Suranya Aiyar, the daughter of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, was asked to leave “their” south-east Delhi home after publishing a post about the Ram Temple, but she claims she doesn’t even live there. In a Facebook video, she exclaimed, “The relevant Residents’ Welfare Association is from a colony where I do not live!”
In a letter, the Jangpura residents’ welfare association requested that Mr. Aiyar and her daughter vacate the colony. The president of RWA stated in the letter that the organization was contacted by colony members in response to her social media “stand/rant” opposing the consecration ceremony.
Suranya was accused of “hate speech” by the RWA, which also asked her to behave like a decent citizen. It stated that people who immigrated to India from Pakistan following partition lived in the colony.
The 49-year-old stirred up controversy on January 20 when she wrote on Facebook that she was fasting to protest the Ram Mandir’s “pran pratishtha” ceremony. It’s an expression of love and grief for fellow Muslims, she explained.
“What Ms Aiyar said through social media was unbecoming of an educated person, who should have understood that the Ram Mandir was being built after 500 years and that too after 5-0 Supreme Court verdict,” the RWA said in a statement.
She said that the reasons behind her disagreement were previously stated in a speech (video) that she made after receiving the RWA notice: “I made a spiritual presentation of my own pain about this by fasting peacefully in my home.”
“What matters is whether or not people can make sense of the viewpoint we present. She emphasized that she had studied overseas and had participated in activism with people from various political backgrounds. “And if at the end of the day, at the end of this process, in India, we can even just find a more civilised, a more thinking and a more sincere way of talking and feeling about these things, then we would have achieved something (sic).”
In response to this development, the BJP stated that the RWA’s action ought to send a message to everyone who thinks it’s “par for the course” to abuse Hindu beliefs.
According to a post on X by BJP IT department head Amit Malviya, the RWA has “asked Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar and his daughter to apologise for defiling the Pran Pratistha ceremony at Ram Mandir, and leave the residential colony.”
Mani Shankar Aiyar has not yet responded to the dispute.
The ‘pran pratishtha’ or consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla – headlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – was held at the newly built Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.
