<p>Kameshwar Chaupal and his colleagues had been camping on the banks of the salubrious Saryu at Ayodhya for a week when the summons came from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad chief Ashok Singhal. The Dalit youth from Bihar had been chosen to lay the first stone in the foundation of the grand Ram Temple at Ayodhya on November 9, 1989.</p><p>Fast forward to 2023. Chaupal is now one of the trustees of the Sri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which has been appointed by the government to oversee the construction of the temple after the Supreme Court settled the Ayodhya title suit in favour of the Hindu side.</p>.BJP: Back to ‘Mandir’ for Mandate 2024?.<p>Preparations are now on for a grand ‘Pran Pratishtha’ or ‘consecration’ ceremony, being planned for the third week of January next year – just a few months before of Election Commission is likely to blow the poll bugle to announce the schedule of the next parliamentary polls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will preside over the ceremony. The artisans and masons are working round the clock to complete the ground and the first floor of the temple by December this year. Thirty-seven other temples in the city are currently under renovation.</p>.Varanasi court bans media coverage of ASI survey of Gyanvapi mosque.<p>The Ram Temple Movement started in 1980 when the third RSS chief Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras deputed some pracharaks to mobilize support for the construction of a temple in Ayodhya in place of a 16th-century mosque. The deputations were primarily seen as the RSS’s reaction to the conversion of 200 Dalit families to Islam in Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu in 1980.</p>.<p>The raison d'etre lent a certain inclusive character to the movement. Symbolically and otherwise, the BJP, the political wing of the Sangh, gained the most from the attempts to create a larger Hindu identity with a specific outreach towards the marginalized sections.</p>.<p>In the 1980s and 1990s, the VHP workers would fan out collecting bricks for a grand temple. The Congress played along hoping to reap the electoral benefits of the Hindu consolidation. The dividends, instead, accrued on the BJP, catapulting the party to power in many states and later at the centre.</p>.<p>It was the Ram Temple movement that taught the BJP the nuances of caste politics and social engineering. Just ahead of the 1989 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP at its executive committee meeting at Palampur in Himachal Pradesh adopted a resolution for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. The rest is history.</p> <p>Thirty-five years after Choupal’s ‘shilanyaas’ or stone-laying, the political undertones in the build-up to the consecration ceremony of the idol of Ram Lalla in the temple are evident.</p> <p>It has been reported that the trust will invite more than 20,000 Hindu gurus, saints, and religious leaders for the ceremony, which may continue for 10 days.</p> <p>“We would also ask people to hold pujas in their respective villages that would coincide with the ceremonies here in Ayodhya,” says the VHP spokesperson in Ayodhya, Sharad Sharma.</p> <p>The denouement to the Ram Temple movement is expected to be as grand and extensive as its genesis.</p>
<p>Kameshwar Chaupal and his colleagues had been camping on the banks of the salubrious Saryu at Ayodhya for a week when the summons came from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad chief Ashok Singhal. The Dalit youth from Bihar had been chosen to lay the first stone in the foundation of the grand Ram Temple at Ayodhya on November 9, 1989.</p><p>Fast forward to 2023. Chaupal is now one of the trustees of the Sri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which has been appointed by the government to oversee the construction of the temple after the Supreme Court settled the Ayodhya title suit in favour of the Hindu side.</p>.BJP: Back to ‘Mandir’ for Mandate 2024?.<p>Preparations are now on for a grand ‘Pran Pratishtha’ or ‘consecration’ ceremony, being planned for the third week of January next year – just a few months before of Election Commission is likely to blow the poll bugle to announce the schedule of the next parliamentary polls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will preside over the ceremony. The artisans and masons are working round the clock to complete the ground and the first floor of the temple by December this year. Thirty-seven other temples in the city are currently under renovation.</p>.Varanasi court bans media coverage of ASI survey of Gyanvapi mosque.<p>The Ram Temple Movement started in 1980 when the third RSS chief Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras deputed some pracharaks to mobilize support for the construction of a temple in Ayodhya in place of a 16th-century mosque. The deputations were primarily seen as the RSS’s reaction to the conversion of 200 Dalit families to Islam in Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu in 1980.</p>.<p>The raison d'etre lent a certain inclusive character to the movement. Symbolically and otherwise, the BJP, the political wing of the Sangh, gained the most from the attempts to create a larger Hindu identity with a specific outreach towards the marginalized sections.</p>.<p>In the 1980s and 1990s, the VHP workers would fan out collecting bricks for a grand temple. The Congress played along hoping to reap the electoral benefits of the Hindu consolidation. The dividends, instead, accrued on the BJP, catapulting the party to power in many states and later at the centre.</p>.<p>It was the Ram Temple movement that taught the BJP the nuances of caste politics and social engineering. Just ahead of the 1989 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP at its executive committee meeting at Palampur in Himachal Pradesh adopted a resolution for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. The rest is history.</p> <p>Thirty-five years after Choupal’s ‘shilanyaas’ or stone-laying, the political undertones in the build-up to the consecration ceremony of the idol of Ram Lalla in the temple are evident.</p> <p>It has been reported that the trust will invite more than 20,000 Hindu gurus, saints, and religious leaders for the ceremony, which may continue for 10 days.</p> <p>“We would also ask people to hold pujas in their respective villages that would coincide with the ceremonies here in Ayodhya,” says the VHP spokesperson in Ayodhya, Sharad Sharma.</p> <p>The denouement to the Ram Temple movement is expected to be as grand and extensive as its genesis.</p>