Reports suggest that the Congress has made up its mind to attend the forthcoming inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The party has alleged that the news of speculation over the Congress leadership being in a dilemma on gracing the occasion was the media’s handiwork. The truth, however, is that there are voices of reservation within the Congress on the matter. The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee had informed the All India Congress Committee that it is opposed to party leaders showing up for the event. In fact, the quandary is common to the Opposition bloc. Nitish Kumar has been unequivocal about his willingness to be present but the Rashtriya Janata Dal, an ally of the Janata Dal (Uni­ted), has remained non-committal. Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party has made vague noi­ses while the Co­mmunist Party of India (Marxist), another component of the INDIA coalition, has ruled out its representation.

This babble of contradictory voices in the Opposition on attending the Ram temple’s unveiling is exactly what the Bharatiya Janata Party had hoped for. The political dividends of INDIA tying itself up in knots on this issue are substantial. The Opposition’s perceptible predicament may cement the BJP’s charge of INDIA being an opportunistic, rather than an ideologically coherent, entity. The lack of consensus among the BJP’s challengers would also make them vulnerable to the saffron party’s allegation of the Opposition being unsympathetic to the sentiments of India’s majority community. The political ramifications of such an accusation could be damaging for INDIA given the deeply polarised nature of the Indian electorate. The Congress has been critical of the BJP for politicising the Ram mandir. Such moral screeching is absurd in the realm of politics that is shorn of pious practices. It also exposes a failure: over the decades, the BJP’s opponents, whether in power or out of it, have failed to craft a cohesive, effective counter-narrative to the sangh parivar’s political propaganda on the mandir-masjid subject. It is this failure — pusillanimity — that has enabled the BJP to monopolise the support of the conservative Hindu vote and build a formidable coalition that seamlessly binds majoritarian faith with disparate caste identities. The BJP’s present electoral dominance is the result of this ingenious social engineering. The Opposition’s electoral fortunes in 2024 could well depend on its ability to carve out a response to this.