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Ayodhya’s Rama

Image of the Ayodhya Temple from NDTV


Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be inaugurating the Rs 18,000 crore temple of Rama on 22 Jan 2024. Any patriotic Indian should be filled with nationalist pride. Or, is it religious pride? Cultural pride? Well, you choose.

As an Indian whose patriotism is highly questionable, I chose to contemplate on the very existence of Lord Rama. Google instructs me that Rama was born in Treta Yuga, the second period in the Hindu classification of history. Treta Yuga stretched from 2,163,102 BCE to 867,102 BCE, according to Google. The same Google tells us that homo sapiens arrived on earth some 300,000 years ago. Lord Rama lived long, long before homo sapiens evolved. “Hanuman was Lord Rama’s real subject,” a friend suggested. All the others are creatures of Valmiki’s imagination. “Mythology, man,” the friend reminded helpfully.

Then what about Lord Rama? Did he evolve before time? A premature homo sapiens? I’m inquisitive.

“Don’t you remember Plato?” My friend asks. Rama is God. God has to be perfect. Existence is imperfect, as Plato would say. The idea of Rama is as perfect as can be the ideal idea of anything. So it was the idea of Rama that preceded all evolution, that transcended time and place, that originated even before the cosmic Big Bang…

I joined my hands in gratitude to my friend. This is superb. Even Plato would have prostrated before this friend of mine.

But then arose another problem. Lord Rama has a birthplace. Rama Janmabhoomi, Ayodhya. He was born there following the normal human processes of conception and delivery. He wasn’t all that perfect too. If you trust the suspicions of a barber more than the chastity of your wife whom you choose to consign to flames because of the barber’s suspicions…

We are all imperfect and we love our gods to have imperfections, my friend argues. Plato’s ideal be damned. He is too Greek to be Aryan. Who can worship philosophy except those barbaric Greeks? We the noble Aryans need a god who is like us and yet not totally like us.

So somewhere down the line, Rama became the god in the temple on Ramkot hill in Ayodhya. Perhaps. Perhaps, my friend repeats emphatically as if I don’t know the meaning of that word. No one is really sure that there was a Ram temple there. No one is sure either that the Mughal emperor Babur demolished that temple in order to construct a masjid. That’s all possible, however.

One of the best ways of ascertaining one’s power over a people is to destroy their gods and temples. You prove to those vanquished people that you are more powerful than their gods by demolishing their temples. Didn’t Modi do this? My friend asks. When Modi became the Prime Minister, how many churches in North India were attacked?

I can’t remember the number, I say. The number doesn’t matter a bit, my friend responds. Numbers don’t carry any substantial truths. Look at the millions of people in India. Contrast their living conditions with those of the few elites who actually run the country. Where lie the substantial truths? India will be a superpower soon and yet the majority of her people will be struggling to make both ends meet. Numbers don’t count, man.

Babur destroyed a Hindu temple and replaced it with a Muslim masjid. We destroyed that masjid and are now replacing it with a temple. Where’s the difference between Babur and us?

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 463: One emperor is believed to have demolished a temple to build a mosque there. Another emperor constructs a temple where the mosque stood for a few centuries. What makes this emperor different from that emperor? #WorshipConstruction

 

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    None other than the phiilosophical semantics through which are applied the atrocities...and then, only by those who are desirouse of status and power. The ordinary person simply wishes harmony and the right to live their philosophy untroubled. Quite capable of doing so in each other's company, if left without those who would incite otherwise. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Precisely, Yam. The ordinary people wish to get on in peace and harmony. Those who are greedy for power manipulate truths and distort the world.

      Delete
  2. What is a god? Why do we worship power? Who is right? Do we ever learn?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Too many people won't like such questions. That's the problem.

      Delete
  3. I am no religious fanatic. It is best I dont comment. Dont know about the erstwhile Hindu Temple, but Babri Masjid was a great structure. I remember the crisis during demolition of that masjid. I dont understand all this reclamation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As I have implied in the post, demolition and reconstruction of certain sites have political motives, nothing to do with religion let alone spirituality.

      Delete
  4. I believe that all religions were created to bring law and order among people. What better than to make them believe that almighty and powerful creater shall punish anyone who commits sins and do not repend.

    It did work to some extend , but these days people use religion as a tool to show power and authority.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My understanding is that religions were created to keep the majority under the control of a gigantic delusion. A few shrewd individuals created the rules and gods and rituals in such a way that the majority would be brought to their knees.

      Delete
  5. Liked your post especially the last paragraph. U r right the kind rhetoric being generated on Ram Janam bhumi temple is more to get political mileage. Really sad the way religion has been used as a tool to gain power . We have swung from the policy of appeasement of minorities to now a sort of hatred being promoted, directly or indirectly. - Rama Kashyap

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Using religion so immorally for political purposes will backfire. People will turn cynical and even venal. We can see what's happening already.

      Delete
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    ReplyDelete
  8. Our Ram was so perfect. So perfect that he is looking down right now and mourning the turn of events.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I often imagine Ram, Prophet Mohammed and Jesus sitting together and making jokes about what the sapiens are doing in their names.

      Delete

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