In his monthly Mann Ki Baat radio broadcast, Modi said Amrit Kalash Yatra will be organised under the campaign and 7,500 pots carrying soil from different corners of the country will be brought to the national capital along with saplings.
Dividing people in the name of religion, engineering riots and committing atrocities on Dalits is not Hindutva but to unite one human being with another is, he said in a veiled attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party while replying to a question at a summit organised by news channel Times Now.
19 per cent of all travel in India (by bus, train or air) was pilgrimage or religious travel (possibly the single largest after business and family-related travel), discovers Ambi Parameswaran.
For relatives of many kar sevaks who were killed in the Sabarmati Express coach fire incident in Gujarat's Godhra in 2002, the 'bhoomi pujan' for a Ram temple in Ayodhya on Wednesday brought a sense of closure to the pains of losing their near and dear ones for the cause of the temple.
Speaking on the occasion, Modi said the flag unfurled at the temple is not just symbol of our spirituality, but shows that our faith remains strong despite passage of centuries, and added that the centres of faith and spiritual glory of India are now being re-established.
Police escorted the rally all the way, at one point standing in a row to prevent the rallyists from entering a side road where stood a huge mosque. Across the road, an old Muslim woman asked her Hindu neighbour what the rally was all about. The latter shrugged her ignorance, looking on in bewilderment at the young men with their saffron flags, all of them wearing Bajrang Dal T-shirts.
'Education played the most significant role in entrenchment of Hindutva ideology in coastal Karnataka.' 'Teachers of most of the schools, junior colleges, degree colleges and universities are active agents of Hindutva propaganda.'
'He was a nobody then.' 'And whatever little his contribution was there, it was restricted to Gujarat.'
Terming the agitation for Ram temple the biggest since India's freedom movement, he said it was aimed at the outcome which the verdict has made possible.
A new Congress leader may make an electoral impact by his very presence. Congress voters who had moved away from the party, after being influenced by the BJP's 'family rule' campaign, can now return with a certain moral satisfaction, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The events that unfolded after Advani's arrest not only benefited the BJP, whose political clout grew exponentially, but also catapulted Lalu to the forefront of the anti-saffron camp.
With Vishwa Hindu Parishad adamant in going ahead with its planned yatra from Ayodhya from Sunday, the Faizabad district administration on Friday issued arrest warrants against its 70 leaders amid heavy deployment of police force in the twin towns.
Leaders hope the Ayodhya temple ceremony would pave way for harmony.
The BJP is not taking the AAP challenge lightly. Amit Shah has cautioned party insiders to ensure that AAP does not cross a vote share of 24%. He has always seen AAP as a much more significant challenge than the Congress, observes Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
Despite the Ram Mandir issue failing to cut much ice with voters, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Friday reaffirmed his commitment to building the temple at Ayodhya.
Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leaders L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi reacted to the court acquitting them in the Babri Masjid demolition case.
Top BJP leaders hailed the special CBI court order acquitting all the accused and described it as a victory of truth and justice.
The objective of the entire programme will be to promote Ayodhya, the birth place of Lord Rama, as a tourist destination.
The family members of 26 people from Madhya Pradesh, who were killed in the Uttarakhand accident, cannot believe that the pilgrimage met with a tragic end.
Strident Hindutva has not been the Shivraj Singh Chouhan's hallmark in his long tenure as chief minister. What has changed?
Lalu, who is in his late 70s and suffers from multiple ailments, had been awarded sentences by a special Central Bureau of Investigation court in fodder scam cases.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi and BSP supremo Mayawati will descend on Varanasi on Saturday making it their battleground ahead of the last phase of Uttar Pradesh polls, a schedule that has put the administration on its toes.
An editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana said it was never decided that the grand temple will be constructed through public donations, and political campaigning in the name of Lord Ram has to be stopped at some point of time.
Claiming there was nothing religious about Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 84 Kosi Yatra, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today described it as a "political drama" which his government had not allowed to be staged.
The message for 2024 is that the man on the street is not going to be euphoric if the G-20 crowns Modi as king-emperor for 2023, or if India sends its first man to space just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Even a 'temple consecration' in Ayodhya, or a Uniform Civil Code, or both of them together, may not have enough electoral purchase if fuel and commodity prices are not rolled back, and money-in-the-pocket does not fatten, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rahul Gandhi and young leaders close to him are planning to connect with party workers on the ground and are preparing to embark on a nationwide yatra, reports Archis Mohan.
Not getting the kind of public support it had expected on issues like corruption and law and order, the Bharatiya Janata Party is all set to revive the Hindutva and Ram temple agenda in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, with the party planning to wrap up its Jan Swabhiman Yatra at Ayodhya on November 17.
'The Muslim community is disappointed with this judgment.'
The Ayodhya verdict, far from legitimising the deeply divisive rath yatra Advani set out on, has tried to repair the damage he did to inter-community relations in India, says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani alongwith Uma Bharti is scheduled to visit Somnath temple on Saturday, party sources said.
'As socialism and secularism were the pivot of politics between 1952-80 and 1980-2010 respectively, Hindutva has now come to acquire the same dominance'
'If the BJP thinks it is going to overnight transform Bengal into Madhya Pradesh, sorry, that's not going to happen because I have faith in our ethos and culture.'
'Why were they silent when over 128 temples and shrines including Shivlings were broken down at the time of the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor?' a Varanasi resident asks Rashme Sehgal.
Shifting positions on religiosity and Covid may confuse the Hindutva citizenry, but you can rely on Bengal to turn a non-arguable issue into a raging controversy, notes Kanika Datta.
'The BJP is the most progressive force within Hinduism today.'
'We would try our best that the temple structure becomes visible in the next two years.'
A day after the Uttar Pradesh government banned its proposed 'Sankalp Diwas' rally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on Tuesday vowed to go ahead with its programme even as the district administration said it was determined to thwart any such plan.
Patel alleged that the BJP leadership has distanced itself from the workers and its ideology.
The commission had rejected the theory that it was a spontaneous act by karsevaks whereas the CBI court has ruled that there was no evidence that demolition was a conspiracy.
By all yardsticks 2024 isn't expected to be like 2014 or 2019. But with the mandir expected to be ready in time for the next Lok Sabha polls, Modi will have a new ally in Ram to see him through, observes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
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