As expected, Congress leadership officially turned down the invitation extended for the Pran-Pratishtha ceremony of Ram Lalla at Ayodhya. The excuse is, “Religion is a personal matter” and “RSS/BJP have long made a political project of the temple in Ayodhya”. What better can be expected from the legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family Congress? The vote-bank politics is the apparent reason behind this, but there is more to it regarding understanding Bharat culturally and intellectually.
In 1948, after the merger of Junagarh princely state in the Union of Bharat, Sardar Patel and Dr KM Munshi, both the Congress leaders took a resolve of ‘Jay Somnath’ for the reconstruction of the desecrated temple in Gujarat by the invaders. Then, Mahatma Gandhi was alive. Under Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership, the Cabinet endorsed the decision and agreed to defray the cost. On the advice of Gandhiji, the Government’s funding decision was changed and public contributions were invited for the cause. As the Chairman of the Advisory Committee appointed by the Government for the reconstruction of the shrine, Munshi prepared the Trust Deed and envisioned Somnath as a great learning centre. By the time actual work was initiated, the nation had lost Gandhiji’s Sardar Patel and Nehru backtracked from his own Cabinet’s decision. He described the Somnath project as ‘Hindu Revivalism’. Was it a political project for people like Gandhiji, Patel and Munshi? Why did the Nehru-Gandhi Congress reject the importance of a ‘national project’ by reducing it to ‘personal faith’?
The colonial scholars, delinked from the Bharatiya ethos, have never understood the true spirit behind the movement from Somnath to Ayodhya. Nehru-Gandhi Congress symbolise that thought process. Their arrogance that the ‘idea of India’ is a Nehru’s gift to the nation in the making undermines the fact about the eternity and essence of Bharat. Fortunately, the subconscious of the Bharatiya’s mind never got carried away with such a colonial prism, though they might get confused for some time. The movement, excavations and arguments made by true history scholars have further removed this confusion. Hence, we see a widespread preparation for the Pran-Pratishtha ceremony across Bharat irrespective of regions, castes, languages and sects.
It is the fraudulent concept of ‘secularism’ that never found any problem with Haj subsidy and hosting Iftar at the government cost. The same Sonia Gandhi did not find any problem in nominating her colleagues to the canonisation ceremony of the controversial catholic nun called Mother Teresa by the Vatican Church. Overturning the decision by the Supreme Court in the Shahbano case, diverting temple donations by devotees to the non-Hindu cause and giving ‘secular’ colours to Hindu national festivals is perfectly fine for this ‘political project’ of fooling people for family gains. Undermining national symbols and pride in building communal vote banks has been the essence of Nehruvian secularism that the family-run party and its allies practise.
Shri Ram Janmabhoomi movement symbolises the unwavering faith of ordinary people in the eternal’ idea of Bharat’ that believes in ‘acceptance and respect for all ways’. After 76 physical battles and 134 years-long legal wrangles, Bharat is restoring the spirit of Maryada Purushottam Sri Ram. Congress and its allies have rejected and insulted this all. People are awakened enough to answer such deceptive positioning through their votes and activism, and they will eventually do it. We need to reverberate with the sentiments behind the civilisational, historical and national project unfolding in Ayodhya Dham and spread the message of positivity through participation. At the same time, the rejection legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi Congress and its allies needs to be exposed with historical facts.
