Dhaval Kulkarni@dhavalkulkarni
Invigorated by the victory of BJP at the Centre, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) will launch a campaign covering one lakh villages in India to press for the construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.
The week-long “Ram utsav”, which will be launched early next year, will also cover 9,000 villages in Maharashtra and see a show of strength with processions, religious discourses, keertans, speeches and contests. VHP is seeking a law for the temple’s construction.
Mir Baqi, a general of Mughal emperor Babar, is said to have destroyed a temple of Lord Ram in 1528 to construct the Babri masjid. After BJP brought the temple issue into the mainstream political discourse in the 1980s, the mosque was felled by kar sewaks from the Sangh Parivar