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Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Saturday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intention to “personally conduct the Pran Pratishtha ceremony” at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
Aiyar also claimed that the absence of the four shankaracharyas, who refused to attend the Ram Mandir consecration ceremony, would prove costly for the Prime Minister.
Speaking at the Kerala Literature Festival, Aiyar siad that now it was beginning to show who is the “real Hindu” — one who knows the difference between ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindutva’.
“Modi’s attempt at being personally present and personally conducting the religious ceremony has received such strong disapproval from the four accepted seers of the Hindu religion, who constitute what you may call the pontiffs of the Hindu religion, that it is all going to turn back on him. It will bite back,” news agency PTI quoted the senior Congress leader as saying.
The former Union minister’s remarks came a day after Uttarakhand’s Jyotir Mutt head Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati announced that none of the four shankaracharyas would attend the event as the consecration ceremony is taking place before the completion of the temple construction, which was a clear “violation of the shastras“.
Explaining the difference between Hinduism and Hindutva, Aiyar said, “Most Hindus, at least 50 per cent of them, have never voted for Hindutva. It is our way of conducting elections that has resulted in Hindutva power in the last 10 years”.
Notably, Congress’s top brass, including Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, have “respectfully declined” the invitation to attend the Ram Temple consecration ceremony, accusing the BJP of making it into a “political project” for electoral gains.
The decision attracted sharp criticism from the ruling BJP, who said that there is nothing new in the Congress’ stand as the opposition party and its allies have been “insulting” Hindus and Sanatan Dharma.
