New Delhi, October 05: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani felt ‘vindicated’ about his Ayodhya ‘rath yatra’ in the wake of the Allahabad high court verdict and preferred a negotiated settlement for building a Ram temple at the place where the makeshift now stands.
Advani, the mascot of the temple campaign who launched the rath yatra in 1989, also rejected criticism that the last week’s judgment of the Lucknow bench puts faith above law, saying it is only a case of ‘faith upheld by law.’
He strongly endorsed his party president Nitin Gadkari’s suggestion that Muslims can build a mosque ‘outside the complex’ in Faizabad on the banks of river Saryu.
In the course of more than an hour-long interview with PTI, the BJP leader, who will turn 84 next month, was careful in his statements and did not want to appear victorious after the judgment and did not said anything that would ruffle the feathers in the Muslim community.
On Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Advani referred to the Sangh founthead’s statement on the verdict and said that the judgment should become a turning point not only in the history of Ayodhya but in the relations between the two communities.
“From BJP, the statement we issued the feeling was that this should become an opportunity for moving forward towards national integration,” he said, adding he welcomed the Allahabad high court judgment.
He also recalled what he wrote in his autobiography, “My Country My Life”, on three options he felt were obvious for resolving the Ayodhya dispute — legislation, judicial verdict and amicable settlement between representatives of the Hindu and Muslim communities.
But now he felt a combination of court judgment and negotiated settlement should be best way out of this problem.
–PTI–