Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Thursday said that it was unacceptable to constantly rake up Ram temple-like disputes, and that the country should set an example of harmony, ANI reported.

At an event in Pune, Bhagwat said: “The Ram temple is a matter of faith for Hindus, and it is being constructed. But if some people believe that they can become the leaders of Hindus by doing this, and rake up new such cases every day, how can it be accepted? It is not acceptable.”

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief added: “Under the burden of the past, we should not resort to extreme hatred, malice, enmity and suspicion.”

Bhagwat made the statement a week after the Supreme Court directed courts not to pass any interim or final orders, including survey directions, in pending lawsuits about the religious character of places of worship.

There are at least 18 suits pending in courts across the country concerning 10 mosques and shrines, including the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, the Shahi Eidgah mosque in Mathura and the Ajmer Sharif dargah in Rajasthan. Hindu litigants in these cases have claimed that these structures were built after demolishing ancient Hindu temples.

The Ram temple in Ayodhya is being built at the site where Hindu extremists demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992, claiming that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a part of the Sangh Parivar headed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was at the forefront of the campaign to demolish the mosque and build the temple in its place.

Bhagwat had questioned the spate of Hindutva supremacists laying claim over mosques across the country in 2022 as well. At the time, he had said at an annual RSS event in Nagpur that it was not appropriate to “look for a shivling in every mosque”.

However, he had tacitly backed Hindus on the Gyanvapi mosque dispute in Varanasi, saying that the faith of Hindus had been tied to the site for generations.