From the Urdu Press: ‘BJP has taken over Ayodhya event… Oppn needs to find a counter-narrative’, ‘Rahul Yatra test will be ally attendance’

As the politics over the January 22 Ram Temple inauguration builds up in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, the Urdu Press has turned its gaze on some key questions about the idea of India, expressing concerns over the deepening social fault lines in the country. Flagging that the State and religion have converged in the Ayodhya event, some of the Urdu dailies tried to decode its ramifications for a secular constitutional democracy.

Another story that the dailies closely tracked was Rahul Gandhi’s Yatra 2.0, underlining that the Congress has pinned its poll hopes on the progress of this march.

SIASAT

Referring to the January 22 consecration ceremony of theRam Temple in Ayodhya, the Hyderabad-based Siasat, in its editorial on January 13, notes that the BJP has not left any stone unturned to extract political mileage from the event in the parliamentary poll season. “Although the Supreme Court cleared the decks for the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, which was assigned to a Trust, the BJP has now taken over the entire event, turning a religious matter into a political one while looking to cash in on it in the Lok Sabha polls.”

As regards the Opposition’s stand on the issue, it betrays uncertainty, the editorial says, while adding that parties such as the Congress which have decided to skip the Temple’s inauguration are being attacked by the BJP for being “anti-Hindu”. “A dividing line seems to have been drawn at the social and religious levels between the Hindu and the Muslim communities, and the BJP does not want to erase this line since it ensures its political success,” the edit charges. “The Congress and some other regional parties might be trying to take up other issues related to people’s burning problems,