00:00And there is now a fresh political storm over a statement made by Telangana Chief Minister
00:06Revant Reddy. His remarks on Maryada Purushottam Shri Ram and Bhagwan Shiv.
00:13So, Revant Reddy was speaking in the national capital. He sought to draw a parallel and perhaps
00:20draw a regional contrast between Bhagwan Ram and Bhagwan Shiv. He said, and I quote,
00:27We are Drevidans. People here in the north are Aryans. We are devotees of Shiva. They are
00:36devotees of Lord Ram. Revant Reddy then went on to accuse the BJP of stealing Lord Ram and
00:44questioned why Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders did not
00:50chant Har Har Mahadev and only Jai Shri Ram. And then came what the BJP describes as the
00:59most controversial part of his remark. Revant Reddy said words to the effect, Shiva is the
01:05God of the poor. Ram is the God of the rich. BJP is the party of the rich. But is
01:14there
01:14any evidence whatsoever or any merit whatsoever in what Revant Reddy claimed? I want you to
01:23look at some of the visuals on your television screens right now. Now, these are all images
01:29of Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting various temples of Bhagwan Shiv in the past five years from
01:38Kashi Vishwanath, that's his parliamentary constituency Varanasi, to Mahakal in Ujjain, to Somnath in
01:47Gujarat. He's also visited Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu in Nepal. The BJP has hit right back at
01:55Revant Reddy accusing the Telangana Chief Minister of trying to divide and food, trying to create
02:02political and geographical divides in India and a divide between followers of Maryadhapurshottam
02:10Shri Ram and Bhagwan Shiv. There is no divide. Minister of State for Home, Bandhi Sanjay Kumar,
02:16he said Revant Reddy was attempting to draw political boundaries between two deities that every Hindu
02:23worship. And this is not the first time Congress and its leaders have been in the line of fire or
02:29have
02:29faced questions over their position on Hindu deities. For example, in May 2025, leader of opposition in
02:38Lok Sabha and Congress Party, senior leader Rahul Gandhi, former party president, he was speaking at Brown
02:43University. He referred to Maryadhapurshottam Shri Ram as a mythological figure while explaining his idea
02:51of Hinduism. Then came the Congress decision to stay away from the January 2024 Pran Pratishtha
02:58ceremony at the Divya Bhavya Dennavya Shri Ram Temple at Ayodhya. Sonia Gandhi, Malik Arjun Karge, Adhiranjan
03:06Choudhury reports said they declined the invitation. The Congress said the ceremony had been turned into
03:11an RSS BJV event and the temple was being inaugurated ahead of its completion just for electoral gains.
03:21Months earlier, December 2023, Congress leader Sam Petrodha, he questioned the significance being
03:28attached to the Divya Bhavya Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. He asked whether the Ram Mandir was the real issue.
03:33He pointed to issues like unemployment, inflation, state of economy. Let me take you back to October
03:412018. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, while a vast majority of Hindus believe that Ayodhya was the
03:49birthplace of Lord Ram, no good Hindu would want a temple built by demolishing somebody else's
03:56place of worship. And then of course, you'd recall the 2007 Sri Ram Sethu controversy. During the UPI
04:05government's tenure, an affidavit was filed in the Supreme Court, which raised questions about the
04:12historical or even any evidence whatsoever of the existence of either Lord Ram or the Ram Sethu.
04:20The center, after a huge furor, nationwide furor, it withdrew the controversial parts of that
04:28affidavit, which seemed to suggest that there was no evidence of Lord Ram or words to the effect that
04:33he was just a mythological character. The BJP has also pointed to their efforts to improve
04:39infrastructure, their efforts at improving infrastructure across temple towns. Kashi Vishwana
04:43Dham corridor, for example, that was inaugurated in December 2021, expanded the temple area, improved
04:50access between the temple and Maganga, the river flowing in Kashi. They also point to Mahakarlok in
04:58Ujjain, where the first phase was dedicated to the nation in 2022. That was a project cost of about
05:04850 crore rupees and major redevelopment of pilgrimage centers across the country. The government
05:11also cites the Kedarnath redevelopment project, as well as the development work being undertaken
05:16at the Somnath Temple as part of a broader push to upgrade temple tourism or pilgrimage
05:24infrastructure and heritage sites of the Sanatana Dharma. So tonight, that larger political question
05:31is not simply Revant Reddy raising an issue about Lord Ram versus Lord Shiva. It's about whether India's
05:38gods, India's traditions should themselves become political fault claims. North versus South,
05:44rich versus poor, Ram versus Shiva. The British use divide and rule, is divide and rule being
05:53brought in once again. We debate that larger controversy.
