Not invited to ‘dhwaj arohan’ because I am a Dalit, says Faizabad (Ayodhya) MP Awadhe
Not invited to ‘dhwaj arohan’ because I am a Dalit, says Faizabad (Ayodhya) MP Awadhesh Prasad
M.U.H
26/11/202518
Samajwadi Party Member of Parliament from Faizabad (Ayodhya), Awadhesh Prasad, on Tuesday claimed that he was not invited to the ‘dhwaj arohan’ ceremony—the hoisting of a saffron flag atop the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Temple—in Ayodhya because he was a Dalit.
“The reason I was not invited to the ‘dharm dwaj’ ceremony is that I belong to the Dalit community. This is not in accordance with Ram’s values; it reflects someone else’s narrow mindset. Ram belongs to everyone. My fight is not for any position or invitation, but for dignity, equality, and the honour of the Constitution,” Prasad posted in Hindi on X after Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoisted the flag, marking the formal completion of the temple at Ayodhya—BJP’s electoral promise for decades.
PM Modi said the ceremony marks the completion of a centuries-long resolve, describing the ‘dharma-dhwaj’ (saffron flag) at the ‘shikhar’ of the Ram Temple as “resurgence of Indian civilisation.”
Faizabad (Ayodhya) constituency is one of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and includes the adjoining Ayodhya and Faizabad cities. Though the district was officially renamed from Faizabad to Ayodhya in November 2018, the name of the Lok Sabha constituency remains Faizabad.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Prasad defeated sitting BJP MP Lallu Singh by more than 50,000 votes, marking it as one of the biggest upsets for the saffron party. His post after the victory reads “Ayodhya is not anyone’s ancestral property it is the land of Lord Shri Ram We are the true devotees of Lord Ram, there can be no bigger Rambhakt than us. The god-like people of Ayodhya have defeated the arrogant people.”
Prasad’s victory was important because of Ayodhya and the Ram Temple—the consecration of which had happened just a couple of months back. The Ram Mandir consecration or ‘Pran Pratishtha’ for the main Ram Lalla idol was held on January 22, 2024, in a grand ceremony in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several other dignitaries.
However, in the elections that followed, the BJP failed to win the seat. Analysts credited Prasad’s win to the failure of the BJP’s ‘Abki Baar 400 Paar’ slogan and the Samajwadi Party’s strategy of leveraging social politics by aligning OBCs, Dalits, and Muslims.
Other reasons attributed to the BJP’s shocking setback in the temple town also included resentment among locals for not getting compensation for their land taken over for the development of Ayodhya, though a section also linked the loss to tension between the party’s Delhi and Lucknow leaderships.
