The architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, Mr L.K. Advani, on Saturday visited the Somnath temple in Gujarat to offer prayers. Mr Advani had taken out his contentious rath yatra from Somnath in 1990, triggering the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Saturday was the anniversary of the senior BJP leader’s 1990 yatra.
That the party intends to revive the Ayodhya issue again became somewhat evident when expelled saffron sanyasin Uma Bharti shared the platform with Mr Advani at the Somnath temple. Ms Bharti has been a leading proponent of the Ram temple at the disputed site.
While the Congress in New Delhi cautioned all political outfits against “reopening old wounds”, the Supreme Court will on September 28 decide the fate of the special leave petition seeking the deferment of the Allahabad high court verdict on the Ayodhya title suit.
Keeping the issue alive, Mr Advani recently blogged: “In 1990 I decided to undertake a rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya, where karseva had been announced for October 30. I decided to commence my journey on September 25. I could not complete this yatra...” Ms Bharti accom- panying Mr Advani has also given rise to speculation that the BJP, egged on by its big brother, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its appointee, BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, will look at the option of returning to the saffron core issues of Hindutva. At Somnath, Mr Advani appealed to party workers to maintain calm. He also urged the Supreme Court to take up the matter on September 28 and get the judgment delivered through this bench “since countrymen have been waiting for the verdict for the last 50 years”.
However, the BJP’s move to signal to its cadre that it has not abandoned the Ram mandir issue has created a flutter among the party’s moderate faces. Top leaders are of the opinion that the party must not go full steam ahead on the issue. They feel that Ayodhya should be confined to an “ideological posturing and nothing else”. The majority section feels the “issue has lost its political relevance and the movement should be lead by the Sangh’s religious units, like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal”.
The Congress, while taking a dig at Mr Advani, hoped he would not take any step to disturb communal harmony. Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said: “L.K. Advani is the Bhishma Pitamah of the National Democratic Alliance,” adding, “I do hope that neither Advani nor his party does anything which impacts India’s pluralism and secularism, or in any manner reopens any of the old wounds which have taken a long time to heal.” On Mr Advani’s 1990 yatra, Mr Tewari said the “implications of that yatra, the communal conflagration it unleashed, the wounds it opened, the nation has barely been able to surmount it.”
Mr Advani offered prayers at the Shiva temple in Somnath. Incidentally, he visits Somnath every year after he took out a yatra from here to Ayodhya on September 25, 1990. Ms Bharti said she was “unable to understand the decision of the Supreme Court”.