India's ruling party BJP condemns PM Oli’s remarks on Ayodhya

KATHMANDU, July 14: India's ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has condemned Prime Minister Oli’s recent remarks on the birthplace of Lord Ram.

According to the Times of India, BJP national spokesperson Bizay Sonkar Shastri said that the left parties even in India played with people's faith, and the communists in Nepal will be rejected by the masses in the same way they have been in India.

"Lord Ram is a matter of faith for us, and people will not allow anybody, be it prime minister of Nepal or anyone, to play with this," the BJP leader said in New Delhi.

Speaking at a program organized to mark the 206th birth anniversary of first Nepali poet Bhanu Bhakta Acharya at his official residence in Baluwatar, PM Oli claimed that Ayodhya lies in Nepal, but not India. "We have been suppressed culturally. Facts have been twisted. Even today, we believe that Sita was married to an Indian prince, Ram. We gave her not to an Indian, but to the one from Ayodhya. Ayodhya is a village that lies to the west of Birgunj," he claimed.

PM Oli further said that the Ayodhya that has been created in India is not the real Ayodhya. "There is a fierce debate about Ayodhya. In fact, Ayodhya lies in Thori, which is west of Nepal's Birgunj, and the Pandit who performed Putresthi Yagya [i.e. a religious ceremony organized to seek the God's blessings to have children] after there were no children from King Darsharath was from Ridi [in Nepal]," he said. "Therefore, the child [Ram] is also not Indian. The place [Ayodhya] is not in India either."

PM Oli also wondered how it would have been possible for a king living in a far away place to arrive in Janakpur to marry his son with a princess if Ayodhya was a place claimed by the Indian side. He wondered how it was possible to travel such a long distance as there was no availability of modern transport and communication systems.

"If Janakpur was here and Ayodhya was there [ in India], how would one know that there was a princess eligible for marriage. There was neither telephone, nor mobile phone. It was just impossible to know about the match," he said.

Prime Minister Oli argued that the marriage might have taken place as these two places were not far from each other. "But it is not possible to debate here. There could be one attack after another," he further said.

Oli's remark has courted huge controversy both in India and Nepal.

The India-Nepal relations came under strain after Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated a 80-km-long strategic road connecting the Lipulekh pass through Nepal’s territory May 8.