The Ram Mandir at Ayodhya will be inaugurated on 22 January by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a grand ceremony that will be televised live not only across the country but overseas too. The gigantic scale of the celebrations is unprecedented and mind-boggling.
At this stage, it is hard to estimate how much will be spent on the ceremony and the events leading up to it which are being televised 24×7 and highlighted in print and social media for the last several days. The rituals have already begun with the PM himself commencing with a well-publicised fast with many netizens ridiculing him for making public what is as per tradition a purely personal matter.
Besides other public figures, invitations were sent by the organisers, the Ramjanambhoomi Trust, to leaders of all political parties. In this respect, a strict protocol seems to have been followed. For example, the Indian National Congress (INC) received three invites — President Mallikarjun Kharge, Parliamentary Party leader Sonia Gandhi, and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha.
The invitations were received well in time. But the grand old party took its time to reply, and rightly so.
The CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury didn’t take much time to politely decline the invitation, the reply of Samajwadi President Akhilesh Yadav was both polite and diplomatic. While expressing his inability to attend, Yadav stated that he will definitely worship at the Ram Mandir along with his family after the inaugural ceremony on 22 January. Many other leaders of the INDIA alliance have similarly declined to attend, albeit for reasons slightly different from each other.
Amongst the last to decide were NCP leader Sharad Pawar and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav. On 30 December, I tweeted, "Opinion is sharply divided. But those advising for or against are both well-wishers of the grand old party. The right decision must be taken at the right time, not rushed through. Let the INDIA alliance too deliberate."
No Political Party Can Claim Credit for the Temple
However, it was the decision of the four Shankaracharyas — the highest religious and spiritual leaders of the Hindu faith — that came as a big relief for those who had declined as well as for those who were still undecided. On 10 January Jairam Ramesh, the General Secretary (Communications) of the party, issued the following statement:
"Lord Ram is worshipped by millions in our country. Religion is a personal matter. But the RSS / BJP have long made a political project of the temple in Ayodhya. The inauguration of the incomplete temple by the leaders of the BJP and the RSS has been obviously brought forward for electoral gain. While abiding by the 2019 Supreme Court judgment and honouring the sentiments of millions who revere Lord Ram, Shri Mallikarjun Kharge, Smt. Sonia Gandhi and Shri Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary have respectfully declined the invitation to what is clearly an RSS/BJP event."
It was a wise decision taken after consulting senior leaders of the party and perhaps some of the leaders of the INDIA alliance. The statements of the four Shankracharyas also may have made it easier for the leaders of secular parties to not attend the ceremony as it amounts to mixing religion with politics which is not only unconstitutional but also against the Congress party's creed and ideology.
India's first prime minister and the architect of modern India, who never compromised with communalism of any variety — Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh — before or after independence, warned the nation as early as 1948: "The alliance of religion and politics in the shape of communalism is a most dangerous alliance, and it yields the most abnormal kind of illegitimate brood."
The destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, and the Rath Yatra led by BJP leader LK Advani two years before that, was nothing but the result of this poisonous mixture of religion and politics. From the surreptitious installation of the Ram Lalla idols in 1948 to the incomplete construction of the temple in 2024, it has taken 76 years to settle a dispute originating allegedly over 500 years ago.
No political party can claim credit for the temple which took shape only after the Supreme Court decided the issue in favour of the majority community. The credit, if at all, belongs to the judiciary, but not fully as it decided the matter abruptly. The learned judges of the apex court knew that the general election was imminent, and in all fairness, should have kept the matter pending till the installation of the new government in May 2024. At least after delivering its judgment, the court could have easily given directions that the temple could not be consecrated till the middle of the year. However, giving them the benefit of the doubt, the apolitical judges of the Supreme Court perhaps didn't realise that their untimely judgment would be grossly misused for political ends.
No Political Party Must Compromise on Its Ideology and Principles
The Congress, and almost all secular parties, are therefore right in declining the invitation to what Rahul Gandhi stated recently at Kohima, that the RSS and the BJP have "turned 22 January into a political Modi function." The Congress may have also realised that 'soft Hindutva' cannot win against hard Hindutva. The party's victory in Telangana, and a few months earlier in Karnataka, proves beyond doubt the grand old party won in these two states as it didn't deviate from its secular path, and hence, the minorities voted for the party en mass. In Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the local leadership tried soft Hindutva and lost.
However, what is most important is that no political party must compromise on its ideology and principles while ensuring that those in power do not misuse their authority to tamper with the provisions of the Constitution drafted by Dr BR Ambedkar and with intellectual inputs of Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Rajaji, Maulana Azad, and others, who brought us out of British colonialism with great sacrifices under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.
Addressing a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) in 1955, PM Jawaharlal Nehru warned:
We must not try to get the sympathies of a group or some individuals merely because that may help us in our elections. Nothing is more fatal than that. Nothing can be more fatal to the Congress than to lose its soul. I am not prepared to say, quite frankly, that the soul of the Congress is bright and shining at the present moment. I don't think so. Nevertheless, we still possess a bit of it and that gives us some strength. The moment we lose that bit, we go to pieces completely. It is important, therefore, that we should not demean ourselves or lower ourselves in any way, merely for the sake of some election, either general or local.
The Congress has taken a principled stand and must be proud that it has done so. Those who wish to visit the Ram Mandir must be free to do so, but only in their private capacity. There is no need to do so wearing the Gandhi cap or with the party flag in hand.
Let's not forget that when India's first Rashtrapati, Dr Rajendra Prasad, made his controversial visit to the renovated Somnath temple, he had to do so as a private citizen. Earlier, Sardar Patel (who died before the inauguration of the temple) had assured Mahatma Gandhi that no government funds would be used for rebuilding the Somnath temple (quoted by Rajmohan Gandhi in his book Patel — A Life ). Sardar Patel kept his word. The powerful duo who run the country today hail from his state and swear by him. How much they are spending from public funds for the grand consecration ceremony can be known only days after the gala event is over.
(The writer, an ex-Army officer, is a columnist and author of Freedom Struggle and Beyond. Views are his own and not the party's. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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