All this, after a Varanasi court permitted Kashi’s Hindus to offer prayers in a basement cellar of the disputed Gyanvapi mosque and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath removed barricades overnight for Hindu devotees of Lord Shiva to offer prayers before daybreak.

Coming so soon after the “Pran Pratishthan” of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir, the prayers in ‘Vyasjitehkhana’ was a major victory for the “Hindu Paksh” and it’s now Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s job to keep the triumphant sentiment alive till after the last vote is cast in the 2024 general elections.

A message went late last year to BJP leaders across the country, including to BJP spokespersons, to make “Hindutva” central to the BJP’s 2024 election campaign. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi led from the front.

How could the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister be left behind? The monk-turned-politician made a pointed reference to Kashi’s Gyanvapi and to Mathura’s Krishna Janambhoomi in the UP Assembly, the BJP's electoral intentions out in the open for everybody to see. Don't be surprised if the two disputed sites didn’t boil over before general elections 2024.

If there was a threat implicit in the Yogi’s innocuous text, it wasn’t missed. Those who got the thrust correct, reacted. A certain Tauqeer Raza of Bareilly and a TMC minister in the Mamata Banerjee government. Raza is all fire and brimstone while the TMC minister went straight for the UP Chief Minister’s Hindutva jugular.

This was the reaction the BJP was looking forward to when BJP leaders were told to make ‘Hindutva’ central to the general election campaign. Tauqeer Raza and the TMC minister fell for the trap. On February 14, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath led a bout of devotional prayers at the ‘Vyasjitehkhana’ and it was a pointed warning to Razas and the overstepping TMC minister Siddiqullah Chowdhury who had threatened that if Yogi "comes to Bengal, we will surround him".

Asking Hindus to "vacate the Gyanvapi mosque immediately", Siddiqullah wondered if the Yogi had "any sense", he wouldn't have done what he had done. Siddiqullah is, of course, consolidating his base in West Bengal but he is also helping the Yogi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi consolidate the BJP’s hold on Hindu votes.

It is no longer “Pasmanda-Pasmanda” for Modi. Today, all that matters is the Hindu vote and needling Muslim voices are welcome to the hunt. Forget the ‘Pran Prathistha’ of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has moved on to the UAE where a “Bhavya Hindu Temple '' has sprung up from the sands of the Abu Dhabi desert.

The ‘Ahlan Modi’, which translates to ‘Hello Modi’, reception given to the Prime Minister by the UAE government in the UAE capital appeared like it was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully-crafted 2024 election campaign and was packed with Hindu symbolism. The Hindu votebank of the BJP lapped it up.

The opposition INDIA Block should understand one thing and that is that this government isn’t bothered about farmers at the gates; their complaints, their demands, their concerns, none of them. The standoff on Delhi’s borders is secondary to the showoff in the Gulf region. Don’t be surprised if a branch of the PMO is opened in Abu Dhabi. The impression one gets is that a big chunk of Indian expats all over the Gulf are unabashedly Modi-bhakts and that tells on bhakts at home here, too.

The Qatar triumph of bringing back condemned Indian sailors apart, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also has pumped life into a "Hindu temple in a Muslim country". The BJP election juggernaut will make sure this accomplishment is not forgotten by the voters. And for that to happen, both Gyanvapi and "Krishna Janambhoomi" will also have to be brought alive. Like the Yogi said in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, with Gyanvapi almost a done thing, who can stop "Krishna" from asking for His "janamasthan"? (IPA Service)