A state-sponsored temple to Lord Ram may have been inaugurated in Ayodhya on January 22, but the show was, really speaking, dedicated to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the chief patron or yajman – with Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat also brought in to fill the photo frame.
Adityanath quite simply could not have been kept out the way other BJP-RSS bigwigs were. If excluded, he has enough firepower to be able to cause trouble and Modi is well aware of this. They tried to push him out after Covid ended but had to beat a hasty retreat.
A truce was struck, else the result of the 2022 Assembly polls in UP could have looked uncertain for the BJP. A below par outcome in that large state had the potential to prejudice the party’s standing nation-wide, specially the image of the half man-half God of the ruling party’s pantheon. Adityanath’s power cannot be trifled with in UP. He has state power as well as the power of his Praetorian guard, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, behind him.
As for Bhagwat, he does, after all, head the lathi-wielding, millions strong RSS volunteer force although he is a wholly non-charismatic figure. Modi is known to treat him shabbily, but is aware that the BJP election machinery is run on the strength of RSS cadres. BJP cadres, such as they are, lack the RSS’s experience, ideological agility and guile honed over the decades.
The reasons may only be guessed at but Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP chief J.P. Nadda, as well as L. K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, dutifully kept away from the function lest they become distractions, underlining the wholly political nature of the event, designed meticulously to project the exalted one in the run-up to the national election. Advani, especially might have been a special draw. It was his rath yatra of 1990- in which Modi had played a part from the wings as a hewer of wood and drawer of water that set the stage for Monday’s temple inauguration.
Also read: A Time of Contempt
The cult of personality has been in full bloom for some time but on Monday it reached its apogee. Underlining the loss of the vaunted neutrality and non-political nature of India’s armed forces, the Indian Air Force was made to shower flower petals on the pseudo-religious event.
One thing looks certain: had the Prime Minister not been the master of ceremonies, and were the event genuinely religious in nature, catch the likes of the Bachans and other Bollywood stars, the Ambanis, the Tendulkars showing up in dusty old Uttar Pradesh.
After Monday’s event, Modi has become at once temporal and spiritual authority, the Dalai Lama or the medieval era Pope, casting aside the Constitution of India which lamely still proclaims itself a “secular” republic in which the state has no favoured religion.
Modi’s actions will rub off down the line, on the Union government, all BJP-run state governments, and the dozens of uncivil civil society organizations nurtured or spawned during Modi rule that kill, burn, bulldoze at will, with the acquiescing silence of the Prime Minister.
Modi is matchless when he hits the stage, and he has now cultivated a swagger as well. His preening was on display as he walked toward the sanctum sanctorum and while walking back after prostrating himself before the deity installed on Monday. He pushes in every garb he dons, but most of all the saffron robe, which is the dog-whistle to mobilize people of a certain faith (and usually also against another faith).
In his first term in office, when he first visited Nepal as PM, he dressed in saffron as the Hindu Pope might, and carried with him tons of sandalwood for the famous Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu. But the state of Nepal rebuffed his Hindu bait; they wanted state-to-state relations, not entente between predominantly Hindu countries. In any case, no state runs on religion. Religion is always only a trick to grab and keep power – a “dikhawa” as they say in Hindi, to dupe the people.
Modi’s saffron robes were on view at the temple of Kedarnath in 2019 as news cameras clicked and videos rolled while the Prime Minister of India meditated. The robes were also seen when Modi performed puja when the new Parliament building was inaugurated. Puja, religious clothing, mythological referencing have become the middle name of this prime minister.
In this scheme, Parliament is no longer a place to deliberate and legislate but to carry out the wishes of the maharaj who is also rajrishi, to flaunt the PM as the natural leader of the Hindus of India, “the Sole Spokesman” to borrow Ayesha Jalal’s description of Jinnah. Ambedkar would have blanched at the puja stunt. Nehru would have thrown an angry fit and called in the police to remove the impostor. Gandhi may have sighed, whispering “Hey Ram!” and sat on fast to end the tamasha.
But we know the end result of that Parliament House puja: 146 opposition MPs suspended for showing the temerity to ask questions of the government when the security of Parliament was compromised by disgruntled unemployed youth, and MPs having their membership cancelled for raising the vexed Adani question that seeks answers directly of the Prime Minister.
Also read: The Making of a Temple State and What We have Done to Deserve It
It was again in this Parliament building, constructed to etch Modi’s name in the sands of time, that the question of Manipur, a border state in flames for many months, was glossed over by the PM – to the sorrow and dismay of the country.
The Supreme Court should be asked how the shadow of the Prime Minister’s rituals and religious garb has come to fall on the Ayodhya question. The top court gave its verdict on the Ayodhya issue in November 2019, and not long after, the presiding Chief Justice of India was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, courtesy the Modi regime.
One element of the verdict bears repetition: That the demolition of the Babri masjid was “egregious”- a “criminal” act, that there was no evidence that the mosque dating to Babar’s era had been built by destroying an existing temple, and yet the space occupied by the demolished 500-year old mosque should be handed over to the so-called Hindu parties to construct a Ram Mandir. This is where the temple now stands, inaugurated not by priests but by the Prime Minister.
In a recent interview to PTI, the current Chief Justice of India, Justice D. Y. Chandrachud, who sat on the five-judge Bench that issued the Ayodhya verdict, said without elaborating that the judgment was based on “the law and the Constitution”. To less naive minds it might seem that while the Bench sat down to rule on a title suit in respect of the land on which the mosque had stood, it ended up responding favourably to the pleas of those for whom building the temple right where the mosque had stood was a matter of “astha” or “faith/ religious belief”, and therefore not negotiable.
The CJI might well ask himself in what direction a country is headed when the Prime Minister puts on the religious robes of a particular community in a flash, and the Chief Justice himself gets photographed wearing religious colours and waxes eloquent on the binding force of temple flags. Does this prepare the ground for justice, especially against excesses of the state? Can a non-denominational polity and Constitution, so needed for the world’s most diverse land, be upheld in such a state?
Perhaps it is time to seek solace in the life and work of Goswami Tulsidas, great Ram devotee, great poet and contemporary of the Emperor Akbar, poetic friend of the court literary genius Abdul Rahim Khanakhana, and author of the revered Ramcharitmanas, also known as the Tulsi Ramayan, which has done more to popularise the life and ideals of Maryada Purushottam Ram among the masses than any other work. Tulsi knew Sanskrit, but chose to write the Manas in a mix of Awadhi and Brajbhasha. The work is also replete with words from Bhojpuri, Persian and Arabic.
When his fellow Brahmins forced him to flee Kashi, he lived in mosques and is thought by Hindi literary scholars and critics to have completed his now famous work on the life of his revered God-figure Ram while staying in a mosque.
Maang ke khaibo, maseet mein soibo (I will beg for food and sleep in the mosque), writes Tulsi in his Kavitavali. Tulsi abandoned home life and lived as a wandering mendicant, living on alms and writing away.
There is a stark difference between the Ram of Tulsi and the Ram of Modi and his RSS cohorts who invite an assembly of some of the wealthiest Indians to witness the inauguration of the temple of Lord Ram in Ayodhya. This was a live show fit only for VIPs who are the principal beneficiaries of the policies of the present regime.
Anand K. Sahay is a political commentator based in New Delhi.
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