By Shyam Pandharipande
IANS
Nashik (Maharashtra) : The chief priest of this famous Hindu pilgrimage centre's historic Kalaram temple and a prominent functionary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has created quite a sensation here by announcing his decision to join the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
After meeting Mayawati in New Delhi Saturday, Mahant Sudhir Das, the VHP's advisory board (margdarshak mandal) member said, he was joining the Dalit-centric party in order to atone for the "sin" committed by his grandfather Mahant Ramdas in 1930 by denying entry to the Dalit icon Babasaheb Ambedkar and his followers in the temple.
The BSP leader has accepted the Mahant's invitation to visit the Kalaram temple next month after her scheduled visit to Mumbai, he informed his aides from New Delhi. Mayawati's cabinet colleague Satishchandra Mishra was also present at the meeting, a temple functionary told IANS quoting Mahant Ramdas.
It was his "failure" to persuade the then temple priest (Mahant Ramdas) to allow entry to the 'untouchables' in the temple that had led a dismayed Dr. Ambedkar to proclaim that though he was born Hindu, he would not die in that discriminating religion.
The subsequent epoch-making action of Dr. Ambedkar, of leading thousands of his Dalit followers into Buddhism at a place in Nagpur that the world today knows as Deeksha bhoomi, came on the auspicious Vijaya Dashmi day (Dussera) in 1956.
Interestingly, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Sudarshan had referred to the Kalaram temple episode in his Vijaya Dashmi speech at Nagpur (the Hindu nationalist organisation's headquarters) last year and said the sitting priests had atoned for the sin in 2005 by inviting "Dalit brethren" to the temple.