Ram is back home.

 

   

‘Hindustan’. The land of ‘Hindus’ (now I am not saying that this stands for the religion Hinduism but this word has been used for the area which is east of the river Indus and the religion of the majority of people living here IS Hinduism or idolatry). And still, it took us 500 years to build a temple of Lord Ram, in a place that we believe is his birth land.

So it is believed in the Hindu religion, that Lord Ram was born in Ayodhya and that there was a huge temple, which had been made and developed by old kings and locals, on the disputed land. Later, Babar came to India and obviously in order to spread his kingdom and his religion, he severely damaged the mandir or rather destroyed that centuries old temple complex which not only had a religious place in the hearts of the Hindus but also, represented our old art, culture and traditions, and built a mosque over it. Hence that mosque came to be known as ‘Babri Masjid’.

Now this is the story of about 500 years back. Since then, the Hindus have been relentlessly trying to rebuild a ‘Ram Mandir’ on the disputed land. Being a population of 120 million, Hindus have been generous and kind-hearted enough to try to solve the issue by meetings, discussions, negotiations, legal methods and other non-violent ways. 1 man, Mr. Ansari, was living in Ayodhya itself, surrounded by Hindus, and was fighting against them. Do I think that something like this could’ve happened in any Islamic or Muhammedan state? Definitely not. We are a very flexible, loving, accepting and humane religion. We think of the Muslim population as a part of us. For us, the Muslims are Hindustani too. So instead of using the hook or crook method, we chose the civilised way (unlike Babur, from Uzbekistan, 500 years ago).

The ‘Ram Mandir’ or the Ayodhya dispute had been going on for years. The British courts have also looked into this matter. But that “looking into” was of no use, of course. It was after our Independence that the real struggle started. In 1947, an idol of Lord Ram was found inside the mosque. From then on, the hearts of the Hindus started swelling with faith. Since then, the dispute had been in the local courts. The previous Governments had always sidelined the issue, being not very keen to resolve it. After the failure of the ‘Karseva’ yatra in 1990, where protesters were fired upon by the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government, in 1992, under the leadership of Mr. Lal Krishna Advani, a ‘Rath yatra’ was started from Somnath in Gujrat to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. This was when the dispute was taken up properly, politically. A lot of ‘Karsevaks’ came to Ayodhya and protested in front of the disputed structure, asking the Government and the Judiciary to build a mandir in its place. After protesting for a few days, the ‘Karsevaks’ lost their temper and destroyed the disputed structure on 6^th December 1992.  So many people died in the struggles and riots that took place for the construction of mandir or which happened as a result of the destruction of the disputed structure.

Finally in 2002, the case went to the Allahabad High Court. The Court ordered the Archaeological Department to survey the disputed land and dig to find any evidences of a Mandir. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) gave its report to the High Court in a “sealed envelope”, without making it public and in 2010, the High Court gave its verdict and divided the disputed land into 3 parts. But the Muslim side wasn’t happy with that so they took the case to the Supreme Court of India. Since 2010, the case had been pending in the Supreme Court. The Muslim side appeared not to be very eager to resolve the issue and continuously delayed it. They also called in political assets and were shrewd enough to ask the Supreme Court to delay the decision until the end of the General Elections 2019. And this was said by their lawyer who happens to belong to one of India’s biggest and the oldest political party. But since 2014, the case had been progressing at a comparatively faster pace. 120 million Hindus gave the decision of their faith, into the hands of 5 people. Daily hearings were held between August and October 2019 and finally on 9^th November 2019, the Supreme Court gave its verdict according to which, a temple was to be built on the disputed land. The verdict of the Supreme Court was very amicable though as 5 acres of land was offered to the Muslim community in Ayodhya itself. Finally, Lord Ram was served justice.

Within the battles of religion, it was ultimately the Constitution and the Judiciary who were the real winners. The huge temple will be built by the next 3 years and Ayodhya will officially become the Ram Janmbhumi. I wish that in the future, Lord Ram’s temple, who is considered to be “Maryada Purushotam” (man of men), becomes a symbol of unity, grace, peace, courage, equality, sacrifice, upliftment of poor and justice.