After a Ram Lalla idol was placed in the Babri Masjid on the night of December 22-23, 1949, a livid Jawaharlal Nehru ordered for its removal. But in a country born out of a scarring Partition and riots, Nehru didn’t have his way. The pushback to the Prime Minister’s orders came not just from then District Magistrate KK Nair and city magistrate Guru Dutt Singh, but also from within the Congress in Faizabad.
Local Congress MLA from Faizabad, Baba Raghav Das, was among those who vociferously opposed any move to remove the idol, even threatening to resign if that happened.
In his book, The Demolition And The Verdict, journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay writes, “In 1950, when the Centre, at Nehru’s directive, was pressuring the state government for action, Raghav Das threatened to resign from the assembly and the party if the idol was removed.”
The MLA was no pushover. He had won the Faizabad seat in a 1948 byelection, defeating sitting MLA and socialist stalwart Acharya Narendra Dev by a margin of almost 1,300 votes. The by-election had been necessitated by Narendra Dev’s decision to resign — he was among 13 MLAs who had walked out of the Congress to form a separate socialist party.
Raghav Das had been handpicked for the byelection by UP Chief Minister Govind Ballabh Pant himself. The spiritually inclined Raghav Das was the perfect foil for the rationalist Narendra Dev. Mukhopadhyay’s book says that to ensure Narendra Dev’s defeat, Pant himself campaigned for Raghav Das in Ayodhya, and told people of the temple town that Narendra Dev was an atheist who did not believe in Lord Ram. “Pant emphasised that Narendra Dev did not wear the chot, the tuft of hair worn by devout Hindus,” Mukhopadhyay writes in his book.
The newly elected MLA got linked to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement right from the word go. When a nine-day akhand paath of the Ramacharitamanas was held in Ayodhya from October 20, 1949, Raghav Das attended the programme on the last day, sharing the stage with Mahant Digvijayanath of the Hindu Mahasabha — the guru of Mahant Avaidyanath, whose disciple Yogi Adityanath is now Chief Minister of UP —and Swami Karpatri of the Ram Rajya Parishad.
Raghav Das’s role and stature weren’t limited to Ayodhya.
A new book, Tryst With Ayodhya, written by former BJP Rajya Sabha MP Balbir Punj, says people even called him the “Gandhi of Poorvanchal”. Raghav Das had been made to join the freedom struggle by Mahatma Gandhi himself in 1921, and had gone to jail a number of times. He had also taken part in Gandhi’s 1931 Dandi March. It is believed that it was Gandhi who first called him “Baba” Raghav Das, after which the prefix stuck.
Indeed, Raghav Das had spiritual credentials too. He was a disciple and the successor of Yogiraj Anant Mahaprabhu, a famous saint from Barhaj in Deoria, eastern Uttar Pradesh. He also built the Paramhansa ashram at Barhaj and got a statue of the revolutionary freedom fighter, Ram Prasad Bismil, with whom he was close, installed at the Ashram.
Raghav Das was also a social reformer. He was involved in educational activities, served lepers and was associated with Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement to redistribute zamindari lands to peasants.
Born in a Brahmin family of Pune in Maharashtra as Raghvendra, Raghav Das left home at the age of 17, wandering across eastern Uttar Pradesh “in search of truth” and learning Hindi from an ascetic called Mauni Baba.
Raghav Das became a votary of the Hindi language and opened a Rashtra Bhasha Vidyalaya at his ashram in Barhaj. He also started a leprosy home and a degree college in Barhaj. Till date, a few educational institutions in eastern Uttar Pradesh bear Raghav Das’s name. Among them are Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur, Baba Raghav Das Inter College, Deoria, and Baba Raghav Das Degree College, Barhaj.
Raghav Das passed away in 1958. On December 12, 1998, during the Vajpayee government’s term, a postage stamp in the memory of the ‘Ram Bhakt’ Congress MLA who took on Nehru was released by the Government of India to mark Das’s birth anniversary.
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Vikas Pathak is deputy associate editor with The Indian Express and writes on national politics. He has over 17 years of experience, and has worked earlier with The Hindustan Times and The Hindu, among other publications. He has covered the national BJP, some key central ministries and Parliament for years, and has covered the 2009 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls and many state assembly polls. He has interviewed many Union ministers and Chief Ministers. Vikas has taught as a full-time faculty member at Asian College of Journalism, Chennai; Symbiosis International University, Pune; Jio Institute, Navi Mumbai; and as a guest professor at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. Vikas has authored a book, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab (Primus, 2018), which has been widely reviewed by top academic journals and leading newspapers. He did his PhD, M Phil and MA from JNU, New Delhi, was Student of the Year (2005-06) at ACJ and gold medalist from University Rajasthan College in Jaipur in graduation. He has been invited to top academic institutions like JNU, St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and IIT Delhi as a guest speaker/panellist. ... Read More
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