Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has sparked yet another controversy, vis-a-vis India after he claimed that the ‘real’ Ayodhya is not in India, but in Nepal. He also accused India of encroaching cultural facts, resulting in Nepal’s cultural oppression.

He made the statement while addressing a program organized on Monday, to mark the birth anniversary of Bhanubhakta Acharya, the 19th-century poet, who translated the Hindu epic Ramayana from Sanskrit to Nepali.

“We have been oppressed a bit culturally,” Oli said. “Facts have been encroached. We still believe that we gave Sita to the Indian Prince Ram. But we gave her to the prince of Ayodhya not India.”

“Ayodhya is a village a little west to Birgunj, not the Ayodhya created now,” he said. Birgunj is a city in southern Nepal, neighbouring the Indian state of Bihar.

He further argued, why did a prince [Prince Ram] go so far to Janakpur for marriage, if the Ayodhya claimed by India was real. Janakpur is a city in southern Nepal, which is considered as the birthplace of Ram’s consort Sita. 

The comments have come at a time when bilateral relations have worsened considerably. The relationship took a hit ever since India inaugurated a strategically important road connecting the Lipulekh Pass with Dharchula town in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district.

Oli’s government claimed that Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura areas of Pithoragarh district were Nepalese territories and released a new map showing these areas as a part of Nepal.

On June 12, an Indian national was killed and four others wounded after Nepal police fired on them at the border near Sitamarhi district in Bihar.

Six days later, Nepal’s Army Chief 

General Purna Chandra Thapa visited border areas near Kalapani. 

In late June, Oli alleged that India was trying to topple his government.