The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday during 'bhoomi pujan' of Ram Mandir said that RSS and other like-minded groups worked for nearly 30 years to bring to fruition the construction of the grand temple in Ayodhya.
The RSS chief mentioned BJP patriarch L K Advani and the late VHP leader Ashok Singhal among others for their contribution to the temple movement.
The beginning of Ram mandir's construction in Ayodhya will be culmination of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was led by several key Hindutva figures. The campaign for the temple marked the rise of the saffron party in the 1990s, when Lal Krishna Advani organised a Rath Yatra from Somnath and former VHP leader Ashok Singhal gave a clarion call for 'Kar Seva', something that radically changed the political discourse of the country.
Who is VHP leader Ashok Singhal?
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) President Ashok Singhal, who died on November 17, 2015, was a metallurgy engineer and later turned towards Hindutva. He played an important role in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led the political campaign in the late eighties and later. He was attached to the RSS and was inspired by its ideology throughout his life. He was instrumental in the ‘kar sevak’ campaign that led to the bringing down of the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
Born in Agra on October 2 in 1926, Singhal had a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering from Banaras Hindu University Institute of Technology. He was also a trained vocalist and had a training from the legendary Pandit Omkarnath Thakur.
He was deputed to VHP and became its Joint General Secretary in 1980. In 1984, he became the General Secretary and was later elevated to the post of working President, a post that he held till December 2011. Under his leadership the international branding of VHP was conceptualised for which he recruited supporters and established offices abroad.
