Sagar, even if unwittingly, made his contribution to this churning too. The plan to allow Doordarshan to air Sagar’s Ramayan was set in motion later that year. It is widely believed that in order to appease the Hindus in equal measure, it was Rajiv – not the BJP – who blew new life into the latent Ram Mandir movement by pressurizing then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Bir Bahadur Singh to have the disputed Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhumi site in Ayodhya unlocked in 1986 so that Hindus could perform religious rites. The Supreme Court’s Shah Bano verdict the following year and the Rajiv government’s efforts to overturn it under the pressure of the politically influential Islamic clergy triggered deafening accusations of Muslim appeasement by the Congress party. In the 1984 general elections, contested in the backdrop of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress party had won an unprecedented majority of 402 seats in the Lok Sabha and the BJP was reduced to just two seats. The political events in the years leading up to the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government changing this policy to allow the streaming of Ramayan need to be emphasized. It is pertinent to note that until Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan burst out on telescreens in January 1987 Doordarshan’s programming was, as a policy abiding by India’s secular ethos, religion-neutral.
0 kommentar(er)
