Saturday, 13 JANUARY 2024 | PNS | PITHORAGARH
In latest news from Uttarakhand, the fabled Ram temple in Ganai Gangoli is being decorated now in the run-up to the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya scheduled on January 22. The temple which was established in 1940 when the anti-colonial movement was reaching its crescendo has a history of its own. It was founded at the same place where the Bora caste people, adept in craftworks, torched their sacred threads collectively by way of protesting the social discrimination they were at the receiving end of. After the sacred tread torching event, a number of horrified leaders who were in the vanguard of the freedom movement, including Govind Ballabh Pant and Ram Manohar Lohia, went to the village and tried to mollify them. A big yagya was performed by Saryu river at Seraghat and a resolution was passed condemning the discrimination and vouching for rebuilding the Hindu society on egalitarian ethos. The leaders suggested all the Bora caste people should wear sacred thread. The sugestion was warmly accepted and the Bora caste people returned to the religio-cultural mainstream after collectively taking sacred threads. And the Ram temple was founded at the same place where the people vented their protest against social discrimination by throwing their sacred threads in fire collectively.
