What will future generations think of Ram Temple!

 

What will future generations think of Ram Temple!

It is believed that one of Babur's Generals, Mir Baqi built the Babri Masjid in 1528 at Ayodhya. The Masjid became a disputed site as the Hindus claimed it as the birthplace of Lord Ram.  In December 1949, after the independence, some miscreants placed the idol of Ram inside the mosque. Nehru ordered the removal of the idol. The District Magistrate K.K. Nair refused to carry out the Order, claiming that it would lead to communal riots.  He was dismissed and subsequently he joined the Jana Sangh. And the gates of the mosque were locked to prevent the public entry. However, the idol remained inside and the Hindus continued to perform prayers in the outer courtyard, thus converting the Masjid into a de facto temple.

In the 1980s, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched a movement to ‘reclaim’ the site for Hindus and to erect a temple dedicated to Ram Lalla. In September 1990, L.K.Advani began a rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya in support  of the movement. He gave the reason in his autobiography My Country My Life: “If Muslims are entitled to an Islamic atmosphere in Mecca and if Christians are entitled to a Christian atmosphere in the Vatican why is it wrong for the Hindus to expect a Hindu atmosphere in Ayodhya?"   The rath yatra turned into a politico-religious rally, resulting in communal riots in many cities in its wake, and when it entered Bihar in October Laloo Prasad Yadav got Advani arrested

On 6 December 1992, the VHP and other affiliates of the Sangh Parivar, organized a rally involving some 150,000 kar sevaks at the site of the mosque.  The BJP leaders Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and several others addressed the rally. The mob grew frenzy, attacked the Masjid and brought it down. The Narasimha Rao government at the Centre and the Kalyan Singh government in UP remained mute spectators and the Army, in spite of being deployed in Ayodhya, was not given orders to intervene and stop the demolition. It was a blot on secular India.   More than 2,000 people were killed in the riots following the demolition. The riots broke out in major cities of Bombay, Bhopal, Delhi and Hyderabad.

 A bench of five- judges of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, pronounced a final judgment in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute on November 9, 2019.  The Court ordered the disputed site   to be allocated for the construction of a temple while an alternative piece of land awarded to the Sunni Waqf Board for the construction of a mosque at a suitable place within Ayodhya. Though there was no evidence of the Babri Masjid having been built by demolishing a Ram temple, the Court went by the sentiments of the Hindus that the disputed site was the birthplace of Lord Ram.  However, the Court ruled the demolition of the Masjid was a criminal offence.

Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the construction of Ram temple on August 5, 2020. Incidentally, it coincided with the first anniversary of abrogation of special status of Jammu & Kashmir- the Muslim majority state in the Indian Union- downgrading its statehood and splitting it into two Union Territories. The Head of the Government of a Secular India laying the foundation stone for the temple was embarrassing. The ceremony sounded more like a State function.  Yogi Adityanath and Modi made political speeches, demonstrating triumphalism, catering to the domestic audience that constitutes their core political support base, with Modi even comparing the Ayodhya Temple Movement to the Freedom Movement of India. In 1951, Rajendra Prasad attended the inaugural ceremony of Somnath temple as a private individual, and not as the Head of Indian Republic.   

The Ramayana is an epic poem. It is an integral part of Indian culture, inspiring generations from time immemorial, and its central message being triumph of good over evil.  And as per the Indian folklore, Lord Ram is an embodiment of truth, compassion, sacrifice, universal love, and of an ideal King who practiced Raj Dharm to administer justice to all.  Nehru, in The Discovery of India, quoted what Ramayana meant to the French historian Jules Michelet: “Whoever has done or willed too much let him drink from this deep cup of a long draught of life and youth…Everything is narrow in the West-Greece is small …Judea is dry …Let me look towards lofty Asia and the profound East for a little while. There lies my great poem, as vast as the Indian Ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean (without bottom or bound) of love, of pity, of clemency.”

That the Lord of such a universally acclaimed Ramayana appropriated to serve a sectarian agenda is unforgivable.  A  Ram temple is being built on the debris of a mosque. Of course, one may argue the apex court permitted the construction of the temple. That apart, how will history reconcile to the ignominy that the temple is built by demolishing a mosque? And constructing a temple of Lord Ram - a popular deity among a pantheon of Indian Gods- over the demolished site is a disservice to India that takes pride in its rich cultural heritage and civilisational values. What will future generations think of the Ram temple? A loss of pride! The devout Hindus will feel guilty, with a sense of despondency, whenever they visit the temple.  What if Maryada Purushottam Ram refuses to be a Presiding Deity in the temple that is mired in a crime.  Babri Masjid was not the only mosque in Ayodhya, there are scores of them. Nothing prevented the Sangh Parivar building a Ram temple with all its grandeur and splendor at any other site in Ayodhya. It could have become a great pilgrimage centre attracting people across religious communities the world over. 

Swami Vivekananda said, “I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.  We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true.”  Shashi Tharoor in his book Why I am a Hindu says, “Hinduism is a civilization, not a dogma.  There is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. Hinduism is a faith that allows each believer to stretch his or her imagination to a personal notion of the creative godhead of divinity.” And to Sumit Paul, an advanced research scholar of Semitic languages, civilizations and cultures,“Hinduism is a conglomerate of thousands of beliefs and a veritable canopy to protect a raft of sects and sub-sects without tinkering and tampering with their identities. It is not a grandstanding or grandiose of a religious system, but the grandeur of plurality that is a part and parcel of Hindu consciousness…”

As Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues, “They made Ram synonymous with revenge, with an insecure pride, with a blood curdling aggression, violence towards others, a coarsening of culture and the erasure of every last shred of genuine piety in public devotion and public life.” This “temple is a monument to exclusion, a brute majoritarianism subordinating others…How did we become so insecure that we need a cowardly victory of razing down a monument to satiate out collective narcissism.” How a transcendent faith Hinduism, as old as human civilization, could become a handmaid of  communal elements? Only a democratic liberal and secular State can preserve national unity. And a majoritarian and illiberal State will inevitably turn authoritarian.