The chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Mohan Bhagwat invoked various organizations in his speech and thanked them for their contributions towards the Ram Temple movement. In his speech, he also thanked Ashok Singhal.
The ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram Mandir on Wednesday will be a victory of several Hindutva organizations that spearheaded the Ram Mandir movement since the late 80s. The movement also began the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Among many who contributed to the movement in a significant way was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok Singhal.
A metallurgy engineer, Ashok Singhal was the President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and played a significant role in Hindutva. He was initially attached to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and was inspired by its ideology throughout his life. He was, in a way, the architect of the kar sevak campaign that brought down the 16th century Babri Masjid down on 6th December 1992.
An Able Vocalist
He was born in Agra on the 2nd of October 1926 and graduated from the Banaras Hindu University Institute of Technology. Apart from being a metallurgy engineer, he was also a trained vocalist and had taken training under the legendary vocalist Pandit Omkarnath Thakur.
In the year 1980, he became the Joint General Secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. In 1984, he was made the General Secretary and then promoted as the President. He was the President until December 2011. It was only under him that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad conceptualized its international branding and recruited supporters and established offices away from the homeland.
He passed away on the 17th of November 2015.
Source: Free Press Journal
