 1990.
Earlier, Akhilesh had got a 51-foot-tall, 60-tonne bronze-and-copper statue of Lord Krishna installed in Saifai. He frequently visits temples, attends bhandaras and advocates Sanatan practices.
Alongside this, the party also conducts extensive outreach programmes among Muslims, with Akhilesh attending dozens of Iftar events every Ramadan, donning his red cap. Every precaution is taken to ensure that such engagements do not give political rivals an opportunity to target the SP over alleged "appeasement of Muslims".
Akhilesh's decision to visit the Ram temple in Ayodhya also reflects his intent to portray himself as a people's leader, in keeping with the socialist ideology on which the SP is founded.
The need for a shift in strategy was first underscored in 2017, after the BJP began sweeping elections one after another, riding the Hindutva wave that started with the 2014 general elections, a senior SP leader said.
While reviewing the factors that worked in the BJP's favour in 2017, SP strategists decided that the party leadership's adherence to Hindu religious practices needed greater public visibility. Since the Yadavs were public figures, it was in the party's interest to highlight their spiritual side as well. The party made cautious efforts to ensure that Akhilesh's religious engagements, such as performing puja at home and attending rituals with his wife, were shared publicly.
Initial attempts, such as Akhilesh's decision to visit a temple in Lucknow in September 2017 to install a statue, faced strong protests from right-wing activists. However, this did not deter the SP chief from visiting the Vindhyachal temple in Mirzapur, the Ravidas temple in Varanasi's Seer Goverdhanpur, and Chitrakoot, where Lord Ram spent 12 years of his 14-year exile. He also stayed at the Kamadgiri temple in the years that followed.
At the same time, party strategists tried to keep the Yadavs' religious engagements separate from the party's political affairs. Instead of holding religious events at the party headquarters, Akhilesh visited different communities to participate in their religious events. Apart from Hindu temples, he visited gurdwaras to attend Sikh events, the Bengali Club during Durga Puja and Iftar gatherings during Ramadan.
"It has been a tightrope walk for Akhilesh. The fear that any bold Hindu outreach could alienate the Muslim community has always loomed large over the SP," says Prof Mishra.
"However, the fear of annoying the Muslim votebank is not that well-founded because the party acknowledges that the Muslim community votes consistently for the SP, realising that it is the only party that can challenge the BJP's might in UP," says a senior SP leader.
The fact that Muslims sided neither with the BSP nor the AIMIM during the 2022 Assembly polls or the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and voted overwhelmingly (89 per cent) for the SP, reflected the community's awareness that any division in its votes would benefit the BJP.