'Attempt to conduct Ram temple ceremony will hurt PM Modi', says Congress's Mani Shankar Aiyar

Kozhikode: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's attempt to “personally conduct the consecration ceremony” at the Ram temple in Ayodhya will prove costly given the disapproval of the four shankaracharyas who have refused to attend the ceremony, said Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar.

The former Union minister said it is 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," said Aiyar at the ongoing seventh edition of the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) on Friday.

Uttarakhand's Jyotir Mutt head Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati has said that none of the four shankaracharyas will attend the event in Ayodhya as the consecration ceremony will take place before construction of the temple is completed, making it “against the shastras”.

Aiyar said while Hinduism is the most ancient religion in India practised by a majority of people in the country, Hindutva is a political philosophy dealing with Hindu majoritarianism.

"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," claimed Aiyar, adding that, unlike some people, he is not ready to write off the 2024 general elections.

Discussing his latest book, 'The Rajiv I knew and Why he was India's most misunderstood Prime Minister', the 82-year-old talked about how almost every charge made against the former PM was without basis in truth – including the Bofors scam.

The corruption scam, which led to the fall of the Congress government led by Rajiv Gandhi in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, related to alleged kickbacks in the Rs 1,437 crore howitzer gun deal signed in 1986 with Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors.

Aiyar, who served as a joint secretary in Rajiv Gandhi's prime minister's office and was his senior at Doon School and Cambridge, blamed the media for the Bofors story arguing that it was a 'complete lie' from beginning to end, with even the high court of India stating that there was not a 'scintilla of evidence' against him.

"In 2015, the identity of the former head of Swedish police (who led the investigations into the Bofors affairs)... turned out to be man called Lindstrom and he confesses in that interview in 2015 that they had nothing that led to the assumption that Rajiv Gandhi took any money in Bofors. And yet, this one story completely destroyed the political career of a man who had the highest vision for India. That is why today I am so angry about the media," he added.

Historian William Dalrymple, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, actor Prakash Raj, American physician-author Abraham Verghese, award-winning author Perumal Murugan and comedian Kanan Gill are among the 400 noted personalities attending the Kerala Literature Festival.

The discussions at the four-day festival, which began on Thursday, will revolve around several themes, including science and technology, literature, art, gender, cinema, culture and environment.