Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has called the Ayodhya Ram temple ‘Pran Pratishtha’ or consecration ceremony as an event for the Bharatiya Janata Party to score political mileage and if the Congress attendees, it will be a political choice, and not just a personal one.
Congress bigwigs – national president Mallikarjun Kharge, former president Sonia Gandhi and the party’s Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury – have refused the invitation to the grand Ram temple opening ceremony on January 22, describing it a “BJP-RSS” event.
“Our party has many members who believe in many faiths and they are free to practice them. Hindus in the party have all right to offer prayers to Ram Lalla. But the party felt that going for a political event – for an incomplete temple because the work is not over (for the magnificent temple of Ayodhya)… The timing of this (‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony) seems to be designed to benefit the political goals of the ruling party (BJP). And thus, if we attend, then it will become a political choice, not just a personal one and people need to understand this as well,” Tharoor told reporters.
Tharoor further said, “Let the Lok Sabha elections be held and let the temple be fully built. I will go. I will visit Kashi Vishwanath as well. There is nothing wrong in going there to pray as a believer.”
The Thiruvananthapuram MP also said there was nothing wrong in Hindus rejoicing the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. “However, the Congress party had decided not to participate as our presence at the venue would send out a different message,” Tharoor quoted as saying by The New Indian Express.
Earlier in the day, in a post on social media platform X, Tharoor referred to a speech made by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in 1999 at the Ramakrishna Mission, emphasising how Hindu liberal thoughts contributed to India’s secular identity.
The Congress leader’s response came a day after the BJP criticised the grand old party’s decision to decline the invitation to its three bigwigs to attend the Ram temple consecration ceremony in Ayodhya, alleging it exposed the party’s inherent opposition to India’s culture and Hindu religion.
In a post on social media platform X, where he attached Gandhi’s speech featuring Swami Vivekananda’s views on Hinduism, the Congress Working Committee member expressed his belief that the teachings of Vivekananda carry a highly relevant and impactful message for the present day.
Sonia Gandhi, in her speech on January 12, 1999, when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-head NDA government was in power, had worried over the “appropriation” of Swami Vivekananda – who had admired “India’s pluralistic and composite heritage” — by certain sections of society.
Tharoor, in his post, said the Indian National Congress’s (INC) association with Hindu liberalism is not a recent response to events over the past decade but rather a longstanding and deeply held conviction.
