No votes for temple, we needed roti with Ram: man who cast the first Ayodhya stone

• No votes for temple, we needed roti with Ram

  
  
  • Kameshwar Chaupal, who laid the foundation stone for a proposed Ram Mandir at the shilanyas site at Ayodhya in 1989, has said that the Ayodhya movement has lost its electoral appeal. And the BJP, which has to blame itself for it, should have included “roti (livelihood) with Ram.”

     

    Chaupal, a Dalit (Paswan, by caste), has been a much-feted swayamsevak in the BJP/RSS, and the Sangh Parivar has always maintained that “his shilanyas act showed that the RSS-BJP’s Hindutva was an inclusive, all-encompassing idea.

  • The symbol of Ram then should not have been reduced to the BJP when leaders from even the Congress, like Dau Dayal Khanna and Karan Singh, were also involved in it,” Chaupal told The Sunday Express today.
  • The BJP MLC also said that the BJP ideally should have included roti(livelihood) along with Ram in its political campaign. Asked why Chaupal agreed to remain in the BJP, and contest Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, before being nominated as an MLC (he is serving his second term as MLC), he said: “If all of us in the BJP had a common opinion (on the Ram Temple issue, and other issues), its fate would have been somewhat different.”