Lucknow: Responding to an invitation for him to join the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the chief priest of the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya extended his best wishes to Rahul Gandhi in a letter dated 31 December 2022.
Expressing his inability to physically join the Bharat Jodo Yatra, mahant Satyendra Das said the work Gandhi is doing is in the direction of “sarvajan sukhaye, sarvajan hitaye (good and betterment for all)”. The octogenarian priest who has been taking care of the idol since before the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 was among the priests invited by local Congress leaders to join the foot march in its three-day Uttar Pradesh leg.
In his letter to Rahul Gandhi, a copy of which is with ThePrint, Das wrote, “May your yatra be successful and may you attain the goal of joining Bharat that you aim for. May you be healthy and have a long life. Whatever work you are doing for the good of the country is in the direction of sarvajan sukhaye, sarvajan hitaye. May Prabhu Ram Lalla’s blessings be with you.”
Speaking to ThePrint, the mahant — who had said in January 2022 that leaders of no other party, except the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had visited Ayodhya despite talking about the temple city’s development — said the local Congress unit had invited him to join the yatra when it was in Rajasthan and wanted him to meet Gandhi during its UP leg.
“They had initially wanted that when the Bharat Jodo Yatra comes here (UP), they could take me to meet Rahul. Earlier, they sent me an invite and told me that they could take me to meet Rahul via flight. I told them that I won’t go anywhere so they asked me to give my blessings for the yatra in a letter form which they can send to him (Rahul),” he said.
On his earlier comments that leaders of no other party except the BJP visited Ayodhya and nothing was visible on the ground despite all parties talking about development there, Das said that the issue of the yatra was not linked to the Ram temple.
“This issue is not related to the Ram temple. If someone comes to a sadhu (saint) for blessings, he will definitely get blessings. I had earlier made those comments because of the way the BJP has been active (over the temple issue) and no other party made such efforts, be it SP, BSP, Congress, etc. It was only BJP, and the result is that a grand temple is being built, but this (yatra) is unrelated to the Ram temple, the motive is Bharat Jodo (joining India). If someone wants blessings, he or she is welcome,” he said.
Appointed head priest of the Ram Janmabhoomi in March 1992, Das served the idol placed on an elevated platform under a tarpaulin sheet till construction of the temple began. The idol is now kept in a makeshift shrine on the premises of the under-construction Ram temple.
While he, by his own admission, was appointed the head priest with their help, the mahant’s habit of not mincing words has put the BJP and its ideological peer, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), in a tough spot more than once. Das even went on record to say in 2020 that the “VHP had tried hard to remove him from his position” as chief priest.
His remarks about VHP leaders offering prayers before the idol in violation of a court order, and allegations that the VHP wanted him to keep the issue under wraps, had upset the outfit in the 1990s. But the mahant had said in no uncertain terms that as “chief priest, he refused to act as a puppet or mask of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and would only say what was true.”
In 2014, the mahant had criticised the BJP for making the temple in Ayodhya a poll issue by mentioning it in its manifesto. It is “wrong” to link Ram Mandir, which is a matter of faith, with elections, he had said.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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