NEW DELHI : Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Former Deputy Prime Minister  LK Advani to be bestowed with the Bharat Ratna. He will be the 50th recipient of the highest civilian award since inception and the seventh during BJP’s ten-year tenure.
The Ram Rath Yatra was a political and religious rally that lasted from September to October 1990. It was organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu nationalist affiliates, and led by the then-president of the BJP, L. K. Advani.
“I am very happy to share that Shri LK Advani Ji will be conferred the Bharat Ratna,” PM Narendra  Modi said. In a post on X, the Prime Minister also said he congratulated LK Advani for the same.” One of the most respected statesmen of our times, his contribution to the development of India is monumental. His is a life that started from working at the grassroots to serving the nation as our Deputy Prime Minister.PM said.  He The conferring of the Bharat Ratna on him is a very emotional moment for me. I will always consider it my privilege that I got countless opportunities to interact with him and learn from him,” the PM said.
In a statement, LK Advani  (96) issued a statement accepting the Bharat Ratna with utmost humility and gratitude. “It is not only an honour for me as a person, but also for the ideals and principles that I store to serve throughout my life to the best of my ability,” The vetran said that Bharat Ratna is not only an honour for him but for the ideals and principles he strove in his life to the best of his abilities.
“Ever since I joined the RSS as its volunteer at the age of 14, I have sought reward in only one thing- in dedicated and selfless service to my beloved country in whatever task life had assigned to me. What has inspired my life is the motto ‘idam-na-mama” – ‘This life is not mine, my life is for my nation’,” he added.
Meanwhile, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday  he welcomes the Centre’s decision to confer LK Advani with Bharat Ratna. However, this was not the first reaction coming from the Grand Old Party hours after PM Modi made the announcement through a post on X. Delhi Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said the PM and the BJP remembered Advani quite late.”What the BJP earlier did to LK Advani was hurtful. The position the BJP is in today has been because of Advani. Best wishes to him,” Sandeep Dikshit said. Among the opposition, Shiv Sena (Uddhav faction) also welcomed the decision but asked why Balasaheb Thackeray and Savarkar have not yet been conferred with Bharat Ratna.
“We came to know just now that Lal Krishna Advani is being awarded with the Bharat Ratna. This is a matter of great joy. He always did the politics of humility and tried to bring everyone together. But when will Veer Savarkar and Balasaheb Thackeray get Bharat Ratna? We have raised this demand for years. BJP takes their names when elections come,” Uddhav faction leader Anand Dubey said.
Advani wrote asserting that his motto has always been that his life is for his nation.In
Advani’s son Jayant Advani and daughter Pratibha Advani said “He is very overwhelmed. He is a man of few words. But he had tears in his eyes. He was very happy even at the time of Pran Pratishtha of Ram temple. This was such a dream of his life for which he struggled and worked for a long time.
Citing cold wave and his health, Champat Rai of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir Trust had appealed to L K Advani not to attend the Pran Pratashtha program in Ayodhya.Advani led the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in the 1990s, and his rath yatra culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.
The Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra had reportedly told him and his colleague, Murli Manohar Joshi, not to attend the January 22 ceremony. However, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had then made a show of inviting the two senior BJP leaders.In 1989, the BJP announced that the construction of a Ram temple on the land where they believed Lord Ram was born – and where the Babri Masjid had stood for over 400 years – was its key political agenda. In the autumn of 1990, Advani launched a rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya, the purpose of which was to stir up support for the demand for the construction of a Ram temple at the spot where the mosque stood. 

A Shiv temple had stood in Somnath since at least the 6th  century CE. It was demolished and reconstructed several times over the centuries. The last demolition came at the hands of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1665. It lay in ruins until 1950 when its reconstruction began under the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Advani’s choice of beginning the yatra at Somnath and ending in Ayodhya thus had a very powerful symbolic value of ‘reclaiming’ the temple in Ayodhya as was done in Somnath.“The choice of Somnath as the starting point of the yatra had a powerful symbolic value, made evident by repeated references to it as the target of Muslim tyranny against the Hindus…The intention was to contextualise Ayodhya in the historical lineage of Muslim aggression and then to seek legitimacy for Mandir movement by drawing a parallel. The parallel the Sangh Parivar drew was with the reconstruction of the Somnath temple.”
Advani’s rath yatra made it abundantly clear that he was not carrying a message of peace. Pictures of him carrying a trishul, an axe, a sword and a bow and arrow also emerged. Workers of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad pasted posters along the route of the yatra of the proposed temple and the ‘treachery’ of Muslims.

Through the course of the yatra there was large scale violence, rioting and killings. Advani and his associates were finally stopped and arrested by the Lalu Prasad Yadav-led Bihar government in Samastipur in October 1990.
Even after the arrest of Advani, thousands of kar sevaks managed to reach Ayodhya where 20 of them were killed after a clash with the police. Two years later, on December 6, 1992 the Babri Masjid was demolished by a mob of kar sevaks led by a coterie of BJP leaders, who in turn were led by Advani
(Bureau Report with Media Inputs).

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