The inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22 is more than a religious event. It carries with it the civilisational character of the country for posterity. It is not an end itself but a means to proclaim the progressive message of a commitment to faith that is not premised on “otherness”. The movement to restore the Janmaboomi was neither a battle against any religion nor an effort to re-prosecute history. It was to proclaim the commitment to the culture that has shaped Hindus’ worldview. Lord Ram is not a god that gives, one to whom people go with wishes and aspirations but a deity who personifies ideals of life. He is a non-sectarian icon and represents those virtues considered essential for the uplift of the soul, a harmonious social order and inclusive welfarism for the people. It is these virtues that allow him to transcend the limits of time, geography and religious philosophies.
It is for these reasons that the battle to reclaim his birthplace has been fought by his devotees for five centuries.
Earlier, too, the Somnath temple was reconstructed after Bharat’s independence. But there is a world of difference between the two reconstructions. The first one was carried out largely through political and cultural elites, often enmeshed with the Indian state. There was a limited debate on ideas, even from opponents led by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The masses were an audience in the celebration. The Ram temple movement involved the common masses of all religions and sects, who participated in the ideas and had aspirations to regain the land and rebuild the temple. The movement was not a prisoner of political or cultural elites. In the process, everything under the sun was debated and the present generation can now understand the value of Bharat’s cultural exceptionalism in a world where there is a “clash of civilisations”.
The movement to restore Ram Janmbhoomi saw an ideological opposition that denounced it as an attack on the liberal-secular values of India. These arguments were relegated to the realm of the polemical as archaeological evidence and other historical sources failed the critics. Moreover, they wanted to discover the nation’s past without endorsing its culture, traditions and spirituality.
The limits of which aspects of India’s past glory and philosophy could and would be celebrated have been determined by the West – whether from an Orientalist or post-colonial lens. This not only circumscribed the nation’s autonomy to rediscover its past but also its capability to reproduce its civilisation.
Today, we see no ideological attack against the temple inauguration. There is only dissent by those sections of the political class that subscribe to an outdated idea of secularism. This ideological stream cherishes European modernity and has tried to redefine India civilisationally, disconnected from its culture. Like Russian czar Peter the Great, they belong neither to their home nor to the West.
The reproduction of civilisation does not exclusively depend on people’s aspirations and commitment to their culture. The role of the state is also vital. Many civilisations declined when the state denied legitimate space to culture and spirituality, and measured progress only through material measures.
During the freedom struggle, the Indian National Congress did not include a civilisational reproduction of Bharat and borrowed the Western idea of the nation-state. In the eight colonial-era census reports between 1872 to 1941, there is a clear concern about the slow rate of conversion of Hindus, indicating that religious conversion was part of the “civilising mission”. The colonisers tried to present the diversity among Hindus as competing identities. Congress – with the exception of some leaders like B G Tilak, Lajpat Rai, B C Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh — ignored this cultural aggression. The party did not pass a single resolution against it. Further, Partition was not merely due to the religious and political situation between the Hindus and Muslims. Demographic changes contributed substantially to the communal ideology. Hindus saw no change under the Nehruvian state in terms of the colonial cultural climate.
All these constituted Hindu anxieties and led to an apologist mindset. The success of the RSS, from the leadership of K B Hedgewar to Mohan Bhagwat, lies in addressing these Hindu anxieties. How could the RSS exceptionalism become a reality? Other Hindu organisations, movements and leaders – including the Hindu Mahasabha and V D Savarkar – argued that only by politically consolidating their majority status could Hindus’ identity and existence be safeguarded. This was a theory of domination. The RSS, on the other hand, has been Hinduising Hindus since 1925, who have been divided along caste, creed and have an enforced amnesia about their own greatness. It has tried to free them from sectarianism, orthodoxy and isolationism by investing huge human resources. This is not a majoritarian ambition but a Hindu renaissance.
Movements for cultural revival have been plagued by feudalism and capitalism. This creates plebeians and patricians and eventually sabotages a civilisation’s continuity. The state plays an important role here. Narendra Modi’s social and economic philosophy has made the state more moral. Aggressive poverty alleviation measures, along with his emotional connection with the marginalised are unique, in India and the world. He is committed and consistent in word and deed. PM Modi also enjoys enormous moral power beyond his office. His intervention has removed the danger of the emergence of cultural plebeians and patricians.
His spiritual positioning has uniquely impacted the psychology of people. The Ram temple is not the only example of this. In 2017, he unveiled a 112-foot-tall Adiyogi Shiva statue in Coimbatore. He succeeded in getting space for a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi, an Islamic society, in 2018. There’s also the renovation of the Kashi Vishwanath temple 2021.
All of this highlights the fundamental difference between the two most significant leaders of Modern Bharat, Nehru and Modi. Both are unapologetic about their worldviews. Nehru did not hide his attachment to Western values. His was a case of enlightened subjugation. On the issue of the reconstruction of the Somnath temple, he wrote to chief ministers on August 1, 1951, pointing out that “It is little realised here what great injuries to our credit abroad is done by the communal organisations of India because they represent just the things which a Western mind dislikes intensely and cannot understand. The recent inauguration of the Somnath temple with pomp and ceremony created a very bad impression abroad about India and her professions.”
Neither Somnath temple nor Ram temple denies space to non-Hindus nor does secular space shrink due to them. The Modi era is a quest for resolutions. The PM attends ceremonies, performs rituals and proactively integrates himself with Hindu spirituality. In ancient Bharat, the most iconic kings were those who lived with dharma. The political class in post-independent Bharat earned more from the Machiavellian idea of deluding the people by showing artificial sympathy to religions. Modi demolished this political cynicism, which was based on religious appeasement. The journey from Somnath to Ayodhya has shown that cultural continuity is unaffected by aggression, physical or ideological.
The Ram temple also establishes that the decolonisation of minds and ideas is a cultural and spiritual process.
Till today, the decolonisation of postcolonial societies, especially Bharat, was dependent on discourses generated in the West. They critiqued the West’s domination but wanted erstwhile colonies integrated with Western modernity. This contradictory approach has failed. The construction of the Ram temple involves generations, millions of people as well as the courts and intellectuals. It unfolds with the spirit of decolonisation and inclusiveness. The next step is to ensure social unity.
The writer is BJP Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
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