As we near the prana prathistha of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, the usual suspects are wailing hoarsely and unabatedly. It’s pointless to argue with those wearing ideological blinkers.
However, for the sake of fence-sitters and believers, I would like to respond to some of the rhetoric doing rounds.
BJP has strategically placed the inaugural date to win Elections 2024.
BJP is dividing the nation for political gains.
It’s the other way round. People used BJP to achieve their goal of Ram Mandir. Any party was free to capitalize on the Hindu emotional wave and win elections. But they all prioritized vote bank politics over the legitimate Hindu sentiment. So Hindus who wanted the temple had no option but to turn to BJP, the only party that has a vested interest in achieving it.
During the peak of the separate Telangana movement, it was alleged KCR (TRS party) was exploiting it for political and personal power. In response, the supporters conceded that the party’s leaders were no sages with noble intentions. But they were the only party with a vested interest in securing the separate state of Telangana. The leadership brass of other parties belonged to Seemandhra region and had entrenched interests in keeping the state united. Not just that, the other parties had a record of betraying the movement after initial gestures of accommodation. Left with no option, the people backed TRS due to realpolitik calculations.
Most Mandir supporters are under no illusion that BJP/Modi are doing this out of altruist considerations. Of course, they’re doing it to win Elections 2024. Again, so what? We got what we wanted. That’s all that matters.
Do these people even know it’s Rajiv Gandhi who opened the Babri gates to mollify Hindus as a counter to his appeasement politics in a Shah Bano case? That Congress even promised the temple in its 1991 Election Manifesto? That they engaged Arun Govil, the actor who played Rama in the TV serial ‘Ramayana’, to campaign for Congress.
This is against the maryada of Rama
A more apt instance of devil quoting scriptures is yet to be found!
As I wrote in a previous blog: Exactly what about His life indicates Rama would do it any differently?
Rama killed a woman rakshana in the service of dharma. He killed Vaali from behind to punish his adharmic conduct. He demonstrated refined knowledge of statecraft when He anointed Vibheeshana as Lanka’s emperor even before the war began (thus announcing his fight is not for the kingdom). His messenger burned an entire city. His army destroyed the most powerful empire of the day to re-establish dharma.
What’s it about Rama’s life that would urge his devotees to submit to injustice?
Ram Mandir will auto-magically solve all of India’s problems
That taunt would have made sense if any supporter ever claimed the mandir is the panacea for all that ails India.
Many critics ridiculed the pro-Telangana movement asking if it would solve all their problems. The supporters argued that a new state was necessary for progress, but not sufficient. If a new state is achieved, it opens gates for progress. Thereafter, progress is achievable with the right steps. But sans a new state, the gate to progress remains closed.
The tremendous progress Telangana achieved in the past 10 years substantiates this. The most visible progress comes in the cultural arena. Whereas the Telangana dialect was once ridiculed in the Telugu cinema, it’s now mouthed by top heroes as a style statement.
Likewise, the Ram Mandir is necessary for India’s cultural renaissance. Whether it blossoms with full force depends on our collective actions here on. But without Ram Mandir, all efforts of cultural rebirth will be stillborn.
Why a Mandir? Why not a secular institution like a hospital?
There’s a reason why ‘secularism’ is a dirty word in new India. Would anyone dare to ask the same to any other community?
India’s version of secularism is public funding anti-Hindu institutions like JNU, Aligarh Muslim University, and St. Stephen’s without a corresponding say in their internal matters. It’s penalizing smaller, private Hindu educational institutions by thrusting RTE Act on them. It’s using money from Hindu temples to fund public provisions and goods.
Nobody is stopping anyone from building a new hospital at Ayodhya. Spare us these sermons.
The people wanted a mandir. And, they have achieved it through legal means. Deal with it. It’s called democracy.
Why is the mandir so important?
When the Birla Mandir, Delhi was inaugurated in 1936, it was the first temple to be built in that region after 7 centuries of relentless, industrial scale temple destruction. In the entire North India, you will barely find the grand temples with spellbinding architecture that exist in the south. The archeological evidence that the masjid at Ayodhya was built atop an existing temple is unassailable. The fact is that as late as the 1980s, the Britannica encyclopedia noted as much, until leftist historians distorted it all. Sitaram Goel's two-volume book titled “Hindu Temples; What Happened To Them” details a number of current-day masjids built on temple ruins with evidence culled from the Islamic chroniclers and historians.
This is the Stalingrad of the Abrahamic forces. This is where more than a millennia of assault on an ancient way of life is finally stalled.
But the BJP is cornering all the credit
It will, because it faced the axe for Babri demolition too. In the aftermath of Babri demolition, the then Congress-led central government dismissed several BJP-led state governments. Naturally, they would want to grab all the credit that comes their way.
Further, this very incident made BJP a political untouchable in India. A big chunk of Indian political parties refuse to associate with BJP so as to not alienate their minority vote bank.
People relished this when it worked against BJP. They cannot crib when it works in BJP’s favor.
I hate BJP…
What about Sankaracharyas?
We would like to respectfully differ with them.
Yes, BJP can be accused of capitalizing on the issue for political gains.
Yet, it doesn’t reduce the Ram Mandir’s significance one bit. It doesn’t distract from the fact that the mandir is a watershed moment for Indian civilization.
Hindus, unlike the Abrahamic religions, are allowed to have diverse opinions.
Meanwhile, since when has the left ecosystem grown so reverential of Hindu seers? Would they like to endorse some other opinions from these very seers on matters that are not palatable to them? Would they like to endorse their opinion on caste, for instance?
We understand the game. It was never about them. It’s about spoiling a monumental event for us. And we’re not going to fall for it. :)
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