BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Arun Shourie, who had launched a broadside against the leadership of his party after its Lok Sabha poll debacle, feels the BJP cannot whip up the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign again.
“You can’t fire a bullet twice. The time has passed. Today the issue is delivery,” he told CNN-IBN .
On criticism within sections of the BJP who feel that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was now resembling a noose around the party leadership’s neck, Mr. Shourie said, “That’s bunk...I myself was a strong supporter of the Ayodhya movement because one of the principle corrections that was required to Indian public discourse since Independence was on the perversion of the meaning of the word secular. “And the movement, which got personified by Mr. [L.K.] Advani, was a very strong corrective in that regard,” he said.
On the eve of the debate in Parliament on the Liberhan Commission report on Babri mosque demolition, Mr. Shourie said: “It is an idiotic report...17 years of public money should have been wasted on this gentleman and his staff! It is a crime.”
He said: “It has the most elementary errors. I went through the report and there are so many howlers in it, like the kar sevaks cannot be identified but they were this, that... you can’t identify them, [but] you know their character.”
Mr. Shourie parried a question on his earlier criticism of the party that it was resembling a ‘kati patang’ (kite without a string).
“I was allowed that freedom to raise my points. I had my say,” he said, adding it was up to BJP leadership to decide on issues raised by him.
