INAUGURATION OF RAM
MANDIR IN AYODHYA
https://ramamohanraocheruku.blogspot.com/2024/01/inauguration-of-ram-mandir-in-ayodhya.html
The Ram Mandir movement wasn’t just a movement for any temple. It was a struggle for a temple at Janmabhoomi of Lord Ram, who is India’s identity. Over 3.7 lakh sacrificed their lives for this movement. Then there were years of court cases. … When the legal battle was won, it was decided that a grand temple be built in Ayodhya. It was also decided that the Ram Temple shouldn’t be built by the government or any businessman, (but by the people of India. Srirama is the soul'Tof Bharat. He is the only SARVABHOUMA meaning 'The emperor of the entire Globe'.
As January 22 approaches, an unprecedented fervour grips the
nation as we prepare for the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. While
all the competitive politics surrounding it, especially in an election year, is
inevitable and also insignificant for several of us, a confident expression of
hope and faith for a multitude of common Indians who have no overt political or
ideological tilts is unmissable.
It is truly an epochal moment when the soul of a civilisation
long suppressed seems to be finally finding utterance 75 years after the
nation found that voice. Mass prayers and lighting of lamps across temples in
cities and villages, marathon chanting sprees, people placing earthen lamps in
front of their homes to commemorate the return of Ram from his exile—everyone being that
proverbial squirrel that did its tiny bit in building Ram’s ambitious bridge to
Lanka.
For the longest time, a Hindu was called upon to look at
herself with sheer apologia, and made to believe that we were a rootless
civilisation that ran merely on a sterile codification of laws. Every other
community in India could proudly wear its identity and faith on their sleeve.
But for a Hindu to do so was deemed regressive and communal.
Hindus are hammered with hysterical harangues of them having
a disaggregated faith that did not believe in congregation—their teerth yatras
and shahi snaans notwithstanding. Hence their expression of their faith had to
be muted. After all, making the minorities comfortable was the only goal of
Indian secularism as was perversely practiced. This belief has received a massive
jolt with the upcoming inauguration.
Much is known now about the history of the Ayodhya case
itself. It is a testimony of 500 years of dogged resilience that Hindus showed
to reclaim one of their holiest spaces. Foreign travellers and British
administrators, from William Finch, Thomas Herbert, Joseph Tieffenthaler,
Robert Montgomery Martin and several others recounted how, despite its
destruction by Babar, the shrine received the quiet adoration of devout Hindus.
From the efforts of the Marathas and Nihang Sikhs to numerous
litigations that went on in British courts since 1858, the desire to consecrate
a grand Ram temple here is not a recent phenomenon. The wealth of literary,
historical and legal proofs, as also archaeological evidence that emerged
through the Archaeological Survey adds further credence. That it was always
called Masjid-e-Janamsthan and not Babri Masjid was a further giveaway as to
whose birthplace it was commemorating.
Rest Next…..
INAUGURATION OF RAM MANDIR IN AYODHYA - 2
Before we enter into the second
episode let us come to know these facts.
When Bollywood music composer
and lyricist Ravindra Jain sang ‘Sawa rupaiya de de re bhaiya Ram Shila ke naam
ka, Ram ke ghar me lag jayega patthar tere naam ka’ (Contribute Rs1.25 for Ram
Shila, a brick in your name will get added to the House of Ram) in the 1980s,
little would he have imagined that the whole of India would come together to
construct the Ram Mandir 40 years later.
Sex workers in Maharashtra’s
Ghatkopar came forward and contributed liberally. Beggars gave away their day’s
earnings. Elderly people, some in their 90s and living frugally, gave away
chunks of their meagre pensions. Kinnar Samaj hijras participated with gusto.
An Adivasi woman borrowed Rs 11 from her neighbour and gave that away.
Leave all the controversies that
are flying round as bees around jaggery.
Hindus had to wait
patiently for five centuries and, even after freedom, go through tortuous legal
processes to get back what was rightfully theirs. Today, when that cherished
dream is being realised, we are asked not to celebrate it too much. In a way, the
Ayodhya consecration demolishes for good this very warped Nehruvian idea of
India where the ancient had to be eased out and replaced with a new India that
had a tenuous connection with its past at best.
The Somnath flashpoint was a case in point where Nehru
frowned on the exercise as being Hindu-revivalist and one that would affect his
government’s secular image abroad. He even prevailed upon President Rajendra
Prasad not to participate in the inauguration. Nehru would have rather restored
and given the temple away to the ASI than reinstall the jyotirlinga.
The past was good to be appreciated as a fossilised museum
piece, but never as a living tradition. Consequently, Hindu holy sites,
especially in North India—be it Ayodhya,
Kashi, Vrindavan, Prayag, Gaya or Mathura—languished in utter
squalor with no significant infrastructure, sanitation or tourism facilities.
Rest Next…….
INAUGURATION OF RAM
MANDIR IN AYODHYA – 3 (Last episode)
The biggest irony is that the same ‘secular’ state has no
qualms in controlling only Hindu temples and educational institutions.
Governments of just 10 states control more than 1,10,000 temples, with the
Tamil Nadu temple trusts owning 4,78,000 acres of temple land and controlling
36,425 temples and 56 mutts. All other minority institutions have the rights to
own and manage their religious and educational institutions in a secular India.
Draconian laws like the Places of Worship Act of 1991 prevents Hindus from even
seeking peaceful, legal reclaim of what has been forcibly snatched from them.
Which justice-abiding democracy in the world would have such provisions?
Even in Muslim countries, mosques are routinely displaced for
mundane needs like widening roads or laying railway lines. But in India, the
albatross of secularism always rests on Hindu shoulders. Appropriating the
resources of Hindu institutions does not compromise constitutional moralities,
but the prime minister inaugurating an iconic temple shatters the ever-fragile
warp and weft of our secularism.
The Ayodhya inauguration is also a blow to the pernicious
role played by ideologically-driven historians who blatantly lied in court and
got away with no repercussions. As K.K. Muhammad, former regional director of
ASI, who was part of the Ayodhya survey, reveals that these dubious historians
brainwashed the Muslim community, which was conciliatory initially, and
instilled false hopes that they would manufacture evidence in their favour.
Unsubstantiated propaganda was passed off as history in
several cases, including Kashi Vishwanath, by Congressmen such as Pattabhi
Sitaramayya or Bishambhar Nath Pande. Marxist historians such as Gargi
Chakravartty and K.N. Panikkar claimed Aurangzeb destroyed the temple not of
his own will, but on the advice of Hindu rajas who were outraged by priests
molesting the Rani of Kutch. Demonise the Brahmin, undermine Hindu faith,
whitewash and act as apologists for Islamic bigots was a clear pattern of Nehruvian
secular historiography. This stands delegitimised today.
For a meta-civilisational hero like Ram, who inspires
adulation and reverence across nations, be it Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines,
Cambodia or Thailand; where art forms, murals, dance dramas are inspired by his
life story, to not have a grand temple at his believed birthplace was a
national shame. This is being rectified now.
Here is an exerpt taken from Indian Express:
At the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, V.S. Naipaul
saw it as “a new, historical awakening” of “Indians becoming alive to their
history” and “beginning to understand that there has been a great vandalising
of India”. On this momentous occasion, when Ram returns to his birth town from
a 500-year exile, commentators looking at this in juvenile binaries of temple
versus employment or BJP vs non-BJP are infantilising this genuine
civilisational renaissance. India has long slipped from the iron fists of Nehruvians
and their assorted elite clubs of courtiers. To wake up to this reality will do
them all a tonne of good – The New Indian
Express, 2 January 2023.
SWASTHI.
