Ram temple ceremony to miss key players of the movement amid Covid-19

The Ram temple foundation stone laying ceremony tomorrow will miss key players of the movement

Amid the shadow of Covid-19 and a growing list of political leaders unable to attend the event as they find themselves quarantined, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone and perform bhoomi pujan of the proposed Ram temple in Ayodhya on Wednesday afternoon.

The list of the 175 people invited for the event, as also of the 2,000 places from which soil has been collected and 1,500 sources of water from which it has been fetched for the ceremony, has been carefully chosen to reflect the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s interpretation of Indian history and its attempts at highlighting Hindutva inclusiveness.

If for some the moment will be another reminder of the withering of the project started in 1947, of building a secular Indian state, for the supporters of the Sangh Parivar, the temple’s construction is symbolic of the end to 492 years of “national humiliation and shame” — one that started with Babri mosque’s construction by Mughal emperor Babur’s military general at the site in 1528-29. A Hindu mob had razed the mosque on December 6, 1992, and the Supreme Court of India paved the way for the construction of the temple in its order on November 9 last year.

On Monday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath landed in Ayodhya to take stock of the preparations. He will be one of only three dignitaries to share the stage with the PM at the Wednesday afternoon event.

Modi will place a 40 kg silver brick for the symbolic start of the construction that has been central to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) core agenda since 1989, a movement its ideological cousin Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had spearheaded since 1984.

 

Adityanath is the mahant, or chief priest, of the influential Gorakhnath math (monastery), and his two predecessors, especially his spiritual grandfather Digvijay Nath (1894-1969), played a key role in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. In 1949, he organised a week-long recitation of the Ramayana in Ayodhya, and within days a statue of Ram lalla (Ram as a child) appeared in the Babri Masjid.

Adityanath’s supporters see him as Modi’s successor, and the temple construction will mark the start of his re-election campaign for the UP Assembly polls in March 2022. The others on the stage will be UP Governor Anandiben Patel, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Ram Temple trust head Nritya Gopal Das.

None of the key BJP chief ministers or Union ministers will attend. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, the lawyer of the deity Ram lalla for nearly three decades, has quarantined himself after he said he had met Union Home Minister Amit Shah who has tested Covid-positive and is admitted to a hospital. Madhya Pradesh Karnataka’ chief ministers are also in hospital after testing positive.

Other key players in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement will remain absent. Sources close to BJP leaders L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi say they were not invited; and Uma Bharti said while she will be in Ayodhya on the day, she will not attend the event. It is not known if she was invited.

VHP’s Champat Rai, who is also the general secretary of the Ram Temple Trust, said 175 people, including 135 saints of all sects and traditions, have been invited. Importantly, invites have been sent to Sikh, Jain and Buddhist religious leaders as well as Kabir Panthis, Ravidasis and Lingayats, and to those representing tribal traditions. The effort is to portray inclusiveness of Hindutva by embracing traditions of all castes, particularly Dalits and other backward castes (OBCs). Rai said the first invite was sent to Iqbal Ansari, one of the Muslim litigants in the Ayodhya case.

Elaborate arrangements have been made for the event and subsequent celebrations. The VHP has asked Hindus across the world to light earthen lamps to mark the day as Diwali. In Ayodhya, residents will light diyas from Monday onwards.

For the bhoomi poojan, soil has been collected from places such as Haldi Ghati, which witnessed the battle between Rajput King Rana Pratap and Emperor Akbar in the 16th century, the Golden Temple, Ravidas Temple of Varanasi, B R Ambedkar’s resting place and RSS headquarters in Nagpur.

For the construction, Rs 10 crore has been transferred to the new temple trust from the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas. The cost of the construction has not been made public. After the ceremony, VHP workers will fan out across the country to ask for Rs 100 as donation from 100 million families.

Ahmedabad-based architect, Chandrakant Sompura, designed the Ram temple 30 years ago on VHP chief Ashok Singhal’s request. With more land available for the temple, his sons, Ashish and Nikhil Sompura, submitted a scaled-up design last month. The complex will accommodate 10,000-15,000 people at any given time, and about 4 million are expected to visit in a year.

A new railway station at Ayodhya, to be built at a cost of Rs 104 crore and modelled on the temple, has also been sanctioned.

Meanwhile, the Congress government in Chhattisgarh has approved several projects in the last few days to build temples and develop places associated with the Ramayana as pilgrimage sites. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has announced a temple for Ram’s mother, Kaushalya, near Raipur and development of places that Ram, Sita and Lakshman are believed to have visited or stayed at during their exile.

The Congress has taken to state that its leader Rajiv Gandhi had opened the gates of the Ram Janmabhoomi for devotees to visit, and had also spoken of shilanyas (foundation stone laying) of a temple there.