What does Ayodhya symbolise?
1.2 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had always affirmed that the Ayodhya movement was not just a plea for a temple for Sri Rama, that instead it reflected a far deeper quest for recapturing our national identity. The movement is firmly rooted in the inclusive and assimilative cultural heritage of India. It represents the soul of the nationalist thrust of our freedom movement. The post-independence political creed of the Congress and of most other political parties had come to regard every thing that inspired this nation in the past as less than secular – in fact, communal, and even anti-national. The movement for restoration of the Temple at the birthplace of Sri Rama evolved as a corrective to this distortion. It developed into a massive protest against the derailment of all that inspired the freedom movement the elevating chant of Vande Mataram which Maharishi Bankim Chandra gave to this nation, the goal of Rama Rajya held out by Mahatma Gandhi as the destination of free India, the
