How is the Ram Mandir inauguration going to affect the 2024 elections?

With the ultra-historic Ram Mandir slated to be inaugurated in only a few hours, massive celebrations have been planned throughout the country with millions of people impatiently waiting for the inauguration to take place. After all ‘500 saal baad mere Ram aa rahe hai’ (My Lord Ram is returning after 500 years) and this journey hasn’t been easy for the Hindus who have sacrificed so much, some even sacrificing their lives just so that one day the Ram Mandir will be built in Ayodhya. The amount of anticipation there is for this event, undoubtedly makes it one of the biggest events to ever take place in this country. This inauguration is also a tight slap on the face of those who always claimed that the BJP only used the Ram Mandir for votebank politics and could never really build the temple.

However, this event isn’t without controversy, thanks to the INDI Alliance, who never leave any opportunity to belittle Lord Ram or the Ram Mandir inauguration, going as far as to call it a BJP-RSS event. While it is very clear that the government has made this event into a grand celebration of Lord Ram, to call it a political event and basically insult the emotions and the sentiments of the people is a punch way below the belt for the opposition parties and it is these sly comments and small actions that people will remember when they go to vote after the next 3-4 months.

Having practically already lost the 2024 elections, the opposition parties are just not ready to learn from their previous antics which have cost them very dearly when it comes to politics and votes. In spite of losing the 2014 and 2019 elections quite disastrously, Congress, the grand old party of India which is realistically the only opposition to the BJP nationally is simply not learning its lesson.

In 2014, it was the ‘chaiwala’ jibe used at PM Narendra Modi which he so cleverly used to his advantage, by building the narrative of a ‘Rags to Riches’ story where a ‘chaiwala’, connected to the people of the nation has worked so hard for so many years to become a leader the country needs. And it worked. In 2019, Congress again stooped low and called PM Modi a ‘chowkidar’ under their ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ campaign and we very well remember the ‘Mein hu Chowkidar’ counter-campaign, where PM Modi (and his followers) basically called himself the ‘Chowkidar of India’ (Guardian of India). This campaign also saw thousands of people changing their profile photos and renaming their profiles to Chowkidar followed by their names, making it a grand success for the BJP and another backfiring missile for the Congress and the allies.

Whereas, for the 2024 elections, the big thing for BJP might just be the Ram Mandir inauguration. While the Modi government does have an impressive record of everything that they have achieved in the past 10 years, this ‘Pran Pratishtha’ might be an event which has the potential to be the last nail in the coffin for the entire INDI Alliance’s election hopes. It would also be irresponsible on my part if I put the entire blame on Congress even though its allies are as much to blame for the sinking ship, that is INDI Alliance. With ally partners calling for the demolition of Sanatan Dharma, mocking the Ram Mandir and Ram himself, they have themselves brought the people’s wrath upon them.

Even if we look past the comments made in the last few months, the inauguration has brought back to people’s attention the evil deeds of these very same parties during the 90’s, especially the treatment meted out to the ‘Karsevaks’ during the Ram Rath Yatra. The re-emergence of such information and the past trauma will definitely impact the minds of the voters; new and old and change their outlook toward these parties.

Coming back to why this event is going to benefit BJP so much; the reason is quite simple, it finally did what it said it would do in its manifestos all these years, i.e. build the Ram Mandir. Therefore, showing to the people that they complete every promise they make. Another simple reason is that instead of playing it safe to appear ‘secular’, the BJP has gone all out and openly joined the celebrations and made it even more grand by asking the people and its ‘karyakartas’ to celebrate the day as if it’s Diwali, making it an event which will be there for people to remember for ages to come.

A third reason is the insistence of the opposition parties to boycott this event because of ‘secularism’. This has in my opinion, just shown people the true colours of these parties and that they do not care about what people want. They will simply do what they know best; insult and ‘Divide and Rule’. If only the opposition parties did not act like 5-year-old stubborn kids and joined the celebrations even if out of respect and for the sake of the people, they wouldn’t have lost the respect (which they have) in the eyes of the common people.

As of now, the way things are going, BJP has united people from all over the country in the name of the Ram Mandir and has a captive audience unlike the opposition, which has become quite irrelevant in the past few days because of their stance and behavior. This is despite Congress leader Rahul Gandhi taking out another yatra to try to gather some crowd and increase his popularity as a potential PM candidate. Especially, after the last attempt failed miserably.

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