The inclusion of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the ‘Art of Living’, has stirred a controversy, because of his involvement over the last few years in an effort to find an out-of-court solution to the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid dispute. He had also made the explosive remark that “we will have a Syria-like situation in India” if Ram Mandir issue is not resolved.
Critics fished out his interview in which he asked Muslims to give up their “claims on Ayodhya as a goodwill gesture,” a demand repeatedly made by the RSS-BJP leaders since the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was launched by BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani in the 1980s. In an interview to India Today, he had said: “If the court rules against the temple, there will be bloodshed.
The government may not be able to implement the court order. Do you think the majority community will accept such an order?” He had argued that the only tenable solution is an outof- court settlement, essentially a euphemism for Muslims relinquishing their claim to the site where the Babri Masjid stood.
