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On Ram temple consecration, Sharad Pawar invokes ex-PM Rajiv Gandhi. Here's what he said
The Ayodhya Ram temple's ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony will take place on January 22.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday invoked Rajiv Gandhi, saying the ‘shilanyas’ of the Ram temple in Ayodhya was conducted when the late Congress leader was India's prime minister.
"The shilanyas (laying of first stone) was conducted during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure, but today the BJP and RSS are doing politics in the name of Lord Ram," Pawar was quoted by PTI as saying at a public meeting in Karnataka's Nipani.
On Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertaking an 11-day fast ahead of the consecration ceremony, Pawar said, "I respect his faith in Ram, but had he decided to observe a fast to eliminate poverty, people would have appreciated it."
It was Rajiv Gandhi's government that decided to open the locks of the Babri Masjid in 1985, a move seen by many as the Congress's attempts to balance communal equations after the ruling government at that time had overruled Shah Bano verdict of the Supreme Court.
On November 9, 1989, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders were allowed to lay the foundation stone of the Ram temple in the UP town. According to an HT report, then Union home minister Buta Singh and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Narain Dutt Tiwari had held closed door meetings with the VHP leader before the Rajiv Gandhi government gave its nod for the ceremony.
However, the move did not help the Congress as the VHP intensified the Ram temple movement. The BJP under Lal Krishna Advani embarked on a Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to build the temple in Ayodhya on September 25, 1990. However, Advani's campaign was cut short by his arrest in Bihar on orders by then Lalu Prasad's government. But the Ram Janmabhoomi movement reaped dividends for the BJP as its seat tally in Lok Sabha skyrocketed from two in 1984 to 85 in 1989 and then to 120 in 1991.
In 2019, the Supreme Court paved the way for the construction of the Ram temple on 2.77 acres of land in Ayodhya where the Babri mosque stood until 6 December 1992. The ‘bhumi pujan’ of the newly constructed temple was performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 5, 2020.
Modi, who had accompanied Advani during the BJP stalwart's Rath Yatra in 1990, will preside over the consecration ceremony of the temple on January 22.
(With PTI inputs)
