This story first appeared in GorakhaPatra
On 22nd January 2024, the Pran Pratishtha or consecration of the newly-built statue of Ram Lalla was carried out in Ayodhya with a lot of fanfare befitting the Hindu worshippers. This ostentatious ceremony was watched by Hindus all over the world. They took part in the worshipping in the Hindu temples by joining their hands during the ‘National Temple’ rituals that the Indian Prime Minister Modi, the BJP government and the Hindu leaders in India organised. The Hindus worship idols and believe that the idols will be imbibed with divine energy after pran pratisthan, the sacred consecration ceremony, which imparts life to the idols.
While Ayodhya is the birthplace of Ram, who is the incarnation of Vishnu who is one of the Hindu Trinity and the main character of Ramayan, Janakpur in eastern Nepal is the birthplace of Sita, another major character of Ramayan and the incarnation of Laxmi. The Ram Janaki Madir was lit up and celebrations commenced there that coincided with the celebrations of the pran pratisthan in Ayodhya. Several Nepali political and religious leaders along with the general devotees of Ram went to Ayodhya for the event. As the tradition goes, Janakpur which is the city of the in-laws of Ram, sent offerings locally known as Bhaar, including jewellery, food, and clothes, to Ayodhya as part of the rituals.
Celebration
As India celebrated Dipawali on Monday in Ayodhya, Janakpur also celebrated Deepawali, and the Hindu Nepalis in different parts of the country joined in. People were glued to the Indian and Nepali TV channels that were telecasting this event throughout the day. The Janaki Sena, a youth group in Janakpur, collected donations in the form of oil, cotton lamps, clay pots for their two hundred and fifty thousand oil-fed lamps for which about 2,500 litres of mustard oil had been collected. While Janakpur and some Hindus of Nepal seem to be as excited about the consecration in Ayodhya as their Indian counterparts, there were questions raised as to the fact that while many statues were shown and talked about during the consecration, there was no mention of Sita. In the Ramayan and the Hindu culture, Ram is never complete without Sita!
In Ayodhya, 1,000 tonnes of sand were collected from different shaktipiths all over India for the world’s largest Diya for Ram’s consecration. This earthen Diya, also known as Dashrath Deepak, has a circumference of 100 meters. For this, the cotton wicks were made of several quintals of cotton and the oil used to burn the wicks required several tankers of oil. While Ayodhya showcased a huge theatrical Hindu demonstration of this consecration ceremony, there were opposition voices raised from different sectors on the demonstration of power that politics and religion holds in a secular country like India.
According to The Wire online, a group of Indian diaspora organisation issued a joint statement on Monday (22nd January 2023) saying that PM Modi’s inauguration of Ayodhya Ram Temple would set a “dangerous precedent.” The statement says, “the planned ‘consecration’ of the temple by PM Modi and other members of the ruling (Bharatiya Janata Party) and RSS (Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh) stalwarts is a signal that India has moved to the brink of implementing the long-term RSS goals of making India a Hindu Rashtra (state) and replacing the constitution with Manusmriti, a violently Brahminical anti-Dalit and patriarchal ancient Hindu text.”
The Indian diaspora and analysts all over the world have been expressing concerns that the temple’s consecration makes it clear that Hindutva will be at the front and centre of the BJP elections campaign during the upcoming elections in 2024. The power demonstration of the consecration ceremony in Ayodhya and the Hindutva frenzy that has been created is expected to ensure this BJP victory for the third term. Besides the concerns raised about the political agenda of the BJP and RSS, there were several voices raised regarding the process of the consecration and the fact that it was done before the temple construction was completed. The Shankaracharyas in India have several Peeths and are seen as the guardians of the Hindu religion. Among them a few refused to take part during the consecration as they claimed that the whole process of the rituals was not followed.
In a democratic and secular country like India, the theatrical performance of the consecration of the statue of one of the Hindu gods termed by some in a ‘National Temple’ is a subject of concern. There are questions being raised that the Hindu nationalist groups were ‘appropriating’ Muslim religious sites. The Supreme Court’s verdict of 2019 handed over the land of the Babri Masjid for building the Ram temple. This particular Babri Masjid was demolished by the Hindu nationalists in 1992. Now there are further claims by fundamentalists Hindus on Muslim places of worship in Varanasi and Mathura.
Criticisms
PM Modi faces several criticisms for his active role in inaugurating the temple. One of the criticisms is that the “principled distance” between the state and the religion as set out in India’s foundation as a secular nation has been made obscure. While a lot of celebrities, political leaders and thousands of ordinary people came together for the consecration, there was a stark absence of the main opposition leaders and also the 96-year-old veteran BJP leader LK Advani and another veteran BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi.
Former Indian deputy premier Advani was actually the person who led the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in the 1990s, starting with a rath yatra that culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6th, 1992. The BJP was founded in 1980 with Advani taking the leadership of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1984 before becoming party president in 1986. Since then, BJP has had this agenda which has been realised by PM Modi in a manner which raises questions on whether the Hindus have been spiritually awaked or rather the Indians as a whole have to now start doing a reality check on where they stand as a secular democratic country.