LUCKNOW: Some of the country’s top industrialists and business houses had approached the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) with offers to construct the Ram Temple in Ayodhya single-handedly after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Ram Janambhoomi in November 2019, a senior functionary of the right wing organisation said on Monday.
“The organisation, however, refused the offer and did not even forward it to the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra — the nodal body entrusted with the responsibility of constructing the temple. The VHP, instead, went ahead with its Ram Mandir Nidhi Samarpan Abhiyan, a mega campaign envisaging reaching out to over 13 crore families to raise funds for the temple,” VHP national spokesperson Vinod Bansal told TOI.
He, however, refused to divulge the names of the industrialists who made the offer. Bansal said the idea was to connect people’s sentiments with the Ram temple movement which was carried out by seers and scores of Ram Bhakts for over 500 years.
Bansal said the VHP cadres subsequently fanned across the length and breadth of the country to raise funds for the temple. “It was from here that the concept of Ram temple being a ‘Rashtra Mandir’ took shape,” he said, adding that the parishad would once again reach the doorsteps of devotees in the run-up to the inauguration of the temple by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22.
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