BJP asks Centre to tender apology on Ramsethu issue

Agartala, Sep 13: The BJP today threatened to launch a countrywide agitation if the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) did not withdraw its affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court yesterday on Ramsethu.

BJP president Rajnath Singh alleged the UPA Government was trying to trigger an inter-religious conflict by denying the existence of Lord Ram and the epic Ramayana ''despite a large number of evidences''.

The BJP would support the move of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Shiv Sena for spearheading countrywide movement against the government's latest effort to denigrate the Ramayana, Mr Singh said.

''The government should withdraw the affidavit and tender an apology to the people for making derogatory statements against the 'Ramcharitmanas' and other historical facts of the Ramayana,'' Mr Singh said.

The Congress party has always favoured caste and religion-based politics and it was now a crude attempt to insult ''our culture, civilisation, heritage and Hindu sentiments,'' Mr Singh alleged. He said the latest attempt of the UPA Government was towards its pursuant goal of appeasement politics, he added.

The BJP chief said he was astonished to see the ''poor knowledge'' of the Congress leaders.

''If, according to Congress leaders, there is no Ram, why do they believe that the Father of the Nation had contemplated the 'Ramrajya'? Why have the pictures of Lord Ram and Lord Krishna been depicted in the Indian Constitution?'' Mr Singh asked.

He also alleged that the Congress party was challenging the beliefs and dishonouring the religions practices of the majority Hindu population of the country.

UNI

User Comments

khandu patel 14 Sep 2007 02:11 am

The ASI is no doubt competent to report on the archeological site. They would have been ill advised to comment on the historicity of Ram. Unlike for the more recent Lord Krishna, Lord Ram goes back to a more distant past. The difficulty of so placing Lord Ram does not mean he never existed. The doubt placed on Lord Ram's existence that has come directly from the politicos of the Government is deeply offensive to Hindus. But this is what we should expect from this Government which has been driven in its urge to be offensive to Hindus to earn kudos with the Muslims and Christians of Bharat. The task before the VHP is for them to have within their ranks and following people who are worthy of honour and trust. Quite how they are going to achieve this by taking cudgels against the project to modernise Bharat's infrastructure is beyond me. Our religious texts are wonderful with the mythology that abounds in them but to take everything literally is unnecessary on theological grounds. The sacred duty of the Hindus should be to establish a Government that would respect the proper place of Hindus in the life of the country. The previous Government, which reneged on its promise to build the Ram temple, did little to earn our trust. As the latest polls indicate, the Hindus of Bharat in their madness would return this Government to power! There could not be a greater perversion of the democratic experiment.