Over 100 rivers across the country would embrace the “Asthi Kalash” (urns) of late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee after his immediate family and top BJP leaders first immersed part of it in river Ganga at Haridwar on Sunday.
Post State funeral to Vajpayee, the party is sending ‘Atal message’ by carrying ‘Kalash Yatras’ in all States and ‘Talukas’.
On Wednesday, all the State BJP heads gathered at the erstwhile BJP head office at 11, Ashoka Road, now converted into a ‘War room’ for 2019 lok Sabha polls, to receive the ‘Asthi Kalash’ of the late party patriarch from the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah. Vajayee’s immediate family members were also present on the occasion.
“By way of Asthi Kalash Yatras, all party members and common men in the far-flung areas would be able to pay their homage to the great leader,” the BJP said adding “his death has not only bereaved the immediate family and the BJP but also the entire country”.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, General Secretary (Org) Ram lal and several Union Ministers and senior leaders were present on the occasion.
During the immersion of Vajpayee’s ashes at Har-Ki-Pauri at Hardwar on August 19, Rajanth, Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were in attendance with the family members of the late leader. Vajpayee, who carried a massive personal sway in Uttar Pradesh, represented lucknow lok Sabha constituency five times. The seat is currently held by Rajnath.
The mortal remains of Vajpayee will be taken in lucknow in a procession with an estimated crowd of about 50,000 expected to witness it . The State administration has closed Government and private schools in view of it .
BJP is well aware of Vajpayee’s electoral appeal across the country, including south of India , as it seeks the common people and party men all over the country to pay “true homage” to the departed leader and wants them to remember his contribution to the nation building.
The immersion of mortal remains, unless it takes a political colour, is an ancient Hindu practice for the deliverance of soul of the dead.
Though river Ganga at Hardwar is the first choice of all Hindus, urns are also immersed in Kashi, Allahabad, and Nashik on the banks of the Godavari or Krishna rivers in South India.
The first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a self-confessed atheist (or an agnostic), had willed that his ashes be immersed in Ganga not for religious reason but for his attachment with Ganga and Yamuna.
“My desire to have a handful of my ashes thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad has no religious significance, so far as I am concerned. I have no religious sentiment in the matter. I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jamuna rivers in Allahabad ever since my childhood and, as I have grown older, this attachment has also grown. I have watched their varying moods as the seasons changed, and have often thought of the history and myth and tradition and song and story that have become attached to them through the long ages and become part of their flowing waters,” Nehru had said in his last will.