Veteran VHP leader and one of the faces of the Ram mandir movement of the 1990s, Ashok Singhal blames SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav for the politics of Muslim appeasement in Uttar Pradesh. And unlike many others in the saffron brigade, he has high hopes for Narendra Modi. In fact, Singhal’s hoping the BJP spearhead will lead a revival of the Hindu nat­ionalist movement in the country. He talks to Panini Anand. Excerpts:

Your call for a chaurasi kosi yatra flop­ped, there wasn’t even much sup­port on the ground....

This was a simple and small yatra. It’s not that we don’t have support; why are you ignoring the hundreds of protests in the last few days? We have the capacity to do bigger act­ions than the 1990s movement and we will do it as and when needed.

The BJP and RSS too didn’t support you, neither in Parliament nor on the roads.

You’ve got it wrong. There was an uproar in the...