'PM, Yogi turning Ram temple inauguration into a political project to create communal tension'

Kasaragod: The Union government has gone against the Constitution, the spirit of secularism, and various Supreme Court verdicts by deploying the "entire state machinery" for the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, said CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury.

"If religion is used for political purposes, if the inauguration of the Ram Mandir is to be done by the Prime Minister, the UP Chief Minister, and using the entire state machinery, that is, the State is being identified with one particular religion, that is against the Indian Constitution, and against the Supreme Court verdicts," he said.

Yechury was speaking after inaugurating a Palestine Solidarity Meet organised by the CPM at Chengala, a Muslim-dominated grama panchayat, in Kasaragod on Thursday.

The CPM had already made its stance clear that it would not be sending any representative to the inauguration ceremony of the Ayodhya temple on January 22.

Last week, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the trust entrusted with the construction and management of the Ayodhya temple, came to the CPM headquarters in New Delhi, said Yechury. "The head of the construction committee was accompanied by a VHP leader. They gave me the invitation... Then they asked if I would be attending. I said no," he said, and there was a burst of applause from the crowd.
The State cannot profess or patronise any particular religion, Yechury said.

Therefore, in this case, there is a violation of both the Constitution and the principles of secularism, and the Supreme Court verdicts, he said. "A situation is being created for furthering tensions between religious communities for their Hindutva consolidation," he said.

He said he told the Ram temple trust leaders that the temple inauguration had been turned into a political project. "I said with all due respect to religion, sorry, I will not be attending," he said.

Yechury likened Zionism with Hindutva, one professing the supremacy of Jews and the other the supremacy of the Hindus. "To achieve this objective, both Zionism and Hindutva rewrite history. They destroy our historical evolution. Textbooks are changed. New history is invented and that is based on the spread of hatred against minorities. Hatred is followed by violence against the minorities," he said.

The irony is Zionism is the mirror image of Hitler's Aryan supremacy theory, he said. The ideological closeness between Zionism and Hindutva led Prime Minister Narendra Modi to extend immediate support to Israel after the October 7 attack. "It took more than two weeks to reiterate India's traditional support to the Palestinian cause," he said.

India took a long time to assert that position because, for the past 10 years, the Modi government was strengthening the nexus between the US, Israel, and India to advance its own Hindutva agenda, he said.