There are various aspects of Lord Ram that have kept our devotion to him strong over millennia. India is the only pre-Bronze Age culture that is still alive and thriving. Every single other pre-Bronze Age culture is dead, most of them violently killed off by the same invaders who came for us. But we have stubbornly survived, managing to hold on to much of our ancient culture. Part of that ancient culture is the stories we collectively enjoy, the rituals we practise, the Gods and Goddesses we worship. Among the the most important Gods in the Hindu pantheon is Lord Ram.
What is it about Ram that animates so much devotion till today?
According to Dharmic tradition, each God or Goddess who we worship represents different archetypes. Lord Krishna represents one, Lord Shiva represents another archetype, and so on. What makes Lord Ram stand out is that he represents the archetype of the Maryada Purushottam, the perfect follower of rules/ honour/ traditions. If you get this, then you can understand how and why Lord Ram behaved the way he did.
At a deeper level, Ram is the eternal king of India. He is the representation of leadership like no other. Throughout history, so many dynasties have claimed inspiration and ancestry from him, not just in the Indian subcontinent, but even internationally. The Thai kings, the Cambodian kings, the ancient Indonesian kings, all took inspiration from him. In India, there are an equal number of examples — the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Vijayanagar rulers, the Ikshvakus of Andhra — every region has dynasties who have claimed to have associations with his lineage.
Much of India’s fascination with Ram stems from their faith in him as the ideal ruler. What does an ideal ruler mean? Ram represents the kind of ruler who puts his people and his nation above everything else, including his own family. Our culture speaks of other forms of leadership, too. In the Mahabharata, there is King Dhritarashtra, for example. His leadership came to be most associated with putramoha — an excessive affection for his child. He was a ruler who put his family above the nation. I am not saying that we have to judge this, it is simply a different model of leadership.
In India, for the common people, a king who puts them above his own family is loved and revered much more. That is what Lord Ram represents. And that is why most Indians to this day, have, what I call, a Ram obsession.
This obsession touches our political lives, too. As director of the Nehru Centre, I lived in London for a little over four years. In the West, the kind of politicians who are the most popular are the ones who resemble their electorate. Voters like to see a politician who is like them — a man or a woman who has a full family, a wife or a husband, children, perhaps even a dog. During my time there, I have often heard Westerners say that they want to vote for a leader they can have beer with. It is an alien concept for us in India because that’s not what we’re looking for in a leader. We are not looking for a leader who is like us. What we are looking for at a deep level is a leader like Ram, who will put us, his people, above everything else. In that, Indian voters are very different. One can see its reflections in our political life at the state and national level in the last 75-odd years — many of our most powerful leaders have been single.
One can understand voters who want a leader who puts the nation above everything else. But the message that the Ram Janmabhoomi ji temple sends out is that all of us should also put the nation first. Only when all 1.4 billion of us start believing that desh sarvopari — the nation is above everything else — that we will create a Ram rajya. All of us have multiple identities. But if all of us have an attitude that whatever religion we practise, whatever caste we are from, whatever language we speak, whatever community we are from, the nation comes before anything else, then India will certainly rise again to take its place in the comity of nations, a position our land held for most of human history. That is what we need to learn from Lord Ram. We look for him in our leaders, but I say that we need to look for Ram in ourselves as well. The temple gives us an opportunity to explore that.
As Lord Ram had said, Janani Janmabhumishcha Swargadapi Gariyasi (Mother and Motherland are greater than heaven).
Jai Shri Ram. Jai Siya Ram.
Amish is a bestselling author, former diplomat, and TV documentary host
India’s fascination with Ram stems from its faith in him as the ideal ruler
18
4
22.01.2024
There are various aspects of Lord Ram that have kept our devotion to him strong over millennia. India is the only pre-Bronze Age culture that is still alive and thriving. Every single other pre-Bronze Age culture is dead, most of them violently killed off by the same invaders who came for us. But we have stubbornly survived, managing to hold on to much of our ancient culture. Part of that ancient culture is the stories we collectively enjoy, the rituals we practise, the Gods and Goddesses we worship. Among the the most important Gods in the Hindu pantheon is Lord Ram.
What is it about Ram that animates so much devotion till today?
According to Dharmic tradition, each God or Goddess who we worship represents different archetypes. Lord Krishna represents one, Lord Shiva represents another archetype, and so on. What makes Lord Ram stand out is that he represents the archetype of the Maryada Purushottam, the perfect follower of rules/ honour/ traditions. If you get this, then you can understand how and why Lord Ram behaved the way he did.
At a deeper level, Ram is the eternal king of India. He is the........
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