Salman Khurshid on the Ram Temple: People Are Clever Now

In July 2013, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid responded to the BJP raising the Ram temple issue by noting that the matter was before the courts and that "people are clever now" and would not be misled. The remark was intended as a dismissal of the BJP's electoral use of the issue, but it carried an unintended layer of meaning.

The phrase "people are clever now" implicitly acknowledged that the issue had previously worked as a political mobiliser, and that voters were only now developing a resistance to it. It also positioned Khurshid's own party as the rational, court-respecting voice of restraint, a framing that required the Congress's own history with the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute to be set aside.

The Congress governments of the late 1980s and early 1990s had navigated the issue in ways that critics from across the political spectrum argued had contributed to the conditions that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. The party's claim to having always been the sober institutional voice on Ayodhya was, therefore, contested.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled on the matter in November 2019, more than two decades after the litigation began.