Tryst with divinity, stage set for Ram Lalla’s homecoming at Ram Temple in Ayodhya

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, January 21

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Monday inaugurate the grand Ram Temple in Ayodhya with elaborate religious rituals planned for the ceremony to be attended by devotees, seers and leading personalities from all walks of life.

lord rama binds all, time to forget past: VHP

As religious fervour gripped Ayodhya and vast swathes of the country ahead of the inauguration, President Droupadi Murmu termed the festivities around the temple opening “free expression of India’s soul”.

Holiday declared in Himachal today

Shimla: The HP Government has declared a holiday on January 22 on account of consecration ceremony in Ayodhya. All departments, boards, corporations, schools, colleges and universities, etc., will remain closed.

AIIMS takes U-turn, OPDs to stay open

New Delhi: Amidst outrage, AIIMS has reversed its January 20 decision to shut non-critical services till 2.30 pm on Monday in view of Ayodhya event. In a fresh notification, it said: “OPDs shall stay open to attend to patients with appointments.” TNS

Start of campaign to rebuild ‘Bharatvarsh’

Ram Lalla’s entry in his birthplace and the temple’s ‘pran pratishtha’ will be the beginning of the campaign for reconstruction of Bharatvarsh, which is for harmony, unity, progress, peace and well-being of everyone. Mohan Bhagwat, RSS Chief

In a three-page letter to PM Modi on Sunday, the President said the inauguration of the Ram Temple would mark the culmination of India’s glorious civilisational journey and herald a new era of national revival.

“The nationwide atmosphere of festivity around the Ram Temple opening in Ayodhya mirrors the free expression of India’s soul. We are fortunate to bear witness to the start of a new era of national revival,” the President said, lauding PM Modi for undertaking an 11-day purity ritual ahead of the inauguration. The PM will be the chief patron at the ceremony in Ayodhya and will put “kajal” in the eyes of Lord Rama’s idol. The “pran pratishtha” ritual is meant to pray to Lord Rama, presiding deity of the Ayodhya temple, to reside in the newly sculpted idol. In her letter, the President described Lord Rama as the finest embodiment of India’s spiritual and cultural heritage and quoted Mahatma Gandhi, who called Lord Rama his ultimate saviour in the darkest of times.

Murmu also lauded the PM Modi-led BJP government for an “all-inclusive approach” saying, “The influence of Lord Rama’s governance ideals based on the principles of justice and people’s welfare is evident in the working of the government and the recent launch of PM Janman, a plan to empower the most deprived Scheduled Tribes, is an example of this approach.”

Leading Hindu organisations, including the BJP’s ideological mentor RSS, today described the Ram Temple opening as the beginning of a campaign to reconstruct “Bharatvarsh”, which is for harmony, peace and wellbeing of all. In an article posted on the RSS website, Sangh supremo Mohan Bhagwat, while noting the prolonged struggle of Hindu society for the Ram Temple, called for “conflict and bitterness” to end. RSS’ sister organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad too stressed “unity and peace”.

“Lord Rama binds all. The message of ‘pran pratishtha’ is that we should forget past struggles and rancour and move forward taking everyone along,” said Alok Kumar of the VHP, which is at the forefront of the Ayodhya ceremony.

The RSS’ call for bitterness over the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute to end is significant on the eve of the upcoming 18th General Election with the Ayodhya temple opening being widely seen as the start of PM Modi’s poll campaign for a third consecutive term.

The ruling BJP has already firmed up plans to organise one lakh daily visitations from across India to Ayodhya starting January 23 in a mass mobilisation exercise on the poll eve.

PM Modi also chose to spend the eve of the Ram Temple inauguration in Tamil Nadu, where the BJP is yet to open its Lok Sabha account.

Modi capped his southern sojourn on Sunday with a visit to Arichal Munai in Dhanushkodi, the site from where Ram Setu was built.

He also offered prayers at the Kothandaramaswamy Temple, where Lord Rama is believed to have conducted Vibhishana’s coronation.

For the BJP, the Ram Temple inauguration will mean the culmination of a 35-year-old campaign, which began from Palampur in Himachal Pradesh in 1989 when the party’s national executive adopted a resolution demanding a temple at the site of Lord Rama’s birthplace in Ayodhya, where a 16th century Babri Masjid stood. A year later, LK Advani commenced a rath yatra, powering the BJP to electoral centre stage and campaigning on the slogan “Mandir wahin banayenge”. Starting with 1996, the BJP promised the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in all its Lok Sabha poll manifestoes.

The BJP argued that the temple stood at the Ayodhya site long before Mughal emperor Babur destroyed it to build a mosque in 1528.

The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute peaked in 1992 with the demolition of the mosque.

Eventually in 2019, the Supreme Court gave closure to the festering issue by handing over the disputed site to Hindu petitioners and ordering a separate plot for Muslims.

Tomorrow, when the Ram Temple opens in Ayodhya, Iqbal Ansari, son of Hashim Ansari, the original litigant from the Muslim side in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, will be among the attendees

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