00:00The BJP losing the Faizabad constituency which houses the much-fabled Ram Mandir has come
00:04as a shock to many.
00:06I visited the temple town a few days ago to figure out exactly what had happened.
00:11And the first thing that was immediately clear to me was the portrait of a town as before
00:16and after.
00:18I visited the temple town two weeks before the Ram Mandir consecration and I could get
00:22a sense that this was a place which looked like an adolescent preparing for a fancy dress
00:26competition.
00:33Behind the barricades on the Ram Jan Bhoomi Bhat, all the shops were in a straight line
00:38of file.
00:39I mean, very obedient, eager to almost impress the visitors.
00:44This time though, I saw that a lot of shops had spilled on the street selling different
00:48kinds of items, right from puja to golgappas to what not.
00:52It almost gave me a sense that this is a town that is screaming that this is how we
00:57are reclaiming a street and town, especially because so many shopkeepers on the main road
01:04had their homes and shops snatched, almost shrunk to half on the government orders and
01:09they were given very meagre compensations.
01:52The ex-BJP MP Lallu Singh was very arrogant.
02:12In fact, they used two words to describe him, ahankari and ghamandi.
02:16They said that he never campaigned for election, he never came to ask for votes, he dismissed
02:21the shopkeepers who spoke about compensations and everything else.
02:25Then the locals also spoke about the fact that the BJP had milked the Ram Mandir for
02:30political gains.
02:31They were in fact more willing to hear what their Shankaracharyas had said, that this
02:36was something that was against Hinduism.
02:39Other thing that the locals said was that there were numerous barricades that had overwhelmed
02:43the town.
02:44They said that it feels like as if we are captive in our own homes.
02:48The sense of siege where they couldn't move freely in their own town.
02:58The fact that, as one priest told me, that 30-35 people had died while going to the hospital
03:04during the time of medical emergencies had also not sat well with them.
03:19And finally, the fact that Lallu Singh spoke about the BJP amending the constitution if
03:25it got more than two-thirds of majority had also not sat well with them.
03:29They interpreted it also as an attack on their beloved, Babasaheb Ambedkar.
03:42And finally, the fact that the government has been snatching away a lot of lands of
03:47local villagers is something that has worried a lot of them to build a ring road.
03:52Of course, there was this whole thing about the Aero City construction which has also
03:56worried a lot of villagers.
03:57But this new project has absolutely devastated them.
04:27To end, I would like to end with a quote that a young man told me in this village of Samakhurd
04:50in Ayodhya.
04:52Hindu khatre mein nahi hai, samvidhan khatre mein nahi hai, zameen khatre mein hai.
04:56Which is to mean that Hindus are not endangered, the constitution is not endangered, our lands
05:01are endangered.
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