Ram temple is a matter of national pride, says the RSS

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Citing considerable delay by the Supreme Court, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has reiterated a demand to promulgate an ordinance or legislate a law to facilitate the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The BJP's ideological parent said on Wednesday that the temple was a matter of national pride and not a political or religious one.

RSS joint general secretary Dr Manmohan Vaidya said this after Sangh chief Dr Mohan Bhagwat inaugurated a three-day Akhil Bharatiya Karyakarini Mandal (working committee meeting) at the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini at Keshav-Shrusti in Uttan in Bhayandar, on Wednesday morning.

Top functionaries will participate in the closed-door brainstorming session and plan ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In 2014, the Sangh Parivar had toiled hard, mentally and physically, to help BJP win power in New Delhi.

'Issue ordinance or legislate law'
Commenting on the SC's postponement of the Ayodhya case hearing to January next, Vaidya said there had been a considerable delay on the part of the courts. "Because of the delay, we have urged the Centre to issue an ordinance or legislate a law (for facilitating the construction of the Ram temple)."

Dr Bhagwat had raised the Ayodhya dispute in his Dussehra rally speech in Nagpur early this month. He had said politics had delayed the construction of the temple, and now it was time to end the dispute by way of legislation.

BJP's estranged ally, the Shiv Sena, has also raked up the issue with a plan to hold a rally in Ayodhya on November 25. Party president Uddhav Thackeray has said that he will ask the Modi government to not delay the construction further, or else the Sena would build a temple on the disputed site.

Not Hindu vs Muslim
Vaidya said the 1994 SC verdict in the Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India case, the 2010 verdict of Allahabad High Court, and the findings of the Archaeological Survey of India were very clear on the Ram temple. "What remains now is that the land has to be acquired for constructing the temple," he said. Vaidya said that the issue was not about Hindus versus Muslims, or a temple-mosque dispute.

"Babar was a conquerer. If he wanted a place to offer namaz, he could have done it anywhere. But he was an invader. If a mosque was built there (by demolishing) the temple, then the namaz offered there is not acceptable to Allah. Islamic scholars also endorse the same view," he said. Dr Vaidya recalled the case of the Somnath temple, which was reconstructed in 1951 during the tenure of former deputy prime minister and home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. "The Somnath Temple too was a matter of national pride," he said.

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