Who's stopping you from building temple, Owaisi tells Bhagwat

Hyderabad: "Bring it. Who is stopping you and your government?" This is how MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday reacted to RSS Mohan Bahgwat's demand for a law to build a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya.

The Hyderabad MP said that Bhagwat's statement was a clear example of a nation converted into totalitarianism.

"The RSS and BJP believe in totalitarianism. They do not believe in pluralism or in rule of law," Owaisi told reporters here.

Addressing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers during the annual "Vijayadashmi Utsav" in Nagpur, Bhagwat said the government should bring a legislation to build a Ram temple at Ayodhya.

The Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief said the RSS chief was ignorant of law as the Supreme Court in Ismail Farooqi judgment made it clear that the government cannot make a law for a particular religion as this was against basic structure of the Constitution and violates Article 14.

"This government and RSS are symbols of totalitarianism. They are



ignorant of law. They want to do whatever they like," said the MP.

On Bhagwat's assertion that some fundamentalist elements were trying to obstruct the temple construction, Owaisi said fascists and people who believe in totalitarianism ideology believe they are paragon of virtue and rest are anti-nationals. 

"This is not new. We have been seeing this since the times when Nazis were ruling Germany and Mussolini was in power in Italy. Wherever there are totalitarian regimes, they call themselves paragon of virtue and consider others anti-national," he said.

On reports that the RSS planned to campaign for the BJP in 2019 elections, Owaisi said the RSS had always been helping the BJP and that the whole country knows that RSS was the main face of the BJP. 

"The Prime Minister of our country himself is Sweyamsevak. RSS keeps forgetting they can't dabble in politics because one of the conditions for withdrawal of the ban on them was that they will not participate in politics but they have been doing it," he added.