Krishna Janmabhoomi: Will BJP’s temple trick work?

A small queue is taking shape outside the Krishna Janmabhoomi Temple in Mathura in western Uttar Pradesh, belying the Covid-19 concerns. The temple’s entrance, bedecked by a giant chariot on top of it, ends at a road. Two red-sandstone gates are coming up at both ends of the road. They are tokens of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s promise to voters – to add “divinity and grandeur” to the birthplace of Lord Krishna. What the BJP and other offshoots of the Sangh Parivar mean by the plan to build a grand temple is to make the shrine ‘free’ by doing away with the Shahi Idgah Masjid, the mosque next to it.

Believed to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna by his devotees, the present temple is at the heart of the BJP’s poll pitch in Uttar Pradesh. It is from here that the saffron party is pushing its pitch in temple politics for the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. After the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor in Varanasi, it is the next stop.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya have said that after Ayodhya and Varanasi, the temples in Mathura-Vrindavan are next in line. With the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan, the two temples form the sacred site for Lord Krishna.

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On February 2, Yogi Adityanath tweeted about it: “The BJP aims to honour the values at the heart of India’s identity and the sanatan faith, to restore the glorious tradition of our past. Lord Ram’s temple in Ayodhya and the grand circuit of Lord Vishwanath in Varanasi are being built. Then how can Mathura and Vrindavan be left behind?”

The Mathura Parliamentary constituency has five assembly seats, including the Mathura assembly constituency – Mathura City, Chhata, Mant, Govardhan, and Baldev.

In Mathura, it looks like a tight contest between state power minister Shrikant Sharma and Congress veteran Pradeep Mathur, four-term MLA, who has been the leader of the party in the Assembly.

Queering the pitch is S K Sharma from the Bahujan Samaj Party, who was with the BJP till recently. He was asked by the BJP to fight from the nearby Mant seat last time, which has been held for a record eight terms by the BSP leader Shyam Sundar Sharma. S K Sharma lost the seat, but polled nearly 60,000 votes. This time, however, he was denied a seat from both Mant and Mathura. Videos of him crying after tickets were announced went viral. In Mathura, as he campaigns with his supporters, he says the BJP today does not care for its loyalists.

“I have spent my entire life with the BJP. They promised me the Mant ticket two years ago, and then, someone else was parachuted. The BSP has given me immense respect, I will make sure the BJP does not win,” he says.

In the electoral fight of Mathura, however, there are echoes of some other concerns. Several voters DH spoke to mentioned electricity bills as a prime concern, followed by the pollution in the Yamuna. Voicing these concerns is Congress’s Pradeep Mathur, who was the former MLA. Making his way in Ganeshra village on the outskirts of the city with his arm in a sling – he broke his hand a few days ago while campaigning – he says he’s confident of a win.

“The power minister has been unavailable for the people, and more than 60,000 people have cases against them for bills. The power minister should be answerable,” Mathur said.

“People in Mathura will vote for electricity, sanitation, roads, health, and education. People here know what the situation before 2017 was and what it is now. We are building a religious circuit here for Lord Krishna’s devotees,” BJP’s Shrikant Mathur says.

When asked about BJP’s temple pitch, Mathur said that they will follow the Kashi model that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid out. “We have been struggling for 500 years for Ayodhya, and today there’s a temple there built constitutionally. PM Modi has shown us a model in the Kashi Corridor, we will follow that here in Brij Chaurasi,” he said.

The similarity between the three temples that Mathur is indicating is aimed at the Shahi Idgah Masjid. The mosque, built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, lies in the compound next to the temple. After the construction of the Ayodhya temple began, a plea was filed in September 2020 to remove the mosque. Another plea in December 2021 followed.

Communal tension has rarely reared in Mathura, where 15% of the voters are Muslims. Ironically, Muslims in the area are mostly artisans who make the clothes for the deities in the temple.

The BJP clinched four of the five seats in the region last term. And the Western UP belt, where Mathura is situated has 100 seats.

Will the BJP’s temple trick work once again?