Razing of Ram temple a fact, can’t be sidestepped: Amit Shah

NEW DELHI: BJP seems to be amping up its Ram temple demand with party chief Amit Shah asserting on Thursday that the demolition of a temple at the birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya was a fact that could not be sidestepped while discussing ownership of the disputed site.
“Destruction of the Lord Ram temple in Ayodhya can’t be isolated from the whole controversy. When we discuss it, we should not be losing sight of the incident which took place 600 years ago,” Shah said.Shah was speaking at the launch of two books — ‘Ayodhya Ke Chashmadeed’ and ‘Yudh Mein Ayodhya’ authored by journalist Hemant Sharma — at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi in the presence of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and home minister Rajnath Singh.
The BJP chief ’s remarks came even as the Supreme Court is considering whether to refer the dispute to a five-judge bench. The order is anticipated as CJI Dipak Misra is set to superannuate on October 2. Temple votaries have demanded that the matter of ownership of the disputed site be settled at the earliest rather than the SC seeking re-examination of an earlier order that a mosque was not an essential part of Islam.
Reiterating BJP’s stand that efforts would be made through all constitutional means to see that a grand temple was constructed, Shah said the root cause of the entire dispute was the fact that there was a temple, which was destroyed in 16th century AD. He said Lord Ram was the most revered among Hindu deities and his temples were everywhere in Indian villages as devotees remained resilient for hundreds of years after the Ayodhya temple was razed.
“But a moment came when people lost patience and the biggest agitation of free India erupted for a grand temple at the birthplace of Ram,” he said. Bhagwat, who had made a strong pitch for construction of a Ram temple on Wednesday, reiterated that the temple should be made at the earliest in which people of all faiths, including Muslims, should cooperate.
“I want a grand Ram mandir to be built soon. Whichever way and whatever the means, it should be built at the earliest. There should be no politics over this. If it happens through consensus, then the dispute between Hindus and Muslims will be over forever. If it is done harmoniously, the fingers that are raised again and again at Muslims would not be raised,” he said.
Home minister Singh, meanwhile, recalled that he was among the first to join the temple agitation when he was ABVP president.