RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

A day after Mohan Bhagwat said he was confident of seeing the Ram Temple built in his lifetime, the RSS chief, in a series of tweets on Thursday, urged society to prepare the ground for it.

“The temple will be built within my lifetime… We need to plan it carefully… (we need) a good mix of ‘josh’ and ‘hosh’,” Bhagwat had said in Kolkata on Wednesday.

While he said that the Ram Temple could be built anywhere, Bhagwat added that Ayodhya was the birthplace of Ram. “Just as terrorists attacked the twin towers of World Trade Centre in the US because it was their economic centre. Similarly, this Ram Temple was attacked several times earlier as it was our cultural heart. We couldn’t do anything earlier because at that time we were weak. Now it is in a broken state and should be redone,” he said.

On Thursday, the RSS’s official Twitter handle sent out three tweets quoting Bhagwat on the issue. In one tweet, he recalled that the Somnath temple was rebuilt with the “efforts” of then Home Minister Sardar Patel. In another tweet, Bhagwat asked society to prepare for the building of a grand Ram Temple.

“Ram aur Sharad Kothari ke jeevan se prerna lekar samaj khada ho aur Somnath ke samaan bhavya Ram mandir ke nirman hetu taiyyar ho (Society should draw inspiration from Ram and Sharad Kothari and prepare for building a grand Ram Temple like Somnath),” the RSS chief was quoted as saying, referring to the kar sevaks who were killed in the police firing in Ayodhya in 1990.

The BJP, meanwhile, evaded questions on Bhagwat’s comment. “I do not know,” was the first response of union minister Nirmala Sitharaman when asked to react to his remarks. She, however, added, “It is not a new statement. It has been said several times. BJP definitely believes Ram Temple should be built sometime.”

Bhagwat, however, found a tacit supporter in spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who said on Thursday that the Ram Temple in Ayodhya should be constructed, but with everyone’s consent. He was speaking at an event in the Capital.

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