Ayodhya’s Triumphalist Majoritarianism

 

Every people love to belong to the winning side. Victory has more intoxications than religion. In fact, religion has been used more for achieving earthly conquests than for attaining spiritual bliss. In Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir, PM Modi is offering the nation (all the 130 crore people, in his own words) both intoxications: earthly and heavenly. How?

Earthly Conquest

The Ram Mandir is a symbol of the majority community’s triumph over the minorities and secularists and liberals – all the antinationals, in the new lingo. See, we have the power to bring down your god and his mosque – however historical the mosque may be – and put our own god there in a splendid temple and that too when the country is struggling with a pandemic and concomitant numerous other crises. That is the message from Ayodhya now. This country is not yours anymore; it is unarguably ours, one particular community’s. We are the victors and you are the vanquished.

No one wants to be on the side of the vanquished. So most people are happy to join the side of the victors. These people happily justify the construction of the temple at a time when:

·        unemployment rate is the highest in the country’s history

·        poverty and starvation stare bleakly from rising number of huts and slums

·        crude oil prices mock us from across the borders

·        even the maps metamorphose at those same borders

·        the impacts of poorly implemented schemes such as GST and demonetisation are still poking our soles like spikes on the way

·        crimes are mounting in various shapes: lynching, bank frauds (more than 23,000 cases since 2014), assaults

·        students, protestors and activists are arrested as traitors

·        thousands of crores are spent on advertisements meant to sell us post-truths

·        farmers are committing suicide or contemplating suicide in ever larger numbers

These are small inconveniences on the way to historical victory. Small prices for big gains. Our god has won. We have saved the national pride in the process. We can now boast to the infinite spaces that we have corrected a historical wrong. We have recaptured lost territories.

From whom?

Don’t ask that. If we have to answer that, our victory will burst will like a gossamer balloon we hoisted in the air. How can we admit that our enemies were the poor and downtrodden people who eked out a meagre living in their slums and hutments? How can we admit that we were lynching helpless people who did not even possess the strength to raise a finger in protest? How can we accept ourselves as mere hooligans who obeyed the diktats of our semi-literate leaders who shouted in moments of passion to “shoot the traitors”?

We can’t do any of that, obviously.

Spiritual conquest

So let us claim that we have reclaimed our god and his temple from the marauders of centuries ago? We are correcting the wrongs of history. We are saving none less than our god from the mleccha people and their debris of history. We are the greatest warriors on earth, warriors who fought for their god and none less. We will reap our heavenly rewards. All these earthly sorrows and pains you bear in the process will be nothing in comparison with your spiritual contribution to history.

Rehabilitating god at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was the very purpose of PM Modi’s incarnation. राम काजु कीन्हे बिनु मोहि कहाँ बिश्राम॥ as Modi said in his speech after laying the foundation stone of the Mandir. It was a divinely assigned task. Just like the ones with which Ram was born, Krishna was born, and all those gods were born.

“Today, the Ram Janmabhoomi has become free from the centuries-old chain of destruction and resurrection,” Modi declared rhetorically and asked the people to join him in hailing the god that was liberated from the chain of destruction and resurrection. We are the liberators of god. What more spiritual bliss do you wish for?

Our motherland is superior to the heaven of gods, Modi declared in that speech. What more do you want, dear countryman?

Conclusion

The Ram Mandir coming up in Ayodhya is going to be a landmark in the history of India. It is the end of India as a secular nation. Those who don’t believe in Ram – “the most virtuous ruler in the entire world” in Modi’s words – and those who don’t accept the liberator of that god as the country’s only leader will sink in the riled waters of the country’s history. Lord Rama has only just begun to fill his quiver with arrows.

xZx