Radical Hindu leader: vote for us, and we will give you back the Ayodhya temple
Mumbai (AsiaNews)
- Vote for a Hindu Nationalist government in the elections of 2014, and they will
we rebuild Ayodhya. There
are still two years to the elections for the new prime minister of India, but
for the radical Hindu Vishwa Hindu
Parishad (VHP) the campaign has already (or almost) begun. The
recent public statements of Ashok Singhal, longtime leader of the VHP show as
much. He said: "Only a central
government that is pro-Hindutva [ideology
that theorizes the creation of a country inspired in all respects on the
principles of
Hinduism, ed] can pave the way for the construction of a temple in Ayodhya".
Ayodhya
in 1992 was the scene of one of the bloodiest attacks against the Muslim
community of India. On
6 December of that year, about 150 thousand militants of the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar razed the ancient Babri
Masjid mosque. The
destruction of the place of worship was the culmination of a long campaign
backed by Hindu radicals, which claimed ancient ownership to the land on which the
Babri Masjid stood. The
assault resulted in violent riots, which killed more than 2 thousand people,
mostly Muslims. On
30 September 2010, the High Court of Allabad ruled that the area was to be divided
into three parts among Hindus and Muslims litigants in an attempt to mitigate the
long standing tensions surrounding the area.
For
Sajan George, president of the Global
Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), these comments "want to garner
the hysteria of a part of the Hindus of this country, and use it to prepare the
ground for the next elections," which Hindutva advocates
"need to reaffirm their political identity." But
the Christian leader stresses, "the real issues that affect the majority
of Hindus are others, and have not been addressed: the loss of jobs and the
reduction of living standards, poverty, caused by the negative impact of
globalization." And
the fact that "minorities in India are and were victims of these
nationalists" is a problem, because they "do not represent in any way
the basic principles of the Hindu religion."
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05/01/2024 19:03
