“The movement which L.K. Advani ji started, that movement at whose centre was Ayodhya, and was defeated in Ayodhya…. I am saying a very significant thing… Congress party and INDIA bloc defeated them in Ayodhya,” Rahul Gandhi said last week while speaking to his party members in Ahmedabad. The import of this statement has been missed by the media and the commentariat.

Gandhi’s statement is not the description of a reality. It should rather be heard as a statement of intent. He said that the Ram temple movement led by Advani, a veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, has been defeated by the INDIA bloc in Ayodhya. He was delivering this speech at a meeting held in Ahmedabad after the attack by BJP workers on the Congress party office. It can be said that Gandhi made this claim to boost the morale of his party members.

The question before us is that if Gandhi made a well-thought-out statement, then what is the meaning of defeating the Ram temple movement?

Gandhi’s statement was about the BJP’s defeat in the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency in the recently concluded general elections. INDIA candidate Awadhesh Pasi from the Samajwadi Party (SP) defeated BJP’s Lallu Singh. Ayodhya is part of this Lok Sabha constituency.

The BJP’s defeat by a Dalit candidate, and that too in a place considered to be the epicentre of Hindutva politics, is highly symbolic. This one defeat has forced the BJP to go on the defensive. It was used to the hilt by the opposition in the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha to embarrass the BJP. Pasi sat between Gandhi and Kannauj MP Akhilesh Yadav in the first row where both Yadav and Gandhi kept shaking hands with him. Pasi’s smile was piercing the hearts of BJP MPs. Awadhesh, incidentally, is one of the many names of Ram.

When the news of this defeat came, the BJP scoffed and said that it has not lost in Ayodhya, but in Faizabad. It must now regret the Uttar Pradesh government’s 2018 decision to rename Faizabad district to Ayodhya when the BJP wanted people to forget Faizabad and remember Ayodhya. Ironically, those who opposed the name........

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