LUCKNOW: Challenging the minority community to accept that Ram was their ancestor, UP CM Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday gave the example of the Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto, who recently said his DNA was Indian and that Ram was considered an ancestor in Indonesia.
Talking about Subianto, who was the chief guest at the R-Day parade in Delhi, Yogi said: “Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country. Their president’s name is inspired from Sanskrit. They take pride in their Indian DNA and consider Lord Ram their ancestor, Garuda is their national airline, Ganapati is part of their currency and Ramlila their national festival. Can those staying in India, those who are only considered a vote bank, ever accept that Ram was their ancestor?” He was speaking at ‘Navbharat ka Maha Kumbh’, organised by Times Now Navbharat in Lucknow.
Welcoming Uttarakhand govt’s decision to implement a uniform civil code, Yogi said it was aimed at stopping “land jihad” in the hill state. Saying that there had been large-scale migration out of the state for employment, he claimed that persons of a certain religion had started purchasing land and it was important for ‘Dev Bhumi to retain its identify’.
Yogi said that UP had already taken steps to prevent ‘land jihad’ by making changes in the Waqf Board Act, having identified that only 7,000 of the originally claimed 1.27 lakh Waqf properties were actually theirs. The remaining had been taken over by govt. In UP, he said, the bigger challenge was ‘love jihad’ against which his govt had also acted on time.
On the Sambhal issue, he said the aim was not to go around digging for temples but where there are temples, to bring them out. Refusing to comment on the Places of Worship Act, Yogi instead asked who had given the Opposition the right to play around with people’s faith and why no action was taken against the perpetrators of the Sambhal violence in 1976 and 1978.
Hitting out at AAP govt in Delhi, where polls are due on Feb 5, Yogi challenged Arvind Kejriwal and the Delhi cabinet to take a dip in the Yamuna, like Yogi did with his cabinet at the Sangam recently.
