Temple replica — VHP tones down Ayodhya yatra

According to the VHP, the reason for this extra precaution is the ISI threat to blow up the replica. “We have been tipped off about the ISI’s specific plan to sabotage the yatra and damage the temple’s replica,” VHP general secretary Acharya Giriraj Kishore told The Indian Express today.

The yatra was earlier to be accompanied by a posse of vehicles and include a number of stopovers. Now, the VHP hopes to get the replica to Ayodhya in two days, proceeding non-stop. The various pieces would then be re-assembled at Karsevakpuram and kept for public viewing at a grand function, Kishore informs. Incidentally, he now even denies having ever planned a grand yatra, as “made out by the media”.

But in a bid to keep the VHP cadre in good humour, Kishore reiterates their commitment to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya irrespective of the court verdict. “Even if the court decides against us in the ownership suit, we will go ahead with the construction,” Kishore says. But won’t that be illegal? “So what? Wasn’t the mosque too built forcibly?” he shoots back.

Does that mean that the VHP would wait for the court verdict? “No, we will wait only for orders of dharmacharyas, expected to be taken at the Dharma Sansad during the Kumbha Mela at Allahabad in the coming winter,” Kishore says. The temple construction would amount to laying the foundation stone of a Hindu Rashtra (country) where people adopt the Hindu way of living, he further claims.

The VHP leader seemed angry at the failure of successive governments to implement court orders whether in the Shah Bano case or in the Ghosipura graveyard case of Varanasi “only to appease the Muslims”. The Supreme Court had directed the Uttar Pradesh government to remove two graves of sunnis from a Shia graveyard at Ghosipura in Varanasi. The order has not been implemented even 20 years after it was delivered, Kishore says.