Should Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath be a member of the government-appinted trust that would be formed to construct a Ram Temple in Ayodhya? This is what Swami Narendra Giri, the head of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, the body of 13 top Hindu sects in the country, pitched in favour of on November 12.
While pushing for his name, Swami Giri, however, clarified that Mr. Adityanath should be inducted as a member of the trust not in his present capacity as CM of UP but as the ‘peethadishwar’ of the Gorakhnath Mutt in Gorakhpur. Apart from being the head of state in UP, Mr. Adityanath is also the head priest of the Gorakhnath Temple.
“Yogi Adityanath’s ancestors, the peethadishwar of Gorakhpeeth, were ready to sacrifice themselves for Ramjanmabhoomi and it is due to their inspiration that the movement intensified,” Swami Giri, who is based in Prayagraj, told a news channel.
Talking to The Hindu over phone, Swami Giri concluded that Mr. Adityanath’s guru Mahant Avaidyanath struggled for the Ramjanmabhoomi. “The movement was owed to him,” said Swami Giri, adding that he would soon formally write to the government proposing Mr. Adityanath’s name.
While paving the way for a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, the Supreme Court in its verdict last week directed the Central government to formulate a scheme to set up a trust with a board of trustees entrusted with the power of constructing the temple. The government has been given three months for this.
Author Dhirendra Jha, who has documented the Ayodhya dispute and the politics around it through his research-based books, says that the Gorakhnath Temple made a huge contribution to the Ramjanmabhoomi movement dating back to the early years of independent India. Mahant Digvijaynath, the guru of Avaidyanath, “actually master-minded the planting of idols in the Babri Masjid in 1949,” said Mr. Jha. “He was pulling all the strings and commanding people like Abhiram Das and Ramchandra Das Paramhans, who were local Hindu Mahasabha leaders.”
Digvijaynath was not only the head of the Gorakhnath Temple but also associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, winning the Lok Sabha election from Gorakhpur in 1967. His successor Avaidyanath also won the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha election many times before passing on the turf to Mr. Adityanath in 1998.
Mr. Jha says Avaidyanath “was part of that group of sadhus who for the first time gave religious sanctity to the political movement for Ramjanmabhoomi. That he did during the Kumbh Mela of 1989.”
Meanwhile, the number of persons arrested in the State for posting “offensive” items on social media related to the Ayodhya verdict and for allegedly spreading rumours touched 99. The police have also registered 65 FIRs and action has been taken, including deletion, against 13,016 posts on social media, the DGP headquarters said in a statement.
Most of the posts flagged have been on Twitter, followed by Facebook and YouTube.
