Nepal Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli claimed on Monday that Hindu deity Ram was born in his country, not in India, and that Ayodh...
Nepal Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli claimed on Monday that Hindu deity Ram was born in his country, not in India, and that Ayodhya is in fact a small village near Kathmandu, NDTV reported. He also accused India of “cultural oppression and encroachment”.
“We still believe we gave Sita to Prince Ram but we gave the prince too, from Ayodhya, not India,” Oli said at a cultural programme at his residence. “Ayodhya is a village a little west [of] Birgunj [a district in Nepal that is around 135 km from capital Kathmandu]. We have been oppressed a bit, culturally. Facts have been encroached on.”
Ayodhya is a city of over 4.5 lakh people in Uttar Pradesh, about 135 km from Lucknow. It has traditionally been regarded as the birthplace of Ram. The Supreme Court had last September permitted setting up of a trust to build a Ram temple at a site in Ayodhya where the Babri Mosque once stood.
But Oli claimed that the Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh was in fact a later creation of Indian administrators, The Indian Express reported. “Lord Ram’s kingdom was not in Uttar Pradesh but in Nepal, near Balmiki Ashram,” Oli said, according to India Today.
According to legend, Sita, after she was abandoned by Ram, lived in the...
