Post-election UP: how to build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya

The UP elections are now in their last leg, the results expected in ten days. Soon the battle of the ballot for India’s largest state will have been fought and won. Some party or combination or parties will assume the helm of the new UP sarkar. Whoever wins, my humble plea to the new government is to facilitate the building of a magnificent Ram temple in Ayodhya. There are some important caveats to this plea, though. First, the temple should be built without violence as befitting its location, Ayodhya. The idea of Ayodhya or Avadh means non-war (a + yuddha) or non-killing (a + vadh). If we go into the very depths of these words, we will grasp their inner significance: a city presided by an ideal ruler will have no war or killing. No wonder the notion of Ayodhya had an appeal far and wide, beyond the borders of present-day India. 

A Ram Mandir in Ayodhya would benefit all its citizens, Hindus and Muslims. It would become an international tourist and pilgrimage destination, adding to the revenues of the whole district. In the building of the temple, thousands of workers, both skilled and unskilled, would secure employment — labourers, brick-layers, masons, stone-workers, carpenters, sculptors, ironmongers, engineers, foremen, and so on, Hindus as well as Muslims. Similarly, shops, eateries, bazaars, and other supporting systems would also thrive. Clearly, a win-win for all.

Who would object to such a temple? Muslims, especially the religious-minded, should have no objection. The Babri Masjid, now proven to be built on top of a destroyed temple, is not a sacred site to them. In fact, in Islam, believers can pray anywhere. Even the tombs of the prophet and his family are not sacred sites though worthy of respect. As to mosques, they can be shifted and dismantled, if the need arises, as has been done in several countries of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. In India, however, dargas or hospises built on the graves of Sufis and saints have acquired a Hindu aura of sacredness. Clearly, the erstwhile Babri Masjid was not one of them. It was no place for pilgrimage or ziarat to devout Muslims. Instead, it was only a sad symbol of conquest, vandalism, and religious intolerance. 

Only, it would seem, secularist intellectuals and discredited historians sitting hundreds, even thousands of miles, away from Ayodhya would object. To their question, was felling of the Babri Masjid was regrettable? The answer is: yes, in the sense that it was a protected monument, part of our history. But as a symbolic reclamation, its destruction was perhaps unavoidable. The furore that followed only served to highlight the hostage mentality of our secularist ruling elites: a hundred books on one destroyed mosque against one prior tome by the lone and redoubtable SitaRam Goel on the thousands of destroyed temples! 

That is why, ideally, a great temple should have been built right next to the Babri Mosque. That way people would have understood what really happened in medieval India: how many shrines were looted, desecrated, and destroyed. But how, despite so much carnage, mayhem, and demolition, the peaceful reassertion of Sanatana Dharma was inevitable. The Ram temple will be built in Ayodhya. The very logic of history will make it happen, which a section of our intelligentsia has sought to distort, twist, or deny.

Our historians have tried to whitewash, evade, or shamelessly lie about the carnage and devastation that accompanied the Muslim conquest of India. But the cultural memory of people will not allow us to forget it. Nor indeed the surviving contemporary evidence: from the top of the subcontinent, the Hindukush (literally Hindukiller) mountains to Kanyakumari, there is hardly a historic shrine or icon that does not bear the marks of defilement. At the very least, you will see a broken nose, the tell-tale mark of the religious vandal, theologically justified by an intolerant iconoclastic creed and materially rewarded by spoils of pillage. That such violation has continued right to our own times is attested to by the blowing up of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban and the more recent blasts at the Shahbaz Qalandar Shah in Sindh, Pakistan. 

Perhaps the rabble-rousing political class, with their eager cadres, might create some trouble, especially those who wish to derive political mileage either by building or blocking it. Which brings me to the second caveat: the temple should not only be built non-violently, but also non-politically. An inter-denominational committee of Rama devotees and well wishers with a proven record should spearhead its construction. The present Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas may itself need a significant makeover.

This brings me to my final caveat: the Ram temple must not only be majestic, but beautiful. It should be an innovative, contemporary structure, not some faux-traditional monument. The Swaminarayans have created models of modern temple building on a grand scale, which could be studied, but not necessarily replicated. The Ram temple at Ayodhya should exceed such attempts, creating a new standard in international temple architecture, art, craft, technology, and aesthetics. 

It should symbolise our coming of age, combining the best of classical, medieval, modern — and futuristic India. It should be a monument to learning, not just to piety. It should be not just be inclusive, but radically non-exclusive, welcoming visitors of all faiths from all over the world; it should also attract non-believers, secularists, and communists by its art and architecture. Above all, it should be a monument to reconciliation and conflict-resolution, not to revenge histories and triumphalist self-assertion. After all, Ramrajya symbolises commonweal and sarvodaya (the welfare of all), not the domination of one class, religion, or community over others. 

The Ram Mandir should therefore be a monument befitting not just Raja Ram but Ram Rajya.

The author is a poet and professor at JNU, New Delhi. Views expressed are his own.