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Have you seen Lalu Prasad Yadav stop the BJP chariot 25 years ago?

In 1990, two years before the demolition of the Babri Masjid, BJP president L K Advani had set out on a "rath yatra" in an air-conditioned Toyota converted into a chariot. The purpose was to mobilise sentiment for the building of a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. A few days before its completion scheduled for October 30, when the rath would arrive in Ayodhya and the "karsevaks" would build the Ram Mandir, the BJP leader was arrested in Samastipur, Bihar on orders of its then chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.

The clip above is an excerpt from a documentary called Ram Ke Naam by Anand Patwardhan. Here we can see a much younger Lalu warning Advani against spreading communal hatred. Advani did not heed his warning and was promptly arrested.

Advani's arrest led to the fall of the VP Singh-led government at the Centre. This yatra is also credited with having sowed the seeds for the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which took place on December 6, 1992. Its repercussions were far reaching, starting with the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai.

A younger – and little-known – Narendra Modi was the backroom manager for this yatra that took off on September 25 from the city of Somnath in Gujarat. Now the Prime Minister's electoral yatra has been halted again in Bihar.