Division will aggravate Ayodhya dispute: RSS

Division will aggravate Ayodhya dispute: RSS


Published: Monday, Dec 13, 2010, 3:34 IST
By Jaideep Hardikar & Anshika Mishra | Place: NAGPUR | Agency: DNA

Departing from its stated position on the Ayodhya verdict, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Sunday said the construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya, and not the division of disputed land, is the only solution for lasting peace. Division, it said, doesn’t resolve, but aggravates dispute.

While welcoming the Allahabad high court verdict on Ayodhya on September 30 (wherein the court divided the disputed land in three equal parts), the RSS had urged the communities to accept it and pave the way for the construction of the temple, since the court had upheld that it was the birthplace of Rama.

“Historically, we have seen that sharing or partition has not yielded any peaceful solution,” RSS chief Dr Mohan Bhagwat said. “Kashmir is the best example; did the acceptance of the line of actual control help resolve the issue?

India’s partition gave us four wars and terrorism. Those who favour division serve their self interests by keeping the country divided. The only option is to build a grand temple in Ayodhya and re-establish a symbol of Bharat’s ‘swatva’ (or self-conscience).”

“In fact,” he said, “it is time we re-estalish all such symbols that portend Bharat’s self-image and nature that was razed during the foreign rule.”

Bhagwat was addressing a huge gathering at the Resghimbaug ground at the ‘Virat Hindu Sammelan’, part of the ongoing campaign launched in August last, by the Sangh-backed Hanumat Shakti Jagrant Samiti to revive the temple issue. A battery of modern saints led by Narendra Maharaj was in chair.

The change of stand on the Ayodhya dispute, Sangh watchers say, comes after two months’ of internal brainstorming and the decision of the Babri Masjid Action Committee to appeal before the Supreme Court against the Allahabad high court’s verdict.

The RSS is looking to push on the national political scene both, the vexed Kashmir and Ayodhya issues. Its affiliates, including the BJP, would subsequently join the campaign by steering the issues in line with the RSS positions and objectives, insiders say.

Bhagwat’s speech on Sunday was based on the theme of division or partition and his articulation was to bring Kashmir and Ayodhya issues in line with its strategy to steer the campaigns together.

“There is no dispute about Kashmir,” he said. “It’s an external attack that needs to be defiantly repulsed and the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir needs to be retrieved,” he said. Bhagwat called the recent protests in the valley as an “organised stone pelting” by the separatists to mount pressure on the government.

Without a direct reference to the Congress leader Digvijay Singh, he said there’s a tendency to malign the image of those who serve the motherland, hit out at the saints and soul of the country, and politicise the martyrdom of those who lay their lives for the country. “They put self-interests above the nation; which is to establish the vote banks even while maligning the country’s soul and character.”