Right from the beginning, the Congress had been in a catch 22 with the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute. The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had directed Govind Vallabh Pant to pass orders to the district magistrate of Ayodhya to evict the Hindus from the Ram Mandir and remove the idols inside the Babri Masjid complex. However, District Magistrate KK Nair, refused to budge to the ‘Aurangzeb diktat’ of Nehru citing that the Hindus offered worship at the site. Irked, Nehru saw that KK Nair was penalized and was suspended from service who would later join the Jan Sangh and dedicate himself to the cause of Ram Mandir.
Rajiv Gandhi who had earlier overturned the Supreme Court ruling on Shah Bano, tried to placate the Hindus by opening the doors of the locked Babri Masjid and allow daily shilanyas to be performed.
Fast forward to the new millennium, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in September 2007, told the Supreme Court that there was no historical evidence that Lord Ram lived.
In its affidavit filed in the Supreme Court the then UPA government said “Valmiki Ramayana and Ramcharitamanas admittedly form an important part of ancient Indian literature, but these cannot be said to be historical records to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters and occurrences of events depicted therein”.
This was the Congress government’s response to the petition filed in the Supreme Court against the Sethusamudram project.
Kapil Sibal, senior Congress leader, argued against the construction of a huge Ram temple in Ayodhya on behalf of the Sunni Wakf Board in the Ram Janmabhoomi case. He used a number of tactics to delay the verdict so that it would not come until the 2019 election. He even asked the court that the appeals be heard in July 2019 after the general elections which was refused by the bench. Later, he was told by his party that it will be a ‘politically sensible decision’ to recuse himself from the case.
Another well-known Congress leader, Sashi Tharoor, had earlier said that no ‘good Hindu’ would want to build a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid and went on to say that the Ram temple should be built in one’s heart.
Not only the Congress party but its entire ‘secular’ gang was against the building of a Ram Mandir at the Ram Janmabhoomi.
The Congress party, which had for long denied the existence of Lord Ram went soft on its stance a few months before the 2019 general elections, to garner Hindu votes. All of a sudden, it vowed to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Posters and banners of Rahul Gandhi suddenly featured Lord Ram. They even added that Ram temple would come only under the Congress rule.
Along with them, the self-proclaimed ‘historians’ and ‘intellectuals’ scoffed that BJP’s promise to ‘build the Ram Temple’ would never be fulfilled.
They mocked that they would not have any more promises to give if the Ram temple was really built.
Today, with the foundation stone being laid for the grand temple for Lord Ram at the Ram Janmabhoomi, the Congress and its leaders have completely changed their positions. Rahul Gandhi has said that “Maryada Purushottam Lord Rama is the manifestation of the best human qualities” and attributed Lord Ram to love, compassion and justice. His sister and General Secretary of the Congress Priyanka Gandhi said that let the Bhoomipujan ceremony of the temple of Ramlala became an occasion for national unity. Former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and Congress General Secretary became a complete Ram bhakt and went on to recite Hanuman Chalisa along with sending 11 silver bricks for the construction of the temple.
As Veer Savarkar once said “The day Hindus unite, Congress leaders will wear janeu over the coat”.