How closely linked are India’s true independence and consecration of Ram Temple
Updated: January 18, 2025 2:18
An unnecessary controversy is being raked up over the recent remarks by RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat where he said the consecration of Ram Temple (at Ayodhya on 22 January 2024) marked the real independence of India.
Let us first take a look at what Bhagwat said, “Paush Shukla Dwadashi has been renamed Pratishtha(consecration) Dwadashi. Earlier we used to say Baikunth Ekadashi, Baikunth Dwadashi, now it is called Pratishtha Dwadashi because the true independence of India… was celebrated on that day. India became independent on 15th August (1947); you got political freedom. Determining our destiny is in our hands. We have also made a constitution, a specific vision that emanates from India’s selfhood, from which that constitution was directed, but we did not act according to its spirit, and therefore,
‘Ho gaye hain swapna sab saakar kaisey maan lein,tal gaya sir se vyatha ka bhaar kaisey maan lein’(how can we accept that all the dreams have been realised, how can we accept that the burden of pain is not there anymore)”
Bhagwat went on to talk about defining India’s selfhood as he said, “What is our ‘swa’ i.e. selfhood?” In this context he added that “Sri Rama, Sri Krishna and Shiva are not only Gods”. This has been the consistent stand of the RSS and in its ideological framework of cultural nationalism, Hindu Gods and Goddesses are not merely religious figures but they are icons who represent certain civilisational values that form the core of Sanatan Dharma. In this context Bhagwat specifically mentioned that Sr Ram connects north to south India.
It is important to understand the civilisational context of the movement for constructing a Ram Temple at Ayodhya. The struggle for construction of the Ram Temple lasted for around 500 years. It began after the demolition of Ram Temple in Ayodhya by Babur’s forces. For Bharatiya society, Babur was an Islamic invader. He represented and practised a set of cultural values that didn’t believe in co-existence whereas Lord Rama represents civilizational values that believe in ‘Vasudheiv Kutumbakam‘ (the whole world is one family). The struggle for building a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, was thus, a civilizational war between these two sets of values. How Hindus fought this war and won it despite all odds is a breath-taking story that the world needs to know. Because this story is not about merely a temple or a God, it is about the victory of ‘Dharma’ that is the soul of Hindu civilization and Bharat.
Babri Masjid was representative of a larger design whose manifestation began in A.D. 712 when Islamic invaders started attacking India. Every attack was followed by the demolition of temples and the construction of mosques and madrassas. Mohammad Bin Qasim invaded Sindh (in then undivided India but now part of Pakistan) in A.D. 712 after defeating King Dahir of Sindh. He demolished various Hindu institutions and converted a large number of Hindus forcefully into Islam.
In A.D. 1000, Mahmud Ghazni attacked Bharat and defeated Raja Jaipal. In A.D. 1008, he won Kangra (currently in Himachal Pradesh) and in A.D.1011 he won Thaneshwar where he demolished a number of Hindu temples, including the Chakraswami temple. In A.D. 1025, he demolished the Somnath temple (in Gujarat) and broke the main idol into several pieces.
Noted historian Sita Ram Goel has listed in detail the destruction of Hindu temples in his pioneering work “Hindu Temples: What Happened To Them (Vols. I and II).”
Summing up the macabre destruction, Goel says: “The temples were attacked ‘all along the way’ as the armies of Islam advanced; they were robbed of their scriptural wealth, pulled down, laid waste, burnt with naptha, trodden under horse’s hoofs and destroyed from their very foundations till not a trace of them remained. Mahmud of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura and 10,000 temples in and around Kannauj. One of his successors, Ibrahim, demolished 1,000 temples each in Ganga-Yamuna doab and Malwa.
Muhammad Gori destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutubud’din Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. Ali Adil Shah of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A Sufi, Qayim Shah, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli.Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the day of judgement, were levelled to the ground when swept by Islam, said Goel. In fact, such details have been made available by the Muslim historians themselves.
Temple demolitions sent a message
When Islamic invader Jalaluddin Khilji wrought havoc on Hindu temples in Delhi, for the so called ‘Sufi’, Amir Khusro, it was an occasion to show the power of his poetic imagination as he wrote, “A cry rose from the temples as if a second Mahmud had taken birth.” The temples in the environs of Delhi were ‘bent in prayers’ and ‘made to do prostration,’ by Alauddin Khilji. When the temple of Somnath was destroyed and its debris was thrown into the sea towards the west, Khusro gleefully wrote, “So the temple of Somnath was made to bow towards the holy Mecca, and the temple lowered its head and jumped into the sea, so you may say that the building first said its prayers and then had a bath.”
Many historians including the Muslims have similarly captured the demolition of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in A.D. 1528 by Babur. It was done not merely to build a mosque there but to send a message across that this was the victory of the ‘intolerant’ ones over the ‘tolerant’ ones. It was the victory of fundamentalist streaks of Islam over the set of values represented by Hindu society. That is why the reconstruction of Ram Temple was considered to be more than a religious affair by those who were steering this movement since 1983.
They were clear about this right from the beginning that the Ram Temple at Ayodhya is necessary to re-establish the set of civilisational values of tolerance and co-existence. That was what made Bharat the spiritual guru of the world in the past and that is what would help Bharat to show the way to the world.
